As Bethesda cleanses my flesh in readiness for my purification, Old Enoch and Oren prepare the penitorium for my ‘Donning of Dorn’s Mantle’. Two misshapen servitors enter also, wheeling in the caterpillar-tracked frame upon which my helm and relic armour hangs. My eyes linger on the sheathed blades dangling on their belts from the mount.
After Dorn’s Mantle I don my plate, each piece of ceramite locked and sealed in place by the serfs and servitors. Clearing and reloading my bolt pistol I slip it into my navel holster while Old Enoch and Oren belt my gladii to my hip. The only new addition to the ensemble is Corpus-Captain Thaddeus’s chainsword – a Fifth Company heirloom. A Ryza-pattern rarity, the weapon is relatively short and falchion-shaped, making it perfect for use in areas with restricted space like tunnels and the meat-grinding throngs of battle. The weapon and its harness are strapped to my other thigh.
Oren carries my helm as I make my way through the dormitories, cell blocks and refectory of the strike cruiser. Everywhere I go, unsurprisingly, eyes are averted and heads bowed – a sign of passive defiance easily disguised as subservient acknowledgement. The battle-brothers of the Fifth Company have not forgotten themselves. They are the Adeptus Astartes, proud and bound by centuries of ritual and stricture. I can see through the martial routine and cult observance, however. I see tight jaws and eyes red-rimmed with defeat and loss. They feel the emptiness of the Angelica Mortis and hear the echoes of their butchered brethren. I can hear the snap of the lash with greater regularity than cult observance requires. A company punishing itself beyond the healthy parameters of its primarch’s teachings. Penitoria decks awash with blood. Angels, angry with themselves, furious at me; hollow vessels filling with hate and frustration. I have lived this loathing and there is but one cure. To become honour’s avenger, to right wrongs in the heat of battle; vengeance, surgically applied – the solemn duty for which we were created.
This company is one big open wound. I feel it in the halls and corridors. I feel it across the table of the tactical-oratorium. My officers are gathered here. The great and the good of the Fifth, within whom this pain finds its most intense expression. Again, I have plate, bodies and faces but no eyes. All eyes are on the table. They will not look at me for fear I might know their abhorrence. A hatred born of the shame of my loss both of our precious Stigmartyr and my mind to the Darkness. The same hatred tempered in the fires of their own loss and failure to reclaim the Chapter standard. It is all here, as clear as the Codex Astartes on their faces. The philosopher Guilliman has no advice for me in his great book. Even our own Demetrius Katafalque composed no chapter for this in The Architecture of Agony, although it would have been a worthy subject for his writings.
I sit at the head of a long stone table, a table where the seats are half empty. The absence of the heroes who would have filled those seats has already established a tone. Worse still, I find my phantom has already assumed a dead-man’s seat at the far end of the table. It watches me with a shadowy stillness. The rest of the gathering seem unaware of its macabre presence. I have grown used to the grotesque being and its parlour trickery and attempt to emulate them.
Silence stings the air. Ezrachi is present. The Apothecary is satisfied with his new facilities and Helix-staff, but has found the company’s welcome no warmer than my own. Next to him are the other company specialists: Melmoch, the Fifth’s assigned Librarian and astrotelepathic communications officer – still smiling; Techmarine Dancred with his clockwork face; Chaplain Shadrath, hiding his cold discontent, as always, behind the leering half-skull of his helm. Sitting opposite is Corpus-Commander Bartimeus of the Angelica Mortis, as gruff and blunt as his immaterial voidmanship. Beyond the bridge officer sit the Fifth Company’s remaining squad whips: Ishmael, Joachim and the chief whip, Uriah Skase. Skase is a veteran – as the torn and mangled flesh of his face testifies. It sits on his face like an ugly, snarling mask, seemingly only held together by the staples, stitches and decorative rings that run across it. I have no reason to believe that the rest of his body isn’t scarred in the same way, like some hideous resurrection experiment.
Ezrachi has already told me that Skase is going to be a problem. More so even than Chaplain Shadrath. He is a legend within the company. An assault squad whip, he has more combat experience than the rest of his squad added together. He has walked away from the most grievous injuries and heaviest fighting of the Fifth Company’s many victories and has been at the forefront of the Excoriators’ efforts to reclaim the Stigmartyr from the filth Alpha Legion at Veiglehaven. He is loved by his men, who view him as an indestructible force. Ezrachi heard that he was so unrelenting on the battlefield that on the midnight plains of Menga-Dardra, a Black Legion Land Raider slammed into him with its dozer blade, ran him down and crushed him beneath its tracks, only for the mauled and buckled Skase to get back to his feet and rush back into the heart of the fighting. Worse, he had been Corpus-Captain Thaddeus’s right hand and, with Shadrath, had held the company together in the wake of the atrocities at Vieglehaven. Every Excoriator in the Fifth had fully expected Uriah Skase’s promotion to corpus-captain as a given. That was until Chapter Master Ichabod’s intervention and my unwelcome arrival aboard the Angelica Mortis.
The surviving battle-brothers of the Fifth have been reorganised by Skase into three full squads. He has taken the first, Squad Cicatrix. The second, Squad Castigir, is led by Skase’s own right hand, Squad Whip Ishmael, an Excoriator crafted of much the same unforgiving brutality as the chief whip. Brother Joachim has been recently promoted to whip of Squad Censura. Joachim is younger and fresher of face, but his devotion to Skase and his ideals is clear, assuming the form of a kind of hero worship. Together, the three whips have the allegiance of the company’s fighting brotherhood locked up and the Fifth Company’s detestation of my existence is universal.
The only battle-brothers not under Skase’s influence are the Tenth Company Scouts under Veteran Squad Whip Keturah. Fortunately, Silas Keturah allows for no other influence upon his neophytes but his own. I have felt little warmth for my own authority from the silver-haired veteran, who has clearly not relished using his young charges to bolster the depleted numbers under my command. Whenever we speak, I feel his critical scrutiny through the visor interface built into his brow and the cyclopean burn of the sniper’s single bionic lens, whirring softly to magnification.
By the time I finally speak, I have been sat there for some time – lost in my thoughts. No doubt my brothers will think this some proud indulgence and abhor me all the more.
‘Corpus-commander Bartimeus, when do you expect us to make St Ethalberg?’ Kersh asked across the cool stone of the table. When Bartimeus didn’t immediately reply, Kersh pressed. ‘Learned brother?’
The Scourge immediately regretted the derisive comment. Sarcasm was an indulgence and one not befitting the Emperor’s Angels, let alone a corpus-captain. Ezrachi had warned him that it would be unwise to meet the discontent in the company head on. He advised the Scourge to think like an officer and handle his men as such. Kersh’s belligerence was not so easily tamed, however, and his warrior’s pride was constantly fed by the sting of the company’s own mordant provocation. As Ezrachi had observed, it was fuel for the mutinous cancer already eating away at the Fifth Company’s collective soul. Initially, the Space Marines – already unhappy with the choice of their new corpus-captain – had been taken aback by the Scourge’s manner, but this soon settled into a morose sourness that became the hallmark of their disappointment and acceptance.