Kersh didn’t take the offered hand. He turned to face the altar. Eventually, Gideon let it drop and nodded. It was the Scourge’s way. As he left, with a sneering Dardarius at his heels, Kersh called, ‘I fear you may be the last to do that.’
Gideon stopped and nodded once again.
‘Kersh, to command is not to be liked, feared or even respected. It is to be followed. Every corpus-captain finds his way. Some ways are harder than others, but they are all lonely paths,’ Gideon told him. ‘That’s why I left you Ezrachi.’ With that, Gideon left the chapel-reclusiam.
Once again, silence reigned.
‘This is a mistake,’ Kersh said, looking up at the towering stained-glass tessellations of Katafalque and the Primarch Dorn.
‘As corpus-captain you must master the art of the politician,’ Ezrachi answered. ‘It’s never a mistake when the Chapter Master makes it.’
‘I’m the Scourge,’ Kersh said, not seeming to hear the Apothecary. ‘I was born a warrior. I was engineered to kill.’
‘You’re a killer, yes. But killers need to be led, sometimes by other killers. You think yourself not worthy?’
Kersh let the question hang.
‘You are the first Excoriator to win the Feast of Blades. The first of our kind to earn the primarch’s sword. This promotion is just reward for your efforts at the Feast. Also, you are justly qualified for such a position. Before you were the Master’s Scourge you were a squad whip.’
‘First with the Eighth, second squad. Then, like Tiberias, with the Vanguard – First Company.’
‘Then I fail to see the mistake.’
‘The Feast is a distraction. I am afflicted. The Chapter has lost its standard and shares that affliction. I must assume responsibility for the Stigmartyr’s loss and the damage done as a result. I was a fool to think the Master would welcome my return – with or without the Dornsblade. He cannot trust me by his side. This promotion is a convenience. A way to keep me at arm’s length. Like sending me to the Feast in the first place.’
‘From what I know of the Chapter Master, that seems unlikely.’
‘Have you fought by his side for most of your life, Ezrachi?’ Kersh challenged. ‘Been his blade where his could not be, bled in his stead and been the moment between his life and death?’
‘No,’ the Apothecary admitted.
‘Then tell me not of your observations from afar. I know Quesiah Ichabod. He is a fair and honourable master, the best of us by a light year. He is more than a man, but he is still human and feels as humans do. He is dying. Slowly and in agony because he took an assassin’s blade that should have been mine to turn aside or receive. I am the Scourge!’
‘You are human also,’ the Apothecary reminded him. ‘You may think this promotion a return for some perceived failure or betrayal, but I watch as your all-too-human guilt eats away at you, corpus-captain. You punish yourself enough for both you and the Chapter Master. You view the Darkness as an affliction, but perhaps this is the primarch’s wish. Like Ichabod you were spared the butchery of that dark day on Ignis Prime. You both live your pain but are meant for greater things. The Feast of Blades. Company command.’
‘Command?’ Kersh snorted. ‘You honestly think of me as a commander? I am my brother’s right hand and the blade in his blind spot, not a voice on the vox directing that blade. I am not strategist or tactician. I am an attrition fighter in the best traditions of our Chapter, but when I cross blades I little know what I am going to do next, let alone a hundred others. And of the hundred, why the Fifth? Why did it have to be the Fifth?’
‘There is a poetry to the thinking,’ Ezrachi admitted. ‘You think that you earned the displeasure of your Excoriator brothers at the Feast? Wait until you meet the remainder of the Fifth Company. Then you will come to understand the true hatred of brother for brother.’
‘Like the loathing Master Ichabod must hold for me?’
‘Perhaps that is the point. Or perhaps the Master still has much to teach you and this is in turn a much needed lesson. You said it yourself, we are attrition fighters. We endure as you will endure this new responsibility and all that goes with it.’
‘Does your tiresome advice go with it, Apothecary?’
Ezrachi chuckled. ‘I will give you honest counsel when I can. To be corpus-captain is not to have all the answers. You will lead the way and your brethren will follow, it is as simple as that.’
‘I am a poor choice.’
‘But you are the choice. These are the chains of command, Kersh, and they are binding.’ The Scourge nodded.
‘Now, corpus-captain, if you’ll excuse me I have staff and equipment to transfer to the Angelica Mortis.’
Kersh nodded once more and the Apothecary withdrew, leaving him alone again in the chapel-reclusiam. He approached the altar, looking up at Katafalque and Dorn. He placed his helm and the data-slate of Ichabod’s orders next to the Dornsblade and knelt before the glass representations. He thought on the trials of the Second Founding. Dorn’s own guilt and the agony of the Codex Astartes’ decree, the division of the Legion into autonomous Chapters. He considered the noble features of Demetrius Katafalque at his primarch’s side. The captain who bled with his men before the walls of the Imperial Palace, under the horrific onslaught of the Warmaster’s siege. Holding out for as long as he could. Putting his body between the enemy and his Emperor. Making them pay in blood for every treasonous step. Demetrius Katafalque, whom Rogal Dorn had designated the first Excoriator. The first Master of their Chapter. The Scourge rested his gauntlet on the pommel of his gladius. The weapon he’d received upon becoming a fully-fledged battle-brother, so many years before.
‘Were you ready?’ Kersh put to the stained-glass Katafalque.
The four men of the God-Emperor knelt before the cardinal’s throne.
‘You think it wise to treat the Adeptus Astartes thus?’
‘How many of their calling have you encountered?’ Pontifex Nazimir asked his brother ecclesiarchs across the ancient’s lap. They too wore their years of faith on their faces, but where the cardinal drooled into his vestments, his sycophants still revelled in the wiles of old men.
‘None,’ Convocate Clemenz-Krycek admitted.
‘They’re solemn bastards,’ Confessor Tyutchev complained bullishly. ‘Much in love with their own self-importance and genic heritage.’
‘Common Imperials fear them,’ Nazimir said. ‘They are in awe of their blood-bond with the God-Emperor – but in reality the Adeptus Astartes are little more than genestock slaves.’
‘We are still right to fear them,’ Clemenz-Krycek replied. ‘Surely it is hubris to ensnare the Emperor’s Angels and shackle them to our bidding.’
‘You talk of hubris – an Angel’s prerogative,’ Tyutchev interrupted.
‘I will, of course, be guided by your excellencies in this,’ Arch-Deacon Schedonski told them. ‘But I too have some misgivings about using the Adeptus Astartes in this way.’
‘You would ask them politely for assistance, would you?’ Nazimir teased.
‘No–’
‘For it would be futile. They think themselves removed from the concerns of modern men.’
‘They think of themselves,’ Tyutchev repeated, ‘as the giants of old, battling alien barbarians on far-flung worlds, repeating the mistakes of their failed crusade.’
‘They still look outwards,’ Nazimir said, ‘acting on orders given ten thousand years hence, from an Emperor who was not all He would be. They do not appreciate as we do, the God-Emperor’s divinity.’