by Nick Kyme
Every fire-born had a brander-priest. It was he or she that would scour the flesh, burn in the deeds of duty and embed forever the ignominies of defeat. For a Salamander’s skin was his legacy and his mortal tapestry of remembrances. Like many Chapter warriors had subalterns, minor equerries or auxiliaries, the fire-born had the brander-priests or Incendum Sacerii as some knew them. It was an old term, rapidly growing out of fashion but Drakgaard was an old warrior and had tastes to match.
They were armourers as well as priests, and some amongst the Chapter even called upon them for counsel. Drakgaard had only ever uttered his own brander-priest’s name. It was not that he thought Etar was beneath him, it was simply all the communication that was needed between them.
As Drakgaard held out his arms, Etar took it as a signal to stow his branding iron in a rack on the wall and went to his master.
It took almost an hour to remove the armour and Drakgaard grimaced at every plate extracted from his body. A litany of scar tissue was revealed beneath, merging with the brands that also colonised Drakgaard’s flesh. He remembered every one, knew every wound and relived it acutely when he was stood naked in readiness for the blessing of the furnace.
He stepped forwards, limping with the knotted muscle and twisted skin of his right thigh. Smoke and heat fell upon him like a purifying veil as he felt the soles of his bare feet start to burn.
A metal plate sat adjacent to the furnace, absorbing its heat. Drakgaard stood on it, arms held by his sides, fists bunched as he breathed deep of the fiery vapours. It was only now, during the ritual of branding, that the dull ache of his injuries abated. Pain to cleanse pain, only this was the purer.
Drakgaard bowed his head, eyes now shut as he entered deep meditation. He heard the scrape of metal against stone as Etar took up the brand again and thrust it into the furnace. It would take a few minutes to reach the temperature he needed it to. Drakgaard awaited its touch, welcoming it.
Bring the fire, he willed, a brief cessation to the dull agony he lived with day in and day out. Let it burn…
Thus far, the war on Heletine had been long. It was to get longer.
CHAPTER NINE
Sturndrang, underhive of Molior
No one else approached them as they delved deeper into Molior’s foetid underbelly, Zartath’s massacring of Karve and his gang enough to keep others at bay. Through the tunnels, the atrophied gantries and abandoned block-towers, beneath the low grimy fog underfoot and the distant skeletal remains of once-regal domiciles, Agatone was certain that eyes watched from the febrile darkness. He detected fear and a weakness of spirit in the marrow of this desolate place, one he had only found previously in the enslaved. Most other Chapters would have despised the human underclass that dwelled in lower Molior but, as a Salamander, Agatone pitied them.
Zartath had a less humane philosophy.
‘They reek of fear, this waste,’ he said, his voice a guttural snarl of distaste. ‘This pit is ripe with it, that and corruption. I was held prisoner, but I was never a slave. Not like this. Small wonder the taint has crept in – weak minds are ever prey to it.’
Through his belligerence, Zartath betrayed himself. A slight tremor in the cheek, under the right eye, at the memory of his incarceration by the dark eldar. For the longest time, he had scavenged to survive and watched his brothers slain. It had changed him, made him into something that was more animal than man, but despite his savage edge, he still felt.
Back aboard the Forge Hammer, after they had left their brothers – Agatone’s brothers, in truth, for although liveried in green drake scale and having endured the rite of pain, Zartath still had the feral beating heart of a dragon – Agatone had seen the ex-Black Dragon at prayer. His words were guttural, more like growls and snarls, but they were imprecations and devotions of faith. It was a rare moment of stillness, one Agatone did not interrupt nor reveal his witnessing of later. Zartath had been given a fresh suit of power armour upon his induction to the Chapter, artificered by none other than Forge Master Argos, but he had insisted on keeping his old and battered trappings. A relic, scarcely effective protection anymore, Agatone believed Zartath had kept them to remind himself of who he was and where he had come from. It gave the captain hope that his savage charge was more than just a beast.
Even so, though his assessment of the pitiful wretches they had seen in lower Molior was harsh, it was an opinion likely to be shared by many of the Adeptus Astartes.
‘They look starved to me, not tainted,’ said Agatone. ‘Don’t judge so harshly. We don’t know how long these people have been the grist for the millstones of their overseers or which potentate has them firmly beneath their heel.’
‘Are we liberators now then, captain? Do you wish to save these wretches from themselves?’
Agatone did not answer. On this mission, redemption extended only to one, and he was proving elusive.
There was a plague upon this place, though. Whether a moral or spiritual decay, Agatone did not know, but whatever the source it was virulent. Only now, as they drilled down, was it evident how rotten the core had become. A warrior such as Tsu’gan, even in disgrace, would have seen it had he ventured this way, this deep. Agatone wondered if he had tried to find the source and been outmatched, or had he been too wounded to do anything but stagger hopefully towards aid?
The image was incomplete, a fact that more than irked the Salamanders captain.
They pressed on.
After wandering through a labyrinth of tunnels, walkways and the low-ceilinged sub-hives pressed upon by the multitudinous levels above them, Agatone and Zartath emerged into what amounted to a settlement. It was no more than an industrialised shanty, a few aggregated structures and a populace of dirty-faced, malnourished individuals that huddled in packs around drum fires. There were vendors, selling dubious ‘meat’, some weapons and crude supplies. All of it was trash, gathered from the refuse of the hive, but none of these would-be entrepreneurs dared approach the newcomers.
The appearance of the bulky, obviously armed and armoured, strangers sent herds of these human dregs scurrying for the dark and further anonymity. Agatone wondered who else had visited these poor wretches and what their purpose might be.
‘Eyes and ears, Zartath,’ Agatone murmured, but the ex-Black Dragon’s awareness was already at its peak.
Exor was a dead weight on Agatone’s shoulder, and he noticed some of the bolder inhabitants approach a little closer for a better look at his burden, muttering in hushed whispers to one another when they saw it was a body he carried.
Mercifully, the Techmarine was still breathing and had not yet slipped into sus-an membrane coma. If that happened, reviving him would not be easy. Certainly, it could not be achieved with whatever crude technology the underhivers possessed.
Walking slowly through the procession of rough buildings that shouldered against each other like malformed teeth, their facades badly abraded, Agatone looked for signs that might indicate a medical facility.
He winced. The keening sound Zartath had mentioned earlier was still echoing in his head. It actually seemed louder and he wondered if he had spat out the tainted blood too slowly.
As they reached the square of this frontier settlement, a ‘welcoming committee’ at last met the two warriors. It was one armed with guns and blades, ten men strong. They looked weak, fearful.
As well they might.
Others, too many to discern numbers, cowered in the shadows cast by the ramshackle buildings.
‘C-collection isn’t until next cycle,’ stammered the leader, an old-looking man with pepper-wash stubble and narrow weasel-like eyes.
One looked much the same as another to Agatone, and once again he railed at the filth and depravity of these men and women. Each wore a haphazard agglomeration of armour plate, plastek and some form of hide that he assumed was flensed from the indigenous fauna of Molior’s underhive. Th
eir weapons were machetes or the lengths of sharp metal bent roughly to resemble makeshift blades with taped up grips. Crude ratchet-action shotguns and rusty-looking stubbers served as firepower.
Agatone wondered if they were even loaded as the men moved to encircle them both.
‘We’re not here to collect,’ he told the leader.
‘Because we gave up our tithe – we gave up a full flock as ordered,’ said the old man. Now he had the strangers in his sights and surrounded, he grew a little bolder. ‘You’ll get nothing more from us.’
‘Tithe?’ Agatone asked, intrigued.
The old man looked confused, as if answering a question Agatone should already know the answer to.
‘For the Seven Points.’
‘We’re strangers here,’ Agatone explained. ‘What are the Seven Points?’
Zartath was eyeing the natives dangerously. Surreptitiously, Agatone held out his hand in a silent signal to stand down. They could kill or incapacitate these men in a matter of seconds, but Agatone needed information, not more bodies.
‘Not are,’ said the old man with a half-smile, the kind a native gets when he realises he has outsiders in his midst and sees the possibility for exploitation. ‘Is. The Seven Points is an arena. Some folks call it the “cross”, though Seven Points is more accurate.’
Agatone scowled.
‘You’ll understand when you see it,’ said the leader. ‘Silas Krebb and Otmar the Brute own it. They own everything around these parts. Their gangers set up the fights and we, amongst others, provide the fighters. We’ve only given up dregs before, but this time we had a real prize for ’em.’ The leader flashed an ugly smile, revealing three gilded teeth. Agatone also noticed his coat and pistol were of a higher quality than the rest of his apparel. No doubt the spoils of his slave trading.
Despite his best efforts, Agatone found his anger rising.
Zartath was far ahead of him.
‘What arena?’ Zartath snapped, painful, associative memories resurfacing. ‘What did you give them?’
The old man paled, his brief confidence ebbing as surely as Agatone’s patience, as he caught a glimpse of Zartath’s exposed fangs beneath the ex-Black Dragon’s hood. He started babbling.
‘We patched up a big one, as big as you he was. And a stranger too. We sent him…’ He pointed, and his hand was shaking. ‘That way.’
Agatone stepped in. It was do that or allow Zartath to kill them all.
‘You have a medicus then?’ asked Agatone.
The old man nodded.
‘Show me to him,’ said Agatone. ‘Now.’
‘And if we don’t?’ said one of the crowd behind the leader, a youth with more bravura than sense.
Agatone pulled his cloak aside to afford the human dregs a glance at his armour and bolt pistol.
‘That would be unwise,’ he counselled. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘your medicus. My friend is injured and in need of aid.’
‘You are far from the stars, adept,’ a strong, but veteran voice uttered from the shadows.
The surgery was a grim and poorly lit facility, although the word ‘facility’ did it overdue credit. It huddled between two other structures, stubby tenements rammed with more of the human waste that dwelled in the underhive settlement. A wrought iron staircase, indicated by the leader of the men who had first stopped them, led to this hovel and now he had found it, Agatone was beginning to regret his decision to seek aid here.
‘You know of the Adeptus Astartes, do you, medicus?’ Agatone stepped forwards into the dull lamplight of a hanging phosphor globe. It was the room’s only illumination, and flickered intermittently.
‘Some,’ he admitted. ‘I once fought beside them as part of His Eternal Majesty’s Ecclesiarchy. And my name is Issak,’ said the man, he too then moving into the light. ‘Though I’d suggest we get acquainted later so I can see to your friend.’
Whilst he reconnoitred the surgery, making sure it was not a foolish attempt at an ambush, Agatone had given Exor up to Zartath. Judging by the ex-Black Dragon’s mood, he was not confident Zartath could stay his killing mood and, in error, gut the one man who might be able to restore Exor should he in fact prove to be genuine.
As he regarded the weathered features but bright ruby-coloured eyes of the one who had introduced himself as Issak, Agatone was glad of that decision.
‘I saw you,’ said Issak, tapping a gnarled finger against a cracked pict screen which showed the area immediately outside of the surgery’s door, ‘and heard the booming thunder of your voices all the way down in the square.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I wonder what three adepts of the stars are doing here in Kabullah.’
‘Kabullah?’
‘This settlement’s name, or as was,’ said the medicus. ‘Few live now that remember it, or care. Many call it “the sink”. I’m sure you can appreciate why.’
The nomenclature was an appropriate one – this place was a hole, a sink in all respects.
Issak gestured to the door behind Agatone with his chin. ‘You had better bring him in.’
Agatone watched Issak keenly as he worked. Together, he and Zartath had managed to get Exor inside the surgery and onto the operating table. Despite its roughshod appearance, Agatone discovered the place was clean and sanitised; the tools at Issak’s disposal were simply beyond their best and patchwork as a result.
The air was acerbic with counterseptic chemicals and Issak performed his ministrations behind a half-mask rebreather. He also wore a dark tan medical smock over functional leggings, a crumpled shirt and padded flak vest. Agatone noted, even though it was tight, Issak did not remove the armour to perform surgery. The room was cramped with equipment, various philtres, vials and bespoke medical machinery all hinted at and half shrouded in shadow.
With Agatone’s help, Issak had removed Exor’s armour, surprisingly not reacting to the Techmarine’s bionic augmentations. As to the extent and nature of Exor’s injuries, the medicus had merely said, ‘You need to climb when the klaxons wail. That’s vermin tide and is best avoided even for warriors such as you.’
‘Had we known that…’
‘You would not be here now. I understand.’
Issak worked quickly and diligently, first cleaning the wounds, careful not to get any of Exor’s blood on his skin directly, though he could not have known of the true origin of its poison, and then sealing them where necessary. He used an adhesive gel rather than thread, trusting to the meagre medical provisions available to him.
Agatone had only ever seen an Apothecary work with greater skill at patching up an Adeptus Astartes.
‘You said you fought with us, before?’ asked Agatone.
‘Not you, precisely, another Chapter,’ Issak replied. His attention was mostly absorbed by his ministrations, so he only glanced at Agatone when he added, ‘Nor your other friend’s Chapter either.’
Zartath waited outside as ordered. There was little room in the surgery and the reek of blood was having an undesirable effect on him. It affected Agatone too, and made the keening seem louder. Perhaps, though, it was just the tight confines of the surgery.
Agatone ran a hand through his crest of hair, and found his forehead was lathered with sweat.
Issak glanced up, ‘Should I examine you next?’
‘It’s nothing,’ Agatone replied, then asked, ‘You know something of our order?’
Issak had tended the physical wounds as well as he could. It had taken time, and the medicus was obviously not a young man, but went about his task with vigour and purpose. Agatone suspected it had been a while since Issak had found genuine fulfilment in his work.
‘I am Nocturnean, I should.’
The deep red pupils, the leathern skin darkened by the sun, Agatone saw it at once.
‘Vulkan’s name, you are aren’t you?’
‘Epimethus. Like so few
of my fellow Nocturneans, I sought a different path to that of ore-miner or black-smiter. I boarded a ship, part of a human auxilia and, after a few years of war, I found a different calling on a nearby shrine world. I became a missionary, entrusted with teaching the Emperor’s glory to the heathen and the ill-educated,’ said Issak as he scrubbed his hands clean for the next stage of Exor’s ministrations. ‘Molior seemed as foul a place as any to begin.’
‘How long have you been here, medicus?’
‘Over thirty years. I ventured down into the underhives when I heard of the squalor and depravity there. I took the role of medicus because I used to be a field surgeon. If at the same time as healing broken bones, I could heal the crack in a man’s faith, then I would consider that a blessing and a good day.’
‘And have you had many? Good days, I mean.’
‘Fewer than I would like,’ Issak admitted, ‘but I try to keep faith.’
‘And what does your faith tell you about my friend’s chances of recovery?’
‘His blood is tainted, but you already knew that.’ Issak put on fresh surgical gloves and went to retrieve a device from a locked cabinet he had close to hand.
Agatone considered just how worldly-wise this medicus was. As a missionary in the Ecclesiarchy he would be privy to some knowledge, but clearly he had experience of the Chaotic. To Agatone’s mind, it was wasted here and he wondered what must have driven Issak to seek out this life, this place. Perhaps it was penance? Perhaps that’s why Tsu’gan had fled here too? It was the closest thing they could find to hell, a fitting place for sinners Agatone supposed. It mattered little. He needed Exor and so he needed Issak. The Ecclesiarchy’s loss would be Agatone’s gain. He could live with that, but he still had questions.
‘You saw another of my kind recently?’
‘Is that really a question?’ Issak worked as he talked, preparing his tools for the patient.
‘No,’ admitted Agatone. ‘How bad were his injuries? The alderman said you’d patched him up.’
