"How did he die?"
The entirety of a second passes before I realize I am the one Asur is addressing.
"My lord?" I am careful to keep my voice differential, well aware the eyes of the rest of the warband are turning to scrutinize me. I should be far below the regard of one such as Asur – yet now, having unintentionally captured his attention, the envy of his favored warriors is making itself known in subtle shifts of posture and in the activating clicks of private vox-channels.
"The Imperial Fist whose helmet you bear as your sole trophy – how did he die?"
I look down and lift the battered yellow helm that hangs from a brazen chain affixed to my weapons belt. Standing amongst Chaos Marines whose spiked battleplate is bedecked with the helms and skulls of dozens of defeated foes my solitary war-prize must seem a trite and insignificant thing in comparison. Perhaps this is why Asur deigns to suddenly notice it.
"This is not the helm of an Imperial Fist," I say, wishing he would turn his attention elsewhere.
"Oh?" Asur leans back in his command throne and motions for me to approach. "Enlighten me, then."
I step from the throng of his men, feeling their hostility brewing like a storm at my back. I am not one of Asur's brothers, not in truth. The survivors of my former warband were absorbed into his following our own master's defeat. I and six others were given the choice between servitude and a slow execution. My brothers are long dead, their bones bleaching on forgotten battlefields in service to Asur's ambitions – yet his warriors had never accepted me into their brotherhood. In their eyes I am still nothing but a glorified captive in power armor.
I hold the helmet reverently in my hands. "This is the helm of a great hero," I say with perfect sincerity.
"Ah," Asur's voice is laden with contempt, "one of the deluded, self-righteous champions of the Corpse Emperor?"
"Not quite, lord – rather, he was the sort of hero the downtrodden masses of humanity look to for salvation when men like us fall upon their worlds like ravening wolves. He did not fall attempting to seize glory for himself or his Chapter – he fell trying to keep my former brothers from breaching the doors of a bunker full of cowering civilians."
"What a pathetic way for a Space Marine to die," Asur snorts in disgust. "And you were the one who put an end to his miserable life?"
"He was the last of his squad - his battle-brothers lay dead about him, though they had made a good account of themselves despite being hopelessly outnumbered. Alone, he stood his ground before the bunker's armored doors, covered in so much blood the yellow of his ceramite could hardly be seen. His bolter was dry and his sword had been broken. It was indeed a pathetic sight – and yet it was also...inspiring."
"Inspiring?"
I nod. "There was no hope for him and he knew it; he knew he had failed and that the wretched humans he and his brothers had squandered their lives to protect would be taken, either to be sacrificed to the gods or enslaved aboard our warships. Yet he still stood there, wounded unto death, defying us even as we opened up with our bolters. He screamed out his Chapter's warcry as he collapsed – a warcry I have never forgotten – and he was still struggling to rise again when the bunker doors suddenly opened."
I close my eyes, lost in the memory. "And the civilians came rushing out like water flooding through a burst dam – hundreds of them: men, women, children, even pet canines. As one they charged us, howling the loyalist Marine's warcry at the tops of their lungs; we had just enough time to come together and empty our bolters into the first, second and third ranks, mowing them down like chaff – yet they kept on coming; they broke against us and we began laying about with our chainblades. It was utter slaughter. Those mortals assailed us without giving a second thought to their own survival, and so they died – not as sacrifices, nor as slaves, but as warriors: fighting to the last, taking their Space Marine protectors' defiance as their own example."
Asur is silent. Perhaps my tale is boring him.
"Afterwards, when the butchery had ended, I located the loyalist Astartes, now buried beneath a carpet of dead civilians. I pulled their ruined corpses from him then wrenched the helm from his head; his beautiful countenance marked him as one of Sanguinius' sons and the faint smile on his lips informed all who looked upon him that he was a man who had died at peace, his duty complete: it was an expression I had never seen on the faces of my own brothers, living or dead – and in that moment I envied him, for he had been of purpose. I could not bring myself to plunder his wargear; so I took only his helmet with me as a reminder of our conflict, and I have carried it with me ever since."
Asur gives an unimpressed grunt. "So...the helm is not in truth a trophy, but rather a keepsake."
Squaring my pauldrons, I look the warband's overlord directly in the eye-lenzes. "Call it whatever you wish, Asur – but know this: the Space Marine who wore it was twice the warrior you and all your bastard brothers will ever be."
I hear the ring of steel as blades are drawn behind me. Asur's voice drops to a dangerous growl. "Tell me one last thing, then: this 'great hero'...what was his Chapter's warcry?"
I am smiling even as I turn to face his followers, my mind filled with visions of last stands and hopeless struggles against impossible odds.
"For those we cherish we die in glory!"
