In this way Gideon had also decided to return the Scourge to his commander last. Apart from Kersh’s ceremonial significance, his commanding officer was the Chapter Master himself. Since the Excoriators home world of Eschara was the final destination on the frigate’s journey, it made sense to deliver the Scourge last. Still, this did little to assuage the warrior’s impatience. As he had confided to both Gideon and Ezrachi, Kersh was eager to return to Eschara, beg forgiveness of Master Ichabod in person and request that Santiarch Balshazar despatch him on a penitence crusade of his own, to track down the Alpha Legion and reclaim the Excoriators Chapter’s precious standard. Only through such recompense could the Scourge earn redemption in the eyes of his brothers and achieve a spiritual peace.
About the kneeling Scourge’s penitent form his mortal serfs busied themselves, at once dedicated yet inconspicuous. While Techmarine Hadrach was responsible for the maintenance of the ancient plate and the suit’s machine-spirit, many Chapter rituals and cult appeasements fell to Kersh’s seneschal, lictor and absterge; and there was much to do. The plate was magnificent – as befitting a Scourge of the Excoriators Chapter. Every Excoriator honoured with carrying the Chapter standard or ‘Ancient’ had worn the suit and it was as old as it was immaculate. Like the banner itself, it displayed the venerated symbol of their brotherhood – the Stigmartyr – on the suit’s loincloth. Kersh had considered himself, therefore, part of the standard, making its personal loss all the more grievous.
Seals, chains and brown leather strapping dripped from the suit, but Old Enoch and Oren occupied themselves with the plate itself. The armour was a relic and as such had been heavily modified by Adeptus Astartes artisans, but its studs and robust cabling betrayed its original mark and designation. The ceramite surface was pock-marked and scarred like the meteorite-battered surface of a moon. The ivory paint was mottled silver-grey with burns and bolt-craters from the many engagements the armour had witnessed. It had been the Scourge’s honour to add to these. Equally scarred and annotated was the helm sitting on the flagstone before the Scourge. It spoke ugly belligerence with its unsmiling grille, snake-eyed optics, studs like horn buds and a short, brutal crest.
Oren’s bulging arms were put to good use rubbing sacred oils into the ancient plate of the suit’s pauldrons. Each was a representation of the Stigmartyr: crafted ceramite fists, clutching Kersh’s shoulders and shot through with lightning bolts that protruded both front and behind like wicked spikes. The sacred oils preserved the excoriations and provided extra spiritual protection for the plate. Bethesda stood barefoot beside him, reading benedictions of bearing and repairing from a devotional tract, her syllables a sibilant whisper amongst the servitor chanting. Old Enoch knelt beside one gleaming vambrace, a diamond-tip vibro-quill in his bony hand, annotating each nick, scar and hollow with a date and location.
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
‘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
