The Outcast Dead

They needed a scapegoat, and when one of their own wouldn’t fall on her sword, he had been the next best thing: a willing victim. Kai felt the black chains of guilt within him slip, a tiny loosening of their implacable hold. Not completely, nothing so simple as the words of a friend could cause them to break their grip so easily, but that they had slackened at all was a revelation.

He smiled and reached up to touch Roxa

‘You’re cleverer than you look, do you know that?’ said Kai.

‘Like I said, this place gives you perspective, but how would you know? You can’t even see me with that bandage over your eyes. You never did say what happened to them.’

And Kai told her all that had befallen him since his arrival at the City of Sight, his retraining, the terror of the psychic shockwave that had killed Sarashina and placed something so valuable within his mind that people were willing to kill to retrieve it. He told of their escape from the Custodians’ gaol, the crash and their flight through the Petitioner’s City, though this last part of his recall was hazed with uncertainty and half-remembered visions where fear and dreams collided. He told Roxa

When Kai finished, he waited for Roxa

‘You can’t let them take you to the Warmaster,’ she said.

‘You think I owe the Imperium anything, after all they did to me?’ said Kai. ‘I won’t just hand myself over to the Legio Custodes again.’

‘I’m not saying you should,’ said Roxa

‘I know,’ sighed Kai. ‘But how can I stop them from taking me? I’m not strong enough to fight them.’

‘You could run.’

Kai shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t last ten minutes out there.’

Roxa

‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked at last.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said Kai. ‘I don’t want to be used anymore, that’s all I know for sure. I’m tired of being dragged from pillar to post. I want to take control of my own destiny, but I don’t know how to do that.’

‘Well you’d better figure it out soon,’ said Roxa

THE DEAD WERE ashes. Argentus Kiron and Orhu Gythua were no more, their bodies consumed in the fire. Tagore felt numb at their deaths, knowing he should feel a measure of grief at their passing, but unable to think beyond the anticipation of his next kill. Ever since the battle with Babu Dhakal’s men, his body had been a taut wire, vibrating at a level that no one could see, but which was ready to snap.

It felt good to have blood on his hands, and the butcher’s nails embedded in his skull had rewarded him for his kills with a rush of endorphins. Tagore’s hands were clenched tightly, unconsciously balled into fists as he sca

While Severian and Atharva spoke to the grey-haired man who owned this place – he could not bring himself to use the word temple– Tagore sent Subha and Asubha to secure their perimeter. His breath was coming in short spikes, and he knew his pupils were dilated to the point of being totally black. Every muscle in his body sang with tension, and it took all Tagore’s iron control to keep himself from lashing out at the first person that looked at him.

Not that anyone dared look at a man who was so clearly dangerous. No eye would meet his, and he took a seat on a creaking bench to calm his raging emotions. He wanted to fight. He wanted to kill. There was no target for his rage, yet his body craved the release and reward promised by the pulsing device bolted to the bone of his skull.

Tagore had spoken of martial honour, but the words rang hollow, even to him. They were spoken by rote, and though he wanted to feel cheated at how little they meant to him, he couldn’t even feel that. They were good words, ones he used to believe in, but as the tally of the dead mounted, the less anything except the fury of battle came to mean. He knew exactly how many lives he had taken, and could summon each killing blow from memory, but he felt no co

The Emperor had made him into a soldier, but Angron had wrought him into a weapon.

Tagore remembered the ritual breaking of the chains aboard the Conqueror, that mighty fortress cast out into the heavens like the war hound of a noble knight. The Red Angel, Angron himself, had mounted the chain-wrapped anvil and brought his callused fist down upon the mighty knot of iron. With one blow he had severed the symbolic chains of his slavery, hurling the sundered links into the thousands of assembled World Eaters.

Tagore had scrapped and brawled with his brothers in the mad, swirling mêlée to retrieve one of those links. As a storm-sergeant of the 15th Company, he had been ferocious enough to wrest a link from a warrior named Skraal, one of the latest recruits to be implanted with the butcher’s nails. The warrior was young, yet to master his implants, and Tagore had pummelled him without mercy until he had released his prize.

He had fashioned that link into the haft of Ender, his war axe, but that weapon was now lost to him. Anger flared at the thought of the weapon that had saved his life more times than he could count in the hands of an enemy. Tagore heard the sound of splintering wood, and opened his eyes in expectation of violence, but from the pinpricks of blood welling in his palms, he knew he had crushed the projecting lip of the bench.

Tagore closed his eyes as he spoke the words to the Song of Battle’s End.

‘I raise the fist that struck men down,

And salute the battle won.

My enemy’s blood has baptised me.

In death’s heart I proved myself,

But now the fire must cool.

The carrion crows feast,

And the tally of the dead begins.

I have seen many fall today.

But even as they die, I know

That our blood too is welcome.

War cares not from whence the blood flows.’

Tagore let out a shuddering breath as he spoke the last word, feeling the tension ru

‘What was that you just said?’ asked the boy, looking up from a pamphlet he was reading.

Tagore looked around, just to be sure the boy was, in fact, addressing him.