had to content itself with the lump of palace masonry it pulverised instead. A sudden backslash, riding on a crest of spite, found the Scourge, smacking his backpack and slamming the Excoriator into the wall.
Kersh swung straight back with the raging teeth of his chainsword, clipping the tip off the retracting girder. Clasping the weapon like a lance, the daemon charged at the Excoriator. Kersh batted the metal away with the flat of his sword, allowing the girder to skewer the stone of the wall right beside him. The Scourge accelerated the chain on his weapon to an insane screech before cutting down through the girder’s thickness. Again the creature retracted the strut only to have Kersh follow, pressing his advantage. The beast rewarded its opponent with a series of strikes designed to cut the Adeptus Astartes in two, but each one met with the Scourge’s serrated blade and the immovable arms of the Excoriator behind it. The girder’s length was cut down again and again, forcing the creature to step back up the bell. With just a stump remaining of the daemon’s weapon, Kersh brought up his pistol. By the time the Mark II delivered its death-dealing blast, however, the monster had flipped back behind the bell, leaving the girder to fall to the uneven floor and fat bolt-holes in the metal of the bell.
Fuelled by the creature’s retreat, Kersh stormed across the demolished architecture. A lightshow cast ghostly patterns through the swirls and eddies in the dust. The Scourge immediately recognised the semi-automatic
Kersh would have stormed into the hail of las-bolts himself if it hadn’t been for the company standard, resting in the rubble. Toralech’s hand was still clenched around the banner pole, despite the fact that the hulking standard bearer’s body was a twisted mess of bone and ceramite, half buried in the wreckage. Kersh spat and swore. Suddenly a gauntlet snatched at his boot. Spinning around, Kersh saw a partially buried Excoriator. Looking from the lightshow to the gauntlet, the corpus-captain slammed his Mark II and his chainsword down in the rubble. Heaving pieces of stone off the Space Marine, Kersh found himself looking down at the cracked, half-skull face of Shadrath’s helm. The Chaplain had been buried in masonry and the rim of the Great Bell rested across the smashed ceramite of his chest.
‘Hold on,’ Kersh told the Chaplain and rested his pack against the metal of the bell. Hooking his fingers around the rim, the Scourge pushed with his legs.
From the stairwell beyond, Kersh could hear the disciplined fire of the lasfusils break up and the screams of Guardsmen echo about the ruins of the palace. Heaving upwards, the corpus-captain lifted the colossal weight of the bell slightly, allowing the rim to clear the buckled chestplate of the Chaplain. Kersh heard Shadrath take a laboured breath, then the sounds of slaughter. The beast was among the Guardsmen, tearing and gutting its way through the Charnel Guard with hateful ease.
Within moments the thing was back. Down on all fours, the daemon charged at Kersh. It smouldered with the scorch tracks of las-bolts that had found their mark, and steamed with the blood of the Guardsmen it had butchered. Kersh held his ground as Chaplain Shadrath squirmed his way out from under the Great Bell. At the last moment, Kersh released his grip. The bell came back down on the Chaplain’s pauldron, trapping his arm and causing the Excoriator to grunt in pain and exertion. The daemon hit the metal of the instrument with the dome of its elongated cranium – its twisted horns ringing against the surface. Snatching the relic-gladius from his belt, the Scourge allowed the weight of its bulbous pommel to carry the blade around with centrifugal certainty before slashing down through the beast’s willowy arm.
Kersh’s stroke took off the limb at the elbow. But though such a loss might have given most enemies pause for thought, the daemon seemed oblivious. It spat its gall and fed its rage with a blinding counter. Using the dribbling stump of the same limb, the monster smacked the gladius out of the Scourge’s grip with bone-ringing force. Pushing itself off the bell with its hind-talons, the daemon blazed at the Excoriator. Slamming the length of its skull against his chest and midriff, the beast ran the corpus-captain into the opposite wall. Stone crumbled and masonry fell as the creature butted the Space Marine repeatedly into the unforgiving surface. Kersh tried to reach for the hilt of his remaining gladius – the only weapon he had left – but was forced to grab on to the monster’s horns in order to prepare himself for the next brutal impact.
Twisting the hydraulic sinew of his armoured wrist, Kersh broke off a length of the fiend’s horn and thrust it into the thing’s hideous visage. The reaction was immediate. Its head came up and its jaws flashed open, wider than the Scourge thought possible. Gagging under the creature’s gorebreath, Kersh once again grabbed the torturous cage of horn that protruded from the daemon’s skull, forcing it back. As the Excoriator fought to force the monster back, the slack length of bloodlustful tongue suddenly became solid and sharp, like a speartip. Kersh intuitively craned his head out of harm’s way, as the tongue shot out like a slaughterhouse groxgun. Puncturing the wall, the repellent tongue retracted. The Scourge threw his head the other way, only to have the devilish tip nick the side of his head and impale the brickwork.
Out of nowhere Kersh heard the familiar crack of a bolt pistol. The beast seemed to arch and screech its vexation before rocketing away, allowing several rounds to pluck at the stone about the Scourge. Falling to a crouch, Kersh saw that Chaplain Shadrath – his shoulder still trapped beneath the Great Bell – had got his other gauntlet to the corpus-captain’s Mark II pistol. The daemon was back down on all fours, bounding this way and that, causing each of the Chaplain’s unsteady shots to narrowly miss. Leaping up onto the side of the bell once more, it forced the instrument down with its infernal weight, causing the Chaplain to gasp and drop the weapon. Pinning his wrist to the floor with one wicked hind-talon, the beast reared its other above Shadrath’s cracked helm in readiness for the kill.
The ruins were suddenly filled with the clamour of bolt-fire. Brother Micah, masonry dust still cascading from his plate, took several determined – if shaky – steps around the Great Bell. His combat shield attachment was buckled but his bolter raged fully-automatic fury at the beast. The creature let loose an inhuman wail as the bolt- rounds plucked at its daemonflesh. With its stump and talons held out as an instinctive shield, and its digits and claws blasted off by the barrage, the monster backed away from the advancing champion.
As Micah’s half-spent magazine ran dry, the mauled beast turned to find the Scourge standing behind it. The Excoriator stood tall and held a large chunk of ruined masonry above his head. His face was a strained mask of fury and physical effort. Smashing the small boulder down on the creature’s long head, Kersh watched the daemon stagger back. Shaking dust, grit and rock fragments from its hellish form, the beast seemed momentarily dazed. Fearless and foolish, the Scourge ran at the monster, wrapping his arm around its neck, grabbing it by its repulsive tongue and clutching its head to his armoured side. He felt the spirit of his plate protest against such close proximity to the Chaos daemon. Kersh was beyond caring, however. Holding the beast in an armlock, the Scourge pummelled the beast with his other fist.
Kersh felt his being expand to accommodate the pure rage coursing through him. A natural gene-bred hatred of the Emperor’s enemies, growing into something unnatural and monstrous. Fighting the warp-sired thing had given rise to something ugly and uncompromising within the Scourge, a primal thing beyond his Adeptus Astartes training and the cool conduct of battle. A feeling that superseded strategic frustration and a Space Marine’s bottomless desire to win. Anger, indiscipline, anarchy. A lack of control that could only be described as bloodlust. Kersh became a ceramite chalice, spilling over with hot, mindless fury.
Spitting curses and oaths, beating and punching the monster, Kersh’s actions were no longer his own. His eyes remained fixed on the rubble through which his boots and the monster’s hind-talons stumbled. An image flashed before the Scourge’s eyes. A momentary flicker. A memory, seared into the Space Marine’s unconscious.
The crystalline wafer he’d found on his chest. The Emperor’s Tarot card. The
At once, Kersh was himself again. The fury gone. The spite steaming away before a Space Marine’s singular purpose. The Scourge became aware once more of the monster in his grasp. The threat. The need to act. Kersh dragged the daemon over to the knotted carnage of the Great Bell’s pulley system. Snatching a length of bell cord, the Scourge looped the thick rope around the daemon’s macabre skull. As he released the beast he felt furious life return to its blasted limbs. Two remaining talons scraped across the ceramite of his shoulder plate before Kersh got
