Corpus-captain Gideon stepped into the stone corridor. Closing the barbican behind him, the Excoriator rested his broad shoulders against the cool metal of the door. Beyond, Gideon could hear the crisp ring of blades rise up from the pit and through the solemn gathering of Adeptus Astartes officers stood amongst the tiered galleries.
Apothecary Ezrachi stepped out onto the long, empty corridor. He wiped blood from his hands with a surgical rag and stared down at the corpus-captain, whose head was angled to the door.
‘Usachar?’
‘Cut to ribbons,’ the Apothecary told him, his voice bouncing around the confines of the subterranean passage. ‘He’ll be more stitch than flesh when I’m finished with him.’
Gideon turned his head to put his ear flat to the metal barbican. The sound of clashing blades had ceased. A sombre announcement was being made. Even muffled through the door, it was obvious to the corpus-captain that Brother Dathan had not been successful.
‘Expect another for your slab,’ Gideon informed the Apothecary. He turned to look at the aged Excoriator. Rubbing the red from his hands, Ezrachi returned the grim gaze.
‘Corpus-captain…’
‘I know,’ Gideon said with slumped resignation. ‘I would not do this but for the dishonour we would endure in exiting the Feast so early and the disgrace to carry back to Eschara. I promised Master Ichabod a victory to lift the Chapter and carry our brothers through these dark times. I cannot return with both empty hearts and hands. News of our failure would likely finish what the filth Alpha Legion started. I fear the disappointment alone might end him, Ezrachi.’
The Apothecary shook his battered face. ‘Quesiah Ichabod is the greatest Excoriator to have ever lived. Those armoured serpents were lucky – and perhaps born so – but even they, with their lies and infernal ways, could not take him from us. Besides, he is now on Eschara with one of our best, the Chief Apothecary.’
‘I can’t look my Chapter Master in the eye and tell him I did everything in my power to secure victory when I did not.’ Gideon seemed to come to a dismal decision. ‘I’d hoped that it would not come to this. Nine Excoriators have fought for their Chapter in the Feast, yet ten were sent for such a hallowed duty. Only Dorn knows why Master Ichabod insisted upon his inclusion, but that is now the choice laid before me. Can the Scourge be made fit for anything, let alone battle?’
‘I believe so. We are pure of hearts but not of blood. As part of a former Legion and now as a Chapter, we are not alone in our experience of genetic deficiency. The Wolves and the Angels, as well as the brethren of future Foundings, carry the flaws of their blood heritage on to new generations,’ the Excoriators Apothecary explained. ‘When the Darkness takes one of our number, it might appear to us a wretched palsy: the slackness of the jaw, the tremor of the limb, the blankness of the eye. But those who survive it report the experience as a living nightmare, a sleeping wakefulness in which they relive the bottomless woe of Dorn’s most trying time – the grievous loss of our Father-Emperor, at least as we knew him. This is both our father’s genetic blessing and his curse to his sons. To know the possibility – for even a second – of an Imperium without the Emperor. To feel what Dorn felt. The profound misery of a primarch. The paralysing fear that even one as great as he experienced, for himself and for humanity, over the Emperor’s shattered body. To live the Darkness.’
‘Such details have little meaning for me, Apothecary,’ Gideon told him. ‘The Adeptus Astartes are bred for battle. They exist only to avenge the Emperor and put the enemies of humanity to the blade. I need warriors, not dreamers. Whatever the actual nature of this affliction, it does not befit one of our calling. If it were me, I’d rather my brothers ended such a vegetative existence than watch me live on in a senseless state.’
‘Since the Darkness can strike any of us at any time, corpus-captain, I’ll bear that in mind,’ Ezrachi promised with a subversive curl of the lip. ‘While we dwell on such matters, you should know that the procedure I intend is untried and that the brother in question might not survive it.’
‘For the calamity he has brought down on all of us, I would lose little sleep over that.’
‘I suspected as much,’ the Apothecary said. ‘I inform you only that it in turn might inform your strategy for our brothers in the contest. You do know it is possible that his suffering caused the loss of the Chapter standard rather than his failure being the cause of the Darkness.’
‘What do I care for that?’ Gideon snorted. ‘He failed his primarch. He failed his Chapter Master. He failed us all. The only care I have in this is to find use for such traitorous hands. What will you do and how long do you need?’
‘Santiarch Balshazar has his way of managing the afflicted,’ Ezrachi replied. ‘A spiritual treatment that those suffering the Darkness survive or they do not. While I respect the symbolic significance of the Santiarch’s practice and the rituals specific to our Chapter cult, my method is comparatively direct.’ The Apothecary indicated a point at the back of his skull, where in the fashion of the Chapter, his thinning hairline met a scarred and shaven scalp. ‘The catalepsean node is located here on the brain stem. As the implant responsible for modifying the circadian rhythms – our patterns of sleep and elongated periods of consciousness – it seems possible that a malfunctioning node could be responsible for a loss of motor control and the experience of a “living nightmare”. I plan to drill through the bone and insert a hypodermic lightning rod into the brain. There I shall issue a localised shock to the catalepsean node, hopefully interrupting the affliction of the Darkness and reinstating the natural function of the implant.’
‘Sounds painful.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘Good,’ the corpus-captain said. ‘When you are finished with Usachar and Dathan, return to the Scarifica. The Rites of Battle begin for the next round shortly. The Feast waits for no one. Send word if your experiment meets with success. I’ll also need informing if our fallen brother fails us once again.’
‘How do you define failure?’
‘A living-death or an actual one,’ Gideon told the Apothecary as he took his leave. ‘It makes very little difference to me when it comes to Zachariah Kersh.’
‘I trust everything is prepared?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
Apothecary Ezrachi stomped down the ramp into the cargo compartment of the frigate Scarifica, his leg clunking against the metal floor. His nostrils flared. They were down in the bowels of the ship. He would have preferred a more suitable location for the procedure, but his brother Excoriators would not tolerate the Scourge’s presence.
Crates and bulk-canisters had been cleared in the centre of the compartment, creating an open space. There stood a decorative casket, an item transported from Santiarch Balshazar’s Holy Reclusiam, buried deep within the Excoriators’ fortress-monastery on distant Eschara. Beaten from dull adamantium, the box had the dimensions of a sarcophagus and the extravagant garniture to match. Its frontispiece featured a raised depiction of the Emperor-of-All; despite the casket standing upright, it represented him as prone, maimed and broken, following his confrontation with the beast Horus. Santiarch Balshazar’s solution to the affliction of the Darkness. A darkness of his own. The most solitary of confinements, where no self-respecting Excoriator need look upon his weakness and invalidity.
On either side of the sarcophagus’s head was a small confessional grille. On the left, Ezrachi’s apothecarion aides busied themselves in ivory robes, adorned with the insignia of the prime helix. They were making adjustments to a tripod arrangement and drill, the trepan of which was pointed through the open grille. On the opposite side were the Scourge’s own serfs, looking thoroughly miserable. Since the disgrace of their master they had been relegated to the cargo compartment also, bunking and toileting in the dark, down with the casket that held the fallen Kersh.