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It had been some time since this little band of White Scars captured Heti Kottharaka and his brothers in a raid on a Space Wolf vessel. Time enough for him to walk steadily; time enough for them all to decide that this was better than death, better by far than being captives of the Space Wolves. Whatever the White Scars required of them—and they could think of only one thing, with their psyker abilities lost to them and their bodies so weakened—it was better.
Today the Scars were on the hunt again, and they were closing in on their prey.
Heti wanted to encourage them to take back living prizes as well as Space Wolf heads. So here he was, helping Khasar into his armor, trying not to compare his thin arms with their damaged armor ports to a real marine’s.
It was all he could do to lift one of the pauldrons, arms shaking as he did. He was as weak as an unaltered human—no, weaker than the legion serfs who would usually do such work. He had to brace the thing against his chest to avoid dropping it.
What kind of temptation was this, for Khasar to risk his own life to bring back more servants who couldn’t even hold armor pieces?
But then, Heti and his brothers were fairly sure that wasn’t what the White Scars wanted them for.
“Please,” Heti said. “Just get them out. I’ll—” I’ll do anything. “Please.”
Khasar put his heavy-gauntleted hands on Heti’s shoulders and leaned to kiss his brow. Heti couldn’t stop himself from starting at the contact.
“We’ll bring them back to you.”
Heti shivered, his gaze dropping to Khasar’s breastplate. To make up for that lapse, he leaned against him. Unarmored, they were almost of a height, but with Khasar in full plate the difference was great enough that he could tuck his head beneath Khasar’s chin.
Khasar held him tight for a moment—a terrifying moment, with the strength of power armor behind his own—and then stepped away, fastening his helmet as he went. Heti rubbed his shoulders as he watched him go.
Even a lightning raid like the White Scars preferred would take a bit of time, and the Thousand Sons were not expected to man emergency stations in case of a counterattack or during an embattled retreat. So Heti did what he could to make the inevitable less painful for himself, and then returned to his bunk. (Would it even be his bunk, after Khasar returned?)
Wepwawet rose from his own bunk and moved, still slow and stiff but steadier now, to sit by him. Heti leaned on his brother’s shoulder and waited.
Ophois had not expected to survive, this time. The Space Wolves had pulled their beast off before it killed him, but they’d been tiring of him for a while. Asyut’s reactions still amused them; his lack did not.
He wasn’t sure if they’d meant to kill him. But when the alarms signaled that the ship was under attack, the Wolves hadn’t even bothered to take him and Asyut back to their cell—just left them locked in the break room, Asyut pressing down on Ophois’s wound to stem the blood, to hold the life in him.
If they came back to find Ophois dead, well, they’d had their fun with him already, and Asyut would probably be more entertaining afterwards.
Ophois expected the worst when the Space Wolves’ foes started to force the door—Drukhari, perhaps, if they were so interested in the Wolves’ slaves. He was used to that fear, even if he was no longer certain that they were much worse than the Wolves. But it wasn’t Drukhari, nor one of the legions the Wolves had claimed turned traitor, either.
As far as he’d ever heard, the White Scars were still loyal to the Imperium. If that had changed—
Well. If that had changed—what did it matter? It certainly did nothing to help the Thousand Sons.
Asyut hunched down over Ophois, only fighting when the Scars pulled him off him. Foolish of him, probably. Asyut they might find a use for; Ophois expected a bolter to the head at best, and to be left to bleed out alone at worst. There’s no saving me, brother, he would have said, if he thought Asyut would hear him.
But instead of the swift death he half-hoped for they quickly cleaned his wounds, roughly stitched the worst up, bandaged him tightly. One of them stroked his hair with an armored hand, a gesture he took as a warning not to struggle.
(Asyut had stopped thrashing once a White Scar got a solid hold on him, but he was still tense, which would make things worse for him when they got around to punishing him for struggling. He never did go limp, even when it would make things easier for him. They hadn’t done anything yet, but—)
“I don’t like it,” one of them said. “He’s too badly injured. We should get a stormseer—”
“No time,” another said. “We’ve done what we can here, and we’ll see to him again when we’re clear. It’d be better if we could’ve gotten a contra-gravity sled in here, or even a stretcher, but… ” He shook his head. “We’ll have to carry them.”
“I did promise to bring them back,” said the one who had been petting him, and he scooped Ophois up in his arms before standing.
(How disappointed would the commander he’d made the promise to be, seeing only two captives—one half-dead and and neither of them Pavoni?
No wonder they were putting off punishing Asyut.
When they reached the White Scars’ vessel—then, they’d be in trouble.)
When the victorious raiders returned—it felt like an age, although it had been shorter than any Thousand Son operation he’d participated in—Heti scanned the milling crowd. At first, he saw neither new brothers nor Khasar.
Was he injured? Dead? Heti found himself terrified at the thought.
He looked around frantically, trying to keep out of the way. He saw wounded men being readied for treatment, others showing off trophy heads, embracing their brothers in great clashes of plate. It was a familiar form of chaos, made alarming by his new low status.
A brief commotion: a knot of White Scars broke apart, and the one in the center let a too-thin rag-clad astartes to the ground. With surprising speed he threw himself away from the armored Space Marines and into a corner where he crouched, looking half-mad with fear.
Heti took an involuntary step towards his brother. He should help. Intervene, if he could—placate the Scars—if he had any chance of swaying them without his connection to Khasar—
And then there Khasar was: armor stained with gore, carrying a second thin figure wrapped in bloody bandages.
He was alive, and he’d kept his word. His half of the bargain.
Heti watched, stock-still, as Khasar set his new prize down on the deck—he was still too, too still—and looked about until he found Heti. With his helmet still on he couldn’t lock eyes with him, but he beckoned him over.
Heti wanted to rush to his brothers. Either of his brothers. But he had made a bargain, and now it was time to pay.
So instead of going to his brother in the corner, he walked as steadily as he could to Khasar and the wounded man at his feet, who he could have done far less to help with neither biomancy nor a medic’s kit. And instead of falling to his knees by the brother Khasar had brought him—instead of even staring at him as he wished—he met Khasar’s eyes and tried to make his expression admiring.
As he helped Khasar out of his armor—as he took gauntlets, helm, pauldrons, as if he were an arming-thrall—he forced himself to linger. Forced his hands to relax across bulging muscles; forced his eyes to first gorget and then collarbone and finally eyes. He had made this bargain. He had.
“We should…” His throat closed.
“After we get your brothers settled,” Khasar said, with a smile that Heti made himself return.
“After that,” he tried to say, but no sound came out of his mouth. No breath.
Ophois lay in the boarding chamber of the White Scars’ ship and tried to get his bearings.
It was a familiar scene, if seen from a new angle: warriors laughing and boasting of their achievements, astartes disarming, servants helping them to remove their armor and carrying it away.
(Had the Wolves divided their spoils in a chamber like this?)
But among the human servants moved what were unmistakably Thousand Sons—gaunt, cautious, scarred, but unchained, neither bruised nor bleeding.
One of them, with badly scarred armor ports and dark hair braided back, came up to the White Scar who had carried Ophois off. As he helped him remove his armor his hands lingered on bare skin in a way Ophois remembered from Prospero—an unmistakable invitation to bed.
So that was the way of it here.
Ophois wanted to turn his head away. But he knew he couldn’t afford to. He was too helpless now to act on information, but to do without it—and anyway, what honor was there in ignoring his brother’s suffering? He could do nothing but bear witness, but at least he could do that.
So he watched as the White Scar caressed his brother—familiar, possessive, but at least gentle, at least not ripping away cloth to find more skin. At least.
He met his brother’s eyes, and for a long breath neither of them could make themselves look away.
Heti tore his eyes away from his brother—he didn’t even know his name yet. “We should let him rest.”
Please don’t make him watch.
“…Of course,” Khasar said, as if Heti’s words had surprised him, and put an arm about his shoulders. The warmth, just now, was more overwhelming than the weight.
Heti let him lead him away.
Ophois watched them as long as he could, so focused that he started when an unarmored apothecary knelt by his side.
A surprise. They’d seen to him already, after all. But as it turned out, they wanted to change his bandages—ahh, it hurt—and to check the stitches.
With his new brother out of sight (in his master’s bed, by now), he turned his head to watch Asyut instead. There was nothing he could do for him either, but the same principle held: he could at least bear witness.
And it was a distraction from the pain.
In between the efforts of the apothecaries, he saw White Scars leading another of his unfamiliar brothers to Asyut’s corner. As they made him drink something that they said was for the pain, the new Thousand Son knelt stiffly; as they put in new stitches he reached out his hands, and as they wound new bandages he coaxed Asyut into his arms. As the apothecaries eased a stretcher under Ophois’s body he saw a White Scar lead the two of them off without touching either one.
Ophois told himself that it was good they were being patient with Asyut. The Wolves never had been. But perhaps here…
He thought at first they were going to the same place. But when he was taken from the stretcher and laid on a barracks bunk, he could no longer see them. If they were in the same room, they were on the other end.
He could hear someone crying, not far away. Not Asyut; he knew the sound of Asyut’s tears too well. This was a stranger.
Not far at all, and getting closer. Ophois turned his head to look, and winced at the renewed throb of pain.
It was his brother with the scarred armor ports—and his White Scar master, arm still around him.
“See, he’s all right—” The White Scar paused, apparently realizing how foolish that sounded when his captive could see Ophois’s state for himself. “He’s going to be all right. The combat medics all say he will be.”
Ophois’s brother sank to his knees by his side. He was shaking, a little bit. The White Scar knelt by him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and he stilled.
They stayed like that a long time, the White Scar rubbing the Thousand Son’s shoulder and murmuring something half-audible in a language Ophois did not know. (Did his brother? Would he teach him?)
His brother’s master seemed patient with him, at least. That was—that had to be a good thing.
Ophois’s brother wavered, as if he were too tired even to kneel upright. (They had become so weak—no. The Emperor and the Wolves had taken so much of their strength from them.)
In a single abrupt motion the White Scar stood, and Ophois’s screaming muscles tensed as his brother twisted to look up.
“Get up,” Khasar said, and Heti scrambled to his feet. He’d known better, he’d known better than to give his attention to someone else when they’d just made their bargain, when Khasar must want to know that Heti was his possession alone—
But Khasar did not strike him; did not toss him over a shoulder or haul him by the hair to his squad’s part of the dormitory. He never had, but—
Instead he pulled the mattress from the next bunk. It landed on the floor next to Heti’s brother’s bed with a thump, and Heti couldn’t keep himself from jumping.
Khasar shoved it into place with his bare feet. Then he finally looked at him. “If you’re that worried about him, bed down here tonight. The apothecaries can use the other side.” That was accompanied by a gentle hand stroking from the top of head to his back, not the blow he still half expected.
Heti shimmied under the blanket—he could not afford to refuse anything Khasar offered him—and then remembered their bargain. He met his brother’s eyes and mutely tried to apologize.
His brother reached out a hand to him again, and despite his best intentions Heti grasped it and held on as if it was his only hope of air.
The blanket went taut over him, and he felt Khasar’s fingers scratching the back of his neck. The first time he’d done that Heti had thought he was about to die, but now it was, incongruously, a relief.
But not to his brother, whose hand had clenched around his. Heti tried to tell him it was all right with his expression, but he thought he had failed.
“Try to get some rest,” Khasar said. His tone was gentle—it always was.
From his brother’s expression, Heti’s surge of relief showed on his face.
“I’ll tell Wepwawet where you are. He’ll be with the other new one—I’ll see if they want to join you,” Khasar added, and he stood and he went.
There were a thousand things Ophois wanted to ask. How many of our brothers are here? What do you have to do to go unchained? How often do you eat? Do I belong to your master too? Is he even your master, or do you have to serve the others as well? Are all of them so gentle? Why are the White Scars waging war against the Space Wolves?
Instead, he whispered, “What’s your name?”
His brother told him.