to the Apothecary and Brother Micah.
‘No need,’ the Scourge said walking forwards. ‘We’ll contend with what we have.’
Skase nodded his approval and drew his oiled gladius.
‘My lords,’ Oliphant called, getting to his feet. ‘You cannot shed blood in the–’ but Proctor Kraski put a hand on his shoulder and shook his grizzled head.
‘The Rite has been invoked and it has been answered,’ Chaplain Shadrath said, moving down the nave as Excoriators backed between pillars to give the combatants more room. From the shadows, the revenant watched with patient interest. ‘Trial by the Blade. As all Excoriators are equal in Dorn’s image, first blood goes to the victor, when blood is drawn from that image. Brothers will indicate their understanding.’
Kersh drew his relic-blade, taking several practise swings with the gladius. Both corpus-captain and chief whip acknowledged the Chaplain by kissing their right gauntlets.
‘Begin,’ Shadrath told them.
Skase was an ivory blur as he leapt at the Scourge with sword held high. As the blade came down, Kersh feigned a parry, only to slip out from under the cleaving motion. As Skase’s gladius chipped the stone of the basilica floor, Kersh slapped the back of his head with the flat of his relic blade.
‘You will have to do better than that, brother,’ Kersh told him.
The needling comment had its desired effect. Skase came back at him, his gladius glinting its arcs and curves in the candlelit gloom of the basilica. Kersh remained poised, deflecting the blade’s optimistic dance and arching his neck left and right to avoid the venomous stabbing motions the chief whip used to punctuate his spite- driven attacks. Indulging a towering parry, Kersh held the seething Skase at full stretch. Bringing up his left fist, he hammered his chief whip across the jaw before slashing back across his cheekbone with the knuckles of his gauntlet. Skase was battered back, sword in hand, but immediately brought his own fingertips to his face. Stepping closer, Chaplain Shadrath leant in to check for any evidence of blood, but there was none.
‘Proceed,’ the Chaplain barked, backing away once more. Kersh brought his blade in low, but the chief whip battered it aside with an angry grunt. The assault gained in furiousness and before long Skase’s bladework began to lose its discipline. His lip wrinkled into a dogged, hate-fuelled snarl, and his gladius chopped and swept – demonstrating little interest in its target, the Scourge’s duel-scarred face.
‘Come on, meat!’ Kersh called.
Backing from the onslaught, his relic blade barely managing to turn his opponent’s aside, Kersh crashed through iron candelabra and shouldered a stone saint from his pedestal, sending him smashing simultaneously to Oliphant’s horror and the floor. Rounding a column, the Excoriators committed further blasphemies on the pillar- representation of Saint Proulx. Razored edges sparked off crafted stone as the two Space Marines fought for the advantage. Eventually the rhythmic slashing broke and the Scourge’s blade smacked Skase’s into the pillar, pinning the weapon. Kersh’s ceramite boot found the chief whip’s exposed side. The bone-shuddering impact took Skase off the ground, his gauntlet slipping free of his sword hilt and his armoured body clattering across the flags of the nave.
The Scourge ran down on the unarmed Excoriator, eager to end the needless conflict. As the whip shook his head and lifted his face in momentary confusion, Kersh swept in to deliver a duelling scar that Skase would never forget.
Further clattering distracted the Scourge. Before him, gliding across the polished basilica floor, clinked Ishmael’s blade. Squad Castigir’s whip had drawn and slid his own gladius to his battle-brother, and before Kersh knew it the metal of the blade was scraping his ribs. Skase’s thrust from the floor, combined with the force of Kersh running down on the blade had created force enough to slip the sword tip between two ceramite plates and puncture up through the Excoriator’s black carapace. The clash had barely begun, however. Kersh instinctively wrapped a fist around the blade, preventing it from penetrating further. Skase was now on his feet, his face contorted with loathing and the physical effort required to drive the sword home. The whip had little trouble wrapping his gauntlet about Kersh’s fist, which in turn had gone momentarily limp around the grip of his gladius. The two held each other in a feverish grip, paralysed like the statues about them, with their brothers looking on.
His craggy face creased with concern, Ezrachi moved in, but the Scourge shook his head stiffly, bringing the Apothecary to a pause. Skase’s eyes burned with the knowledge that he held the advantage, and Kersh saw the satisfaction ripple across his features as he tried to twist his blade within the Scourge. The gladius screeched against the ceramite of Kersh’s artificer armour. The corpus-captain fought the compulsion to cry out as the blade’s length tore through his black carapace.
‘Sir!’ Brother Micah implored.
‘No!’ Kersh croaked with brutal defiance.
The Scourge’s arm came once more to life, surprising Skase and wrapping around the chief whip’s neck like a constricting serpent. The two fell in a messy embrace, Skase still holding on to both the Scourge’s clutched sword and the weapon buried in his corpus-captain’s midriff. The Excoriators rolled, roaring like animals, their plate clashing and the vaulted chamber filling with intermittent gasps of pain and exertion. They were soon tumbling back and forth, with plate and limb slapping through a gathering pool of the Scourge’s blood. The desperate struggle painted carnage across the basilica floor, with Kersh’s hold finally slipping on his own gore and off Skase’s armour.
The pair rolled, Skase’s blade turning inside the corpus-captain’s torso. Kersh went over the chief whip and ended up with his back resting against the foot of one of the nave’s many columns. Skase sat astride the bleeding Scourge, the corpus-captain’s relic blade held between them. The chief whip’s other hand still held its feverish grip on the gladius gutting his corpus-captain. Only Kersh’s own pulverising hold on the blade prevented further tragedy. Skase snarled and pushed, forcing Kersh’s own blade towards him. Leaning back against the pillar and into his pack, the Scourge quickly ran out of room to manoeuvre and could only watch the oiled length of the weapon edge towards him with cut-throat keenness.
‘Chaplain!’ Ezrachi called out.
‘The conventions are clear,’ Shadrath hissed, both Excoriators closing in with the rest of the gathering. ‘First blood from the face.’
Skase’s face quaked with the furious desire to win. He knew he had the Scourge and couldn’t help a maniacal grin spreading across his ugly features.
‘Do it, Uriah!’ Squad Whip Ishmael roared from beside the column. He was joined in similar encouragement by Joachim and the squad seconds.
Skase’s eyes flashed between Ishmael and Kersh; between his friend and his enemy. Unthinking, Skase leant into the thrust, putting his weight and hatred behind it. The blade shrieked through the corpus-captain’s fingers. Kersh grunted as the gladius cross guard struck plate and the blade punched through his body and out his armoured back.
With his eyes wide open and his hand free, the Scourge grabbed the back of Skase’s head. Ishmael and the seconds feasted on their corpus-captain’s silent suffering and took the manoeuvre to be a death-grasp, a spasm of desperation.
‘Let me take him,’ Brother Micah called desperately – like a loyal hound, straining at his chain. Blinking and straining, Kersh shook his head.
Looking down on the gutted Scourge, Skase’s mask began to fall. He hated Kersh, with every ounce of his being. He wanted to fight him. He wanted to best him. He didn’t want to kill him. His knees resting in Kersh’s blood, with a sword buried in his corpus-captain’s flank – that was what he seemed to have done.
Skase suddenly felt his head thrust forwards. Kersh’s relic blade glimmered between them, still clutched by the pair. With the Scourge’s gauntlet grasping the back of his skull, Skase felt an irresistible pull forwards. Releasing the hilt of the gladius he reached out to stop himself, only to slip as his bloody gauntlet failed to find purchase. He finally slapped his palm against the stone column and pushed back, but it was too late. Kersh’s blade remained rigid between them, held in their desperate hands. The Scourge’s lip came up, showing bloodied teeth as he forced the chief whip’s face towards the relic blade’s edge. As they stared across the mirrored surface of the blade, spitting hatred at one another, the Scourge twisted Skase’s head, the back of his tonsured scalp firmly in the corpus- captain’s grip.
Kersh suddenly relented, allowing Skase to pull his head back a little. The chief whip’s own natural inclination to relax followed a millisecond after, as the Scourge knew it would. Pulling Skase’s head to the side, instead of
