forwards, the Scourge ran the Excoriator’s already disfigured face along the blade’s razored edge. The sword sliced through flesh, muscle, cartilage and scored bone. Kersh flung him to one side, this time Skase rolling through some of his own gore.
The Excoriators looked on in stunned silence. Oliphant and the other mortals present gawped in fear and horror. Leaning against the pillar, Kersh tried to kick against the blood-slick floor. He was trying to get on his feet and when he failed, settled for simply angling the point of his relic blade at the squad seconds, Joachim and Ishmael – whose own blade still impaled the corpus-captain.
Ezrachi slapped the Chaplain on the pauldron and advanced on Kersh, but wild-eyed and skewered, the Scourge turned the tip of the gladius towards the Apothecary. Prompted by Ezrachi, Shadrath hissed at the Fifth Company Excoriators.
‘Stand down!’
After a moment’s hesitation, their stabbing glares fell to the floor. ‘The Trial is at an end. Honour has been both given and taken. First blood to the corpus-captain. Let it be recorded that at this time and in this place, he was the victor. To the bested, we honour his scars as he now honours his opponent with vindication.’
Silas Keturah was down on his knees, his carapace speckled with Skase’s blood. The silver-haired Scout squad whip had torn Skase’s loincloth from his belt and used it like a rag to staunch the bleeding. Kersh had cut the chief whip’s face in half and the blood loss was considerable. The gathering looked to the prone Skase, with a bloody cloth to his face, to respond as the trial dictated. Keturah whispered proceedings into the chief whip’s gore- blocked ear. Skase tensed. His gauntlets became fists. He squirmed before finally becoming still. Keturah put his ear to the sodden cloth. Finally, the faint murmurs of the smothered Skase could be heard. Silas Keturah raised his head. His cheek was bloody.
‘The chief whip renounces his claims,’ the Scout announced.
All eyes came back to the skewered Kersh. The Scourge had managed to get to his feet and clutched at the weapon imbedded in his side. Still leaning against the pillar he jabbed the tip of his own relic blade at the surrounding Excoriators.
‘You think this a game?’ he bawled. ‘Is it not enough that there are thousands of degenerate maniacs at the system’s edge, baying for Imperial blood? Must we spill each other’s?’
The Scourge’s harsh words echoed around the basilica. ‘The fight is out there! This might be a pile of grave dust, but it is the Imperium, beneath our feet. I for one will not allow the Ruinous Powers principality here. They must take the air from my lungs, the blood from my body and the steel from my heart first. Now you will renounce your weakness – as your chief whip has. You will do as your corpus-captain has asked – as your Chapter Master has asked. You will fight here as though it were our Escharan home world or Ancient Terra beneath your boots. For if you don’t, it very soon might need to be. You will give up your gene-seed or I will cut it out of you myself, that Excoriators more worthy than yourselves might take your place in the coming storm. Do you understand me, brothers?’
Kersh held their gaze before slipping and faltering slightly. Ezrachi dared wait no more.
‘Kersh, you’re bleeding to death,’ Ezrachi said, sweeping in. He pushed the relic blade to one side and began attending to the grievous wound in the Scourge’s side. The corpus-captain winced as the Apothecary manipulated the blade that sat snug in his flesh. The Scourge still held his own towards the gathered Adeptus Astartes.
‘You want to see blood?’ he told them finally. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. You will see plenty of your own and each other’s, if you continue as you are. The World Eaters will see to that. Make no mistake, they will ensure it.’
Kersh glared at his Excoriators. ‘Dismissed’.
Chapter Twelve
Wound Within A Wound
With Brother Micah under one arm and the Apothecary under the other, Kersh was helped to a tablet bunk in the hermitage. Ezrachi had set up one of the sanctuary chambers as a temporary apothecarion.
‘I’m all right,’ the corpus-captain had insisted moodily.
‘You’re bleeding like a stuck pig,’ Ezrachi had carped back. Sat on the stone tablet, with Ezrachi and one of his Helix-serfs exploring the wound and gathering instruments, the Scourge looked over to the only other occupied bunk in the apothecarion. The Epistolary, Melmoch, lay unconscious on the tablet, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. Bethesda entered the chamber, light on her toes, with concern and urgency in her eyes. ‘Steel yourself, it’s going to hurt.’
In one practised motion, the Apothecary withdrew the gladius skewering the Scourge’s side. Kersh winced but remained silent. ‘Probably not as much as when it went in though, eh?’ Ezrachi chuckled, handing the bloody sword to Micah.
‘My lord?’ Bethesda said, but the Scourge was lost in thought.
‘He’ll live. As usual,’ the Apothecary reassured her. ‘Now make yourself useful, child, and get your master out of his sacred plate.’
This the absterge fell to immediately. Brother Micah turned the gore-smeared blade over in his hand.
‘Don’t you have anywhere else to be?’ Ezrachi said with irritation. ‘You could return that to Ishmael. I’m sure he’ll be needing it again soon enough.’ When Micah didn’t answer, the Apothecary added, ‘You think on the Trial? You think you would have done any better?’
‘The corpus-captain won the duel. How could I do any better than that?’ Micah said unhappily.
‘Good answer,’ Ezrachi replied, busy at work on the gushing wound.
‘He’s angry I didn’t let him champion my cause,’ Kersh said absently, still looking at Melmoch.
‘I
Kersh winced again. ‘You can take the next blade destined for my belly. How’s that? For now, I need you to find Brother Novah. Send him to me. I have orders to distribute. I need you out there. Ensure my orders are being followed. Oversee the beginning of the demolition. Work with the lord lieutenant and the Charnel Guard. I want recruits processed and armed. Establish emplacements, fire arcs and kill zones around the city perimeter. I want this city ready to defend itself. That is the cause – the company’s cause – that I wish you to champion.’
‘What of our number?’
‘The Fifth Company’s tactics will be more fluid and responsive to the nature, number and orientation of the threat presented. We need to expect anything. Go do your duty.’
‘Yes, corpus-captain,’ Micah replied. The champion stabbed the bloody gladius into a hermitage bench. ‘Brother Ishmael can collect this himself,’ he said with distaste, adopted his helmet and left.
As Bethesda stripped the Scourge of his plate, Ezrachi worked and his serfs stitched and stapled Kersh’s insides back into some sense of order. The puncture in the black carapace, which fused his ribs together like a chestplate beneath his flesh, was harder to remedy. As the Apothecary completed the brief surgery and closed up the wound with a corkscrew needle, he gave the Scourge his report.
‘I’ve administered growth hormone and applied a bonding agent – a surgical resin – to prevent further tearing along the carapace. The pain will fade over time. The resin will take an hour or so to set, so do your best to remain still.’
Bethesda held up the abdominal plate of ceramite through which the gladius had punched. ‘Take that to Brother Dancred,’ Ezrachi instructed.
‘He has better things to do,’ Kersh said suddenly. ‘As do you, Apothecary.’ Bethesda hesitated.
‘Ask him for a temporary patch,’ Ezrachi said. ‘As I have performed on its wearer. The detail and artistry can wait – as indeed it does on the corpus-captain himself.’
‘Where’s Skase?’ the Scourge demanded.
Ezrachi raised an eyebrow. ‘Is he to be punished?’
‘No,’ Kersh said.
‘He stabbed his commanding officer during a duel, an act it would not be unreasonable to characterise as treasonous or even an assassination attempt. He has dishonoured himself…’
