Salamander

Fugis held out an arm to stall him. Like the brother-sergeant, the Apothecary wore robes.

'Are you all right, Brother Tsu'gan? You seem…

troubled.'

Fugis's hood was down and his eyes were penetrating as he regarded the sergeant, some of his old sagacity returned.

'It's nothing. I only seek to honour the dead.' Tsu'gan couldn't keep his voice steady enough as the jabs of pain from the branding wracked him. He went to move on again, and this time Fugis stood in his path.

'And yet you sound as if you've recently been in battle.' His thin face accentuated a stern and probing expression.

'Step aside, Apothecary,' Tsu'gan snapped, gasping through his sudden anger. 'You have no cause to detain me.'

Fugis's cold eyes helped formed a scowl.

'I have every cause.' The Apothecary's hand lashed out. Debilitated as he was, Tsu'gan was too slow to stop it. Fugis pulled back the sergeant's robes and cowl to expose the hot, angry scars upon the lower part of his chest.

'Those are fresh,' he said, accusingly. 'You have been having yourself rebranded.'

Tsu'gan was about to protest, but denial by this point was beneath him.

'And what of it?' he snarled, teeth gritted both in anger and to ward off his slowly ebbing agony.

The Apothecary's expression hardened.

'What are you doing, brother?'

'What I must to function!' Tsu'gan's rancour swiftly waned, replaced by resignation. 'He was slain, Fugis. Slain in cold blood, no better than the wretches that lured us to Aura Hieron.'

'We all feel his loss, Tsu'gan.' Now it was Fugis's turn to change, though rather than soften, his eyes seemed to grow cold and faraway as if reliving his own bereavement.

'But you were not there at his end, brother. You did not gather the remains of his body and armour, wasted away and beyond even your skill to revivify in another,' Tsu'gan referred to the destruction of Kadai's progenoid glands. These elements of a Space Marine's physiology existed in the neck and chest. Harvested through the skill only an Apothecary was schooled in, they could be used to create another Salamander. But in the case of Kadai's tragic demise, even that small consolation was denied.

Fugis paused, deciding what to do.

'

You

must come to the Apothecarion. There I will tend your wounds,' he said. 'I can mend the superficial, brother, but the depth of the hurt you feel is beyond my skill to heal.' For a moment, the Apothecary's eyes softened. 'Your spirit is in turmoil, Tsu'gan. That cannot be allowed to continue.'

Tsu'gan tugged his robe back across his body and exhaled raggedly. A tic of discomfort registered below his left eye as he did it.

'What should I do, brother?' he asked.

Fugis's answer was simple.

'I should go to Chaplain Elysius, make you confess to him what you have been doing, and leave you to await his judgement.'

'I…' began the sergeant then relented. 'Yes, you are right. But let me do it, let me go to him myself.'

The Apothecary seemed uncertain. His searching gaze was back, as his eyes narrowed. 'Very well,' he said at last. 'But do it soon, or you'll give me no choice but to act in your stead.'

'I will, brother.'

Fugis lingered a moment longer, before turning his back and heading towards the anteroom where Kadai awaited him.

Tsu'gan went the other way, unaware of another figure tracking him in the darkened corridors of the Hall of Relics, the very same that had watched him break down at the foot of the anvil shrine and followed him from the isolation chamber.

Pain, grief, shame - they all dulled the brother-sergeant's senses as he came to a fork in the corridor. The light of the brazier-lamps seemed to cast it in an eldritch glow that Tsu'gan failed to notice. East led eventually to the Reclusium, where he would await the Chaplain and purge his heavy soul; west took him back to a small armoury where his battle-plate rested. He was about to turn east when he felt a light touch on his shoulder.

'Where are you going, my lord?' asked the voice of Iagon, 'Your armour is the other way.'

Tsu'gan faced him. Iagon was enrobed too. The hood was pulled far over his face so that only his sharp, angular nose and down-turned mouth were visible. The Salamander's slight form was exaggerated without his armour. It made him look small in comparison to his sergeant.

'I cannot, Iagon,' Tsu'gan told him. 'I must seek Elysius's counsel.' He tried to continue on his way, but Iagon reasserted his grip, stronger this time.

Tsu'gan winced with the pain of his earlier injuries.

'Release me, trooper. I am your sergeant.'

Iagon's face was a dispassionate mask.

'I cannot, my lord,' he said, and increased his grip.

Tsu'gan scowled and seized the trooper's wrist. Despite his wounds, he was still incredibly strong and now it was Iagon's turn to betray his discomfort.

'I am not strong enough to hold you, sergeant, but let me appeal to your better judgement…' Iagon pleaded, letting his brother go.

Tsu'gan released him, the scowl reduced to a displeased frown. It bade Iagon continue.

'Go to Elysius if you must,' he whispered quickly, 'but know that if you do, you will be stripped of rank and made to suffer penitence for what you've done. The chirurgeon-interrogators will probe and incise until they lay you bare. Our Brother-Chaplain will learn of your deceit—'

'I have deceived no one, save myself,' Tsu'gan snapped, about to turn away again, before Iagon stopped him.

'He

will

learn of your deceit,' he pressed, 'and act against all of your brothers who were in that room. Any chance of replacing N'keln will be gone, and the prospect of healing our divided company with it.'

'I don't want to replace him, Iagon,' Tsu'gan insisted. 'That is not my purpose.'

'If not you, then who else will do it?' Iagon implored. 'It is your destiny, brother.'

Tsu'gan was shaking his head. 'I am broken. When battle calls, it is easier. The cry of my bolter, the thunder of war in my heart, it smothers the pain. But when the enemy are dead and the battlefield is silent, it returns to me, Iagon.'

'It is just grief,' the trooper replied, leaning forward. 'It will pass. And what better way to expedite that process than in the crucible of battle, at the head of

your

company?'

Tsu'gan's mind wondered at that. The recently slumbering coals of ambition in his heart started to rekindle.

He