With grimaces of pain and determination carved onto their frost-burnt features, Thane and Tychor fought on. Their bodies became a camouflaged pattern of red as their blood steamed and froze to their skin. As Chapter Masters, battle-brothers and serfs watched the titanic battle, they were forced from their positions on the block wall of the arena as the two opponents fought their way along.
Thane didn’t know what drove the Excoriators sergeant. He had bested Chapter champions and was now holding his own against a Chapter Master. Thane cursed himself for such a foolish dismissal. His bruised bones and sliced flesh testified to Tychor’s natural skill and battlefield experience. What were sergeants and captains — and Thane had faced both in the arena — but the Masters of Chapters in waiting? He could be exchanging blows with a future Chapter Master of the Excoriators. How could Koorland have possibly known that one day he would be Master of his own Chapter?
What had started as a noble battle of ceremony and bladework had turned into a savage brawl. Neither Exemplar nor Excoriator wanted to concede the fight — not with the spirits of their Imperial Fists brothers watching over them. The Excoriators had a reputation for indomitability, earned long ago when they still wore the legionary yellow of the Imperial Fists. They were attrition fighters in the noblest tradition, their craft learned on the walls of the Imperial Palace, defending their position against blood-crazed World Eaters and the thunder of the Iron Warriors. Thane doubted that a champion like Dathan Tychor knew how to surrender.
Thane and the Excoriator slashed and pounded each other about the arena, the cold scalding them back to their senses as their bodies crashed into ice blocks and the frozen floor. Thane became aware of voices and movement from around the arena. Fists Exemplar were calling out their protestations. Excoriators were arguing with them. Ishmael Korda, the Apothecary of Thane’s Second Company, had even dropped down into the arena, ready to administer treatment. Thane slowed the thud of his hearts and allowed a hand to come up. He held an outstretched palm to his Fists Exemplar, to Apothecary Korda, and to Chapter Master Issachar — who also seemed ready to call off his champion.
Taking an agonising breath, Thane looked up at Sergeant Tychor. He could see a cold determination in his eyes. Dorn’s determination.
‘Submit,’ the Excoriator said, his words an entreaty lost in the storm.
‘And dishonour us both?’ Thane returned before the pair once again clashed frozen blades.
Like the battered, blood-streaked Excoriator, Thane was at the epicentre of a galaxy of pain. In the mirror of Tychor’s blade he saw reflected the faces of the greenskin invader, hulking monsters of tusks, blood-red eyes and alien barbarism. Each staggering blow of the bionic fist became the quake of world-shaking ordnance or the planet-tearing upheaval of gravitational weaponry. Thane’s body was a field of battle, the burning agony of each wound in his freezing flesh like notations on a map. Engagements fought and primarchs lost. In Tychor’s furious features he thought he saw the ghost of Koorland’s own — the last Imperial Fist fighting his way into a future that belonged to someone else, leading a spectral Chapter, a fallen brotherhood, into eternity.
Koorland was not there and neither were his Imperial Fists. Only their noble Successors, fighting on. Honouring their name and upholding their traditions. Beneath the scorched surface of his own armour and the blue, ivory, grey and black of his brothers’ plate burned the yellow of a Legion unbroken. For a moment, amongst the fury of crashing blades, the crunch of snow and grunts of superhuman exertion, Thane felt the wisdom of the primarch. Rogal Dorn — loyal, unflinching and resolute. The shield of Terra and most trusted of the Emperor’s sons. Dorn, who had railed against the breaking of his mighty Legion and purged his grief with battle and pain. Amongst the savage bladework and the agony of his wounds, the Chapter Master felt a flash of inspiration. An idea hot from the heart. From the abyssal darkness of his breast, where hope had gone to die, sprang forth a concept fully-formed and burning with possibility.
‘Wait,’ Thane found himself saying, but the damage had already been done. He had become distracted and Tychordid not waste his opportunity. The Excoriator’s blade smashed Thane’s from his frozen hand. Before Thane had chance to register the manoeuvre, Tychor’s sword was hauled back and came thrusting for the Chapter Master’s stomach. Thane grabbed for the sergeant’s arm and the pair fought for control of the weapon. The tip of the blade pushed on through, into the flesh of Thane’s muscular side. Tychor heaved at the blade, while the Chapter Master held him back.
The sergeant was powerfully built and burned with an indomitable will. He had brought honour to himself and his Chapter in the arena. For Thane, however, there was more at stake than the honour of a single battle-brother, or a thousand such. With a snarl he powered Tychor’s arm back and pulled the tip of the blade from his bleeding side.
‘I have something of yours,’ Thane told his opponent. With agonising and incremental movements he pressed the gladius blade back at the Excoriator. With a final thrust Thane forced the tip of the sword into the champion’s scarified flesh, between his shoulder and the fused interface of the replacement limb. Tychor roared as the blade sank through his muscle. ‘Have it back.’
Thane didn’t stop there. He twisted the gladius blade within the sergeant’s flesh, drawing a howl from the Excoriator. The bionic limb locked in place as the turning gladius prised its interfaces from nerve and bone.
Thane threw himself around, wrenching the hilt of the impaling blade away from the sergeant. With the horrible popping of bone and interface lines, he tore the bionic limb free of its anchorage. As the metal limb crashed to the arena floor, sparking and twitching, gore spattered from the ruined shoulder.
He pointed the gladius at Tychor. ‘Submit, brother.’
Silence replied. Thane held the blade, its point dimpling the side of the champion’s throat. He would not ask again. He had been right about the Excoriators. The sergeant would have rather died than submitted in the arena, and Thane would need such qualities in the weeks and months to come. He had no intention of beating them out of a worthy opponent.
Thane looked to Chapter Master Issachar. The Excoriator was halfway into the arena, with his Space Marines and Bohemond of the Black Templars.
‘Enough?’ Thane said, his voice hoarse with pain and exertion.
Issachar nodded.
Thane tossed the gladius into the darkness of the storm and held out his hand. Blinking blood and snow from his eyes, the Excoriators champion took it. The Chapter Master drew the indefatigable sergeant to him with the handclasp of a brother, and as he did so, another arena was created about them. Not of block and ice, but of flesh and honour. Chapter Masters and their Space Marines closed in, followed by attendant serfs and servitors. They came up behind Thane and Tychor, laying cloaks of yellow loosely across their frost-burnt backs. Apothecaries moved in to tend to their champions’ wounds.
‘Then I see no reason why the honour of victory cannot be shared,’ Thane announced to them all. He saw immediate discomfort in the Excoriator’s eyes. The sergeant’s pride would never allow him to accept a victory unearned. ‘Shared between all the descendants of Dorn — all the worthy Successors of his Imperial Fists. For beneath our plate are we not all still Imperial Fists? Was not their blood the same as our own — the blood we have spilled at this Feast, in this arena, in their memory?’
‘What are you saying?’ Issachar of the Excoriators asked, looking to Cuarrion, Euclydeas, Bohemond, Vorkogun and Verpall each in turn before returning his gaze to Thane.