‘You’re welcome, brother…’
The Scourge’s absterge crossed the benighted cargo bay and entered the bondservants’ berth with a heavy water cask. It was less a berth than a dusty unguent locker used by Techmarines to store oils and bless them in readiness for use in the enginarium. The Cog Mechanicum hung above a small shrine to the Omnissiah that Old Enoch had put to good use as a counter or tabletop. The seneschal was stripped to the waist, baring a shrivelled chest, and had laid out a bowl and a shaving blade. He peered at his gaunt, empty features in a section of metal wall that he’d had Bethesda clean and polish to dull reflection. The absterge poured fresh water into the bowl, at which her father said nothing. The seneschal dipped his hand into a can of blessed oil and rubbed his bristled chin with the thin unguent. He then went to work rhythmically with the razor, scraping his slick, leathery skin and cleansing the blade in the water.
Putting down the cask, Bethesda passed her brother Oren, who had toppled one of their metal bunks and was using it to accomplish pull-ups. The lictor’s meaty arms pulled his broad bulk up off the locker floor. With each rise and fall Oren gave a piggish grunt. Bethesda knelt in the corner of their berth and stacked a small collection of empty unguent cans. She produced a selection of half-spent candles and began to amuse herself with their arrangement.
‘What in Katafalque’s name do you think you’re doing?’ Oren asked between grunts, but Bethesda didn’t answer. Enchanted with her simple display, she attempted to light the candles with a screw-flint. The brawny lictor came to a stop, watching his sister. ‘I said, what are you doing? Answer when you’re damn well spoken to.’
Bethesda looked up, smiling to herself. ‘I’m just lighting some candles.’
‘Where did you get them from?’
‘Traded them, with one of the attendants in the chapel-reclusiam,’ the serf admitted.
‘What in damnation for?’
‘Sundries.’
‘You stupid slattern,’ her brother came back savagely. ‘I mean, why?’
‘For the Scourge,’ she answered. ‘To celebrate his delivery from the Darkness.’
This time it was her father’s turn to grunt. Oren put an angry boot straight through the cans and candle arrangement.
‘Not in here you don’t.’
Bethesda went to reclaim her smashed candles. She murmured, ‘Just because he is what you can never be.’
‘What did you say to me?’ Oren growled, his eyes livid and cheeks flushed. He closed on her and she stood with fragile defiance. Bethesda heard her father’s razor pause. Old Enoch mumbled something. Oren paused dangerously before her, his chest rising and falling with a sibling’s petty anger.
‘Once,’ he told her through clenched teeth, ‘I wanted more than my pitiful existence to be an Emperor’s Angel. More than a hundred pitiful existences to be the warrior at whose pleasure I serve – the Scourge. An Excoriator without equal. I know better now. Our master is but a false prophet. An Angel fallen. He is so deep in his brothers’ blood that he might as well have slain them himself. We are punished. The Darkness has taken us all. But know this, good sister, if I had been Chapter Scourge, I would not have given up our Stigmartyr so easily.’
A call came from the distant cargo bay. A demigod demanding attendance. Old Enoch grumbled his garbled insistence and Oren backed away from his sister, holding her gaze as he did so. As the lictor left the locker, his father dashed his unkindly face with water before using a ragged towel to dry it off. He turned and stood, giving Bethesda a sour glare. Throwing the towel at her, he mumbled his disgust before following Oren out, leaving the absterge alone with her candles.
Chapter Two
Stigmartyr
‘Cease!’
Zachariah Kersh heard Ezrachi’s command across the Scarifica’s penitorium and the crack of the whip. Kersh’s personal serfs paused at the Apothecary’s order. Oren hesitated, the stock of ‘the purge’ clutched in his white-knuckled fist, the bloodied lash resting in coils on the deck beside him. Old Enoch looked to his Adeptus Astartes master, whose teeth-clenching snarl fell and eyes opened. He gave the seneschal a stabbing glare. Old Enoch began babbling to his son in a savage tone that echoed the Excoriator’s displeasure. His chest heaving with exertion, Oren gathered ‘the purge’s’ sacred length before handing it to his father for cleansing and consecration.
Kersh took his palms off the numbing cold of a section of reinforced armaplas. The blast shielding was closed, but the plas of the vistaport still retained the scalding sting of the void beyond. The heat from each handprint vanished from its deep blackness. The Scourge turned to present himself to the Apothecary and his freshly mauled back-flesh to the port. Ezrachi shook his head as he took in the constellation of ugly welts on the Space Marine’s body. Old scars from battles fought long ago.
‘What on Eschara do you think you’re doing?’ Ezrachi put to him. The Apothecary’s ceremonial plate was splattered with blood and he held his white helmet under one arm. ‘My express instructions were for rest, not mortification.’
‘I shouldn’t have to learn my shame from an errant,’ Kersh said, staring at the approaching Apothecary but nodding at Old Enoch. ‘I heard from mortal lips how Dorn’s flesh had failed them, failed their master and failed their master’s master.’
Ezrachi slowed. ‘I regret that,’ he said finally. ‘There have been pressing demands on my time. I had hoped to perform such a duty… at a suitable moment. Still, in my absence you had my orders–’
‘I have fallen so far in my estimation,’ Kersh seethed, ‘and that of my brothers that I’m not even sure I deserve to live.’
The Apothecary jabbed a gauntleted finger at Kersh’s superhuman bulk. ‘Do not be casual with this divine instrument, for it belongs neither to you nor your brothers,’ Ezrachi warned. ‘Your soul belongs to the Emperor and your flesh to Rogal Dorn – as you have correctly observed. The death separating the two belongs only to your enemies. In the meantime an Imperium’s interest resides in what may become of this crafted form before that eventuality.’
‘This flesh needs purification. I must find myself and the presence of the primarch within me.’
‘You have been one with the Darkness,’ Ezrachi countered. ‘You have walked in Dorn’s plate, seen the galaxy through his eyes, known the emptiness of his grieving heart. Some may say that no living Excoriator has known his father as well.’
‘Where is the Stigmartyr?’ Kersh asked. ‘Where is the Chapter’s sacred standard now?’
‘It is lost…’ a voice rumbled from behind Ezrachi. ‘Like you.’
Another Excoriator entered the penitorium. He was stripped to the waist, like Kersh, and accompanied by his own trio of Chapter serfs. His flesh was that of a veteran, leathery and lined from a lifetime spent in battle. His brow bore a neat row of service studs and a necklace of chainsword teeth jangled about his taut neck. ‘And now… like us.’
‘Tiberias,’ Ezrachi warned.
As his seneschal, lictor and absterge filed past, the Space Marine turned to hang a towel from a hook set into the wall. The word Vanguard was tattooed across his broad shoulders, identifying him as an honoured brother of the First Company. As he turned again his baleful gaze drove the Scourge’s eyes to the deck. The sting of shame kept them there for a moment, but before Kersh knew he had done it, he was staring back at the Excoriator in defiance.
‘Kersh,’ the Apothecary said.
‘Do not spare me, brother,’ the Scourge called at Tiberias. Fresh blood pitter-pattered the deck about the Space Marine, falling from the torn flesh on his back. Bethesda approached with Kersh’s own towel. ‘Back…’ the Scourge growled, causing the absterge to drop the item where she stood and retreat. Ezrachi watched, uncertain, as Tiberias approached. Kersh took several steps also, scooping up the towel and wiping the glistening sweat from a knotted brow. ‘Where is it?’