by Guy Haley
‘The light and the glory shines on us all!’ Mathieu was saying now. ‘There are more besides myself, those who have looked directly on the light of the Emperor, those who no longer need faith in Him, because we have knowledge of Him. They march with me now, on the Emperor’s holy war. We do what we can, because for all the might and power the Emperor has granted the Lord Imperial Regent, he is only one man, and he cannot win all the Emperor’s wars by himself! It is time, my brothers and sisters, to rise up, and seek service to Him, and to His holy son. Who even now, watches over you. Witness him, as I have witnessed His father!’
Mathieu had evidently pointed, for the crowd turned as one to look up the shadowed stair.
‘Expected,’ said Guilliman, and went to the bottom and into the view of the crowd, who when they saw him murmured, and began to cry out to him. Ilios’ auxiliaries followed him, wary guns kept on the people.
‘The primarch! The Ultramarines! The Emperor’s guardians! We are saved!’
The shouting stopped suddenly, without warning. There was rustling, and a profound silence. Once again moving as one, the people in the crowd knelt, and prostrated themselves to their saviour.
There was a makeshift stage at the front of the market square where Mathieu stood, three large tuns roped together raising him well over the level of the crowd. Three Ecclesiarchy crusaders stood around it, guarding their prophet.
Guilliman swept his gaze over the people of First Landing. His face was stern, but he did not appear judgemental.
‘Rise,’ he commanded. The crowd did not move, but knelt with their foreheads pressed to the ground, mumbling prayers. ‘Rise,’ he said again, and picked his way through them. His boots were as big as men’s backs, and he took great care not to crush the people there, who saw him approach and shuffled out of the way, still kneeling, still praying, with little sobs of terror.
‘Give me your loyalty,’ Guilliman said. ‘Give me your service. Fight for the Imperium, for the Emperor, and for me.’ He moved towards Mathieu. ‘Give me your lives, your blood, your deaths. Give me everything, as I give everything, to protect Ultramar, and the Imperium. I will ask this of you and more.’
Felix saw him weighing his words, the endless struggle. The Adeptus Ministorum had proclaimed him divine, and he hated that. In the wrong mood, it would raise wrathful denial, but as he looked about the crowd, his gaze softened. These people were desperate. They needed him to be more than a man, more than a primarch. They needed the son of their God-Emperor, and Guilliman could not shatter their morale.
‘But I will never ask for your worship,’ he said softly. ‘Look upon me, and you shall see that I am no god. Now rise! Rise, and be about your lives. I wish to speak with my militant-apostolic.’
Guilliman’s commands allowed no disobedience. The crowd dazedly got to their feet. Most drifted away, and the market hissed to a hundred whispered conversations. There were many hopeful looks, and the need to speak with him, but the few that dared approach Guilliman were discouraged by Ilios’ auxilia and the Victrix Guard.
‘Seal the square,’ Guilliman commanded.
‘At once,’ Ilios said.
The primarch neared Mathieu. Even with the extra height the barrels lent him, Mathieu was still shorter than Guilliman, so he looked like a child trying to match eyes with an ogryn.
Felix had not seen Mathieu for months. His robes were as worn and patched as before, if not more so, if such a thing were possible: the frater made a point of poverty. But his face had changed. Always zealous, he seemed now full of even greater purpose. It was no wonder people followed this man.
His resolve was not entirely his own. He borrowed authority freely from the primarch, and when they met he looked upon Guilliman with open adoration. His expression concerned Felix greatly.
The crusaders guarding Mathieu presented their shields and swords to the primarch, giving Felix the insane impression they were saluting him before they attacked, and he felt his fingers twitch inside his gauntlet, but instead they wheeled smartly about on their heels, and stepped back, allowing the primarch to come close to his priest.
‘My lord primarch,’ Mathieu said, and bowed his head.
‘Militant-apostolic,’ said Guilliman. He glanced at the silent crusaders. ‘You have new warriors to guard you.’
‘They came to me one night unbidden. They are a gift from the Emperor,’ said Mathieu.
‘I recall they used to serve Geestan,’ said Guilliman. Mathieu was not intimidated.
‘I understand. You think I am being overly dramatic, but the men of the Crimson Cardinals only serve those they deem to be worthy,’ countered Mathieu. ‘I did not call them, they sought me out.’
Felix wondered what worth a dry old fossil like Geestan showed.
‘Is this true?’ Guilliman asked the crusaders. They were as statues, and did not respond.
‘They have taken a vow of silence, my lord,’ explained Mathieu. ‘They will not speak unless the Emperor Himself commands.’
‘I saw also a congregational battle train within the barbican. This too was Geestan’s. You once spurned the trappings of your office, now you use them. What has changed?’
‘Nothing has changed, my lord Guilliman,’ Mathieu replied. ‘As you say, Militant-Apostolic Geestan had many resources. The Emperor whispered in my ear, and told me to reject such an armoury on the grounds of principle was a foolish thing. Such weapons should not be left unused.’
‘You have been busy, then.’
‘The Adeptus Ministorum wages its war at your side, my lord. The Emperor has much work for me. I cannot hold back. You do not wish me to serve you directly, I must respect that,’ he said, as if Guilliman were a young man asserting his first authority. ‘But later the Emperor showed Himself at the Battle of Hecatone, and the faithful have been coming to me in greater numbers by the day. They need guidance.’
‘So you now have an army.’
‘I have a crusade, my lord! The Crusade of the Witnesses. Each one of these people has been touched by the Emperor’s hand. Some of them have seen Him.’
‘Impossible,’ said Guilliman.
‘No, my lord, it is the truth!’ said Mathieu, and he stepped forward, a feverish light in his eyes. ‘He is abroad. He is at work among us. Mankind is awakening to His glory. The foe thought to cripple His empire by opening reality to the warp, and now they reap His wrath. They call Him a corpse. They call Him carrion. But He lives and He is all around us. He moves, Lord Guilliman. Oh, He moves!’
Guilliman stared at him. Mathieu held his gaze, a look of rapture on his face.
‘You have never seen or spoken to the Emperor,’ said Guilliman. ‘Only I have.’
‘You told me this before, but there you are wrong, my lord. I converse with Him every day. I have seen His manifestations with my own eyes. Who do you think sent me to you? Who guarded me when the Macragge’s Honour was captured, who guided you to choose me as your militant-apostolic? It was Him, it was your father. He told me I must open your eyes, and they are opening, I know.’
‘Enough,’ said Guilliman. ‘You speak of things you know nothing of.’
‘Do I? Am I deluded, or are you, clinging to your worldview when all the evidence points to the contrary?’
‘You are a fanatic,’ said Colquan.
Mathieu looked at the warrior. ‘Am I? Your own kind say that something has changed. They say that the Emperor speaks to you again in dreams and in visions, after so long. How does it feel, when He touches your mind?’
‘I repeat the lord regent’s words. How can you know that?’
‘Because the Emperor told me!’ hissed Mathieu.
‘We should kill him, lord regent,’ said Colquan. ‘He had his warning. He has gone too far. He has suborned an entire regiment to his cause. How far must this madness spread?’
‘Will you shoot down your ow
n people? Do you think the warriors and population of this world will rejoice to see men and women who wish only to fight at the Emperor’s side cut down?’ Mathieu said to Guilliman. ‘You are His son. You would stop His servants doing His bidding by slaughtering them. How many more tongues do you wish to wag, and to say that the son would usurp the father?’
‘Do not threaten me, militant-apostolic,’ said the primarch.
‘I am trying to help you, my lord,’ said Mathieu, reaching out frustrated hands. ‘When will you see that your father is god? When will you see that He is at work through me, through you, through everyone. The Emperor is with us. He stands at our right hand. You are His son. Accept your father’s true nature into your heart. Acknowledge your own divinity, your power, and all your enemies will be as dust before you. You are a god, my lord, a living avatar of the one who sits upon the Golden Throne!’
‘I warned you not to preach this.’
‘I gave my word and I have not, even though it is the Adeptus Ministorum’s official creed.’
‘So you are also a hypocrite,’ said Colquan.
‘I am not. I cannot serve if I am dead,’ said Mathieu. ‘What use would I be then? I do not preach what you forbade me to preach.’
‘Then why speak of it now, to me?’ asked Guilliman.
‘Because you and I must be honest with each other, if you are ever to be honest with yourself.’
Mathieu and Guilliman’s gazes remained locked for half a minute, the mendicant priest, smirched with the dirt of poor living, his teeth blackening, his hair thinning, and the living son of the Emperor, tall, regal and inhuman. An angel and a pauper. To Felix’s immense surprise, it was Lord Guilliman who looked away first.
‘I have heard enough. Goodbye, militant-apostolic.’
‘We will pray for you!’ called Mathieu after Guilliman as he left the square. ‘We will pray for you to see the light!’
‘My lord,’ Felix voxed him on a private channel. ‘I fear Lord Colquan is correct. Something must be done about him.’
‘Colquan is correct, you are correct, but unfortunately Frater Mathieu is also correct,’ said Guilliman, and his voice was cold. ‘That was no hollow threat he made.’
Chapter Fourteen
ATTACK ON HERA
The rains did not let up.
For day after day they washed the stones of the Fortress of Hera. Clean at first, iron-grey and cold like Macragge’s seas, they became steadily more polluted. It was a gradual process, barely noticeable at first. A strange smell, a certain oiliness to the puddles sometimes, grit in them, or the odd wriggling larva that quickly expired, rare enough to be discounted. Some days these phenomena would not manifest, and the rains would run clean again, but each time the filth returned it did so a little stronger, and its effects persisted a little longer, until the sky wept poisoned slime and clean, cold water was a memory.
Fabian lay in his bed, awake. He had not slept for weeks. Although he’d become somewhat inured to the sounds of war over the last decade, and had slumbered soundly in trench systems under bombardment, and snored his way through void wars, these were the exceptions rather than the rule, times when exhaustion threatened to kill him before the enemy did. Fabian remained nervous at heart, and the conditions of siege exacerbated this tendency.
There was the endless waiting for something exceptionally bad to happen. Fabian would have preferred battle. That was over and done in moments, one way or another. One was either dead, or one was not. A siege was a limbo. He could deal with the terror and the bloodshed of a fight. He could not deal with waiting for it.
Then there was the unpredictability. The seemingly random times the great cannons of Hera’s walls opened up, or the enemy would assay another of their doomed attempts to break the walls and the guns would bark and bark all night like packs of ravenous canids. Suddenly, it would be silent, nothing but the rain, but he would not sleep, for his ears would be straining to hear the sounds of doom coming for him.
Calgar grudgingly explained the situation to him. The enemy were feeble, and the Ultramarines could easily sally out, even with the low numbers they had present on Macragge, and wipe them away like dirt from the front screen of a groundcar. But the next day they would be back, and the process must be repeated, and maybe one or two of Calgar’s men would fall. Not many, but if the same happened the next day, and the next day, then eventually there would be no one left, and they would lose by default. The same was true in the void. Every enemy ship downed was replaced. The Ultramarines could get out of their cities or off the planet, but they could not stay outside their defences long without being overwhelmed, while the enemy’s troops were numerous but of too poor a quality to break any wall.
So the Space Marines sat in their fortresses and the enemy sat outside them, and they both waited to see how the war would turn out elsewhere.
It was torture. It was telling on Calgar too; Fabian had spent enough time with him on the far side of the Rift to know the signs. He and Calgar did not get on, which struck Fabian as a great pity, because he and Guilliman, he thought, had a good relationship. He could not even blame their mutual dislike on a recalcitrance at being watched. Calgar understood Fabian’s mission all right, and had at first applauded it. What put them at odds was Fabian’s personality. Calgar just didn’t like him: he found him impatient, prone to complaint, too quick to anger, and despite the stoic, Macraggian demeanour they all affected here, the Chapter Master had come close to telling Fabian that to his face.
Or at least, that’s how it felt to Fabian, late at night, lying in a bed that was too hard and too soft, too hot and too cold, his pillow wrapped around his head to shut out the endless, maddening rattle of water on the windows. Fabian could not get comfortable. He could not rest and he was too jittery to concentrate. Every crack of thunder made him think battle was about to start again. Every positive thought he had was fleeting, and at best damage control for his blacker ideas, which circled around and around his head.
Fabian groaned.
‘I hate this planet,’ he moaned. ‘Even Vigilus was better.’ He rolled over, found the position just as uncomfortable, then rolled over back to where he had been. That did not suit him either.
‘Confound it!’ he said, and threw his pillow aside. He sat on the edge of his bed, ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, then stood up with unnecessary force. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Work it is,’ and he strode for the desk waiting for him on the other side of the room. The first thing he did was pick up the ewer of wine standing there, always full.
Fabian had to concede that the Ultramarines treated him well. His quarters were of a size and an opulence that the old him could not have imagined, albeit furnished in the severe Macraggian style. Soft fur rugs covered the stone floor. The furniture was beautifully crafted. But it was all like the wine of Macragge: well made, but sharp, and cold; like the planet, like the Ultramarines.
He poured and drank the wine nonetheless. He had yet to activate the lumens. Light from the fortress wall lamps shone through the rain coursing down the tall windows. Lightning flashed, revealing statues, colonnades and pinnacles otherwise hiding in the dark, and temporarily dazzled him.
He grumbled, opened his escritoire, pulled out his chair, ignited the lumen, sat down, put the wine carefully onto a round of stone to save the wood, and took out his latest notebook.
He found it hard to concentrate on his notes. It was dull stuff. The histories of Macragge and its surrounding worlds were recorded in meticulous, dry detail in the Chapter archives. His cramped hand condensed it down to a broad outline he thought to work into a tract if he ever got the time.
He would never get the time.
He snapped the book shut, and chided himself, and told himself it would be interesting if he did not know that only a few hundred yards from where he sat was a sealed library full of all manner of wonders. He imagined truly a
ncient works lurked in the Library of Ptolemy. Codexes from the Dark Age of Technology. The history of the settlement of this region of space. The writings of extinct alien species. The role of the Ultramarines in the Great Heresy War. Tantalising hints to what had befallen mankind’s first stellar domain – another mind-blowing revelation, that the Imperium was not the first human empire to rise, a history so secret men had been killed for knowing it, all assimilated and mulled over by Fabian until it had become mundane. Fabian knew so much that so few did, and yet there was always more to know. Human history was long and built of secrets.
‘And the Library of Ptolemy is full of them,’ he moaned.
The night rumbled. He listened attentively, assuring himself it was only thunder and not the guns beginning again. Greenish lightning flickered through the clouds, lighting up their roiling undersides. Rodded rain fell, as solid as a cloud of javelins. The grim countenances of Space Marine heroes of ancient days flashed bright, then fell back into darkness.
Thunder crackled again, fitful, angry, prowling across the heavens, a beast about to strike.
A little nervously, Fabian swigged sour wine and returned to his notes. He was engrossed awhile.
Tap tap tap. A noise at the window. Tap tap tap.
Fabian’s neck hair prickled against his nightshirt, and he turned very slowly to face the source of the noise. All he saw was his own white, frightened face reflected back at him in the black glass.
Tap tap tap.
With shaking hands he reached for a candelabra, and touched the rune that lit the sticks. Flame burst from the wicks. He approached the window, haunted by his own reflection, face gaunt with lack of sleep, eyes hollow. Flickering lights danced in his eyes. He peered out into the night, but could see nothing.