by William King
Then it was time to leave. We swept out through the rear entrance of the cathedral. There were aircars waiting at all four doors to confuse any potential assassins. Macharius only decided at the last second which one to take. The landing ramp was clear. Valkyries hovered over head. We clambered into the aircar and rose into the sky, flights of gunships moving into position around us as an escort.
We returned to the palace. Looking out the porthole on the side of the aircar I saw a procession of glittering flyers following us. All of the great nobles and their retinues had been invited to the banquet that followed the triumph. I looked at Anton. He pretended to stifle a yawn. I knew what he meant. It was going to be a long night.
The orchestra played. Music filled the ballroom. The nobles danced. All of them were surrounded by their retinues, bodyguards, personal attendants of every sort, courtesans and companions and pet assassins.
Officers wore full dress uniforms, noblemen their court finery, noblewomen long gowns, narrow at the waist, their great hooped skirts supported by suspensor systems so that they seemed to float just above the ground. Every dress was a statement of power. They each cost as much as supplying a regiment. They glowed with precious materials and fitted their wearers with the same precision as a personal battle-suit. They would be worn only once and discarded, just to show that their owners could afford such things.
Servants moved through the throng bearing trays of drinks and elaborate snacks. Enormous chandeliers housing poison snoopers and surveillance systems looked down like the jewelled eyes of enormous insects.
I wondered how many thousands of people were here. I wondered how much all of this was costing and how many of the poor in the hives of other worlds that money could support. I did so very briefly, for one of the things about being surrounded by enormous wealth is how quickly you come to take it for granted.
Macharius sat on a floating throne. Beside him, on either side, were two of the loveliest women I had ever seen, both high ladies of one of the noble Houses. Both looked at him as if he were some delicacy they intended to sneak from the plate of the other. They both appeared to admire Macharius without noticing the woman on the other side of him. The Lord High Commander was courtly to both and obviously amused by their rivalry. They both sought to get something from him while he played them and their Houses off against each other.
I stood behind Macharius on a raised dais and looked out at the crowd. They were moving through one of the great formal ceremonies so beloved by our aristocrats, one of those rituals so elaborate and courtly that only people with an enormous amount of free time on their hands could master all the intricacies.
As ever Macharius looked completely relaxed and at his ease, but I suspect he was bored. These vast ceremonies were more for the benefit of the locals than they were for him. He would rather have been directing a battle somewhere. Still, in the absence of more physical conflict, he seemed to take some pleasure from social warfare, and here it was visible all around.
One of the ladies leaned forwards and whispered something in Macharius’s ear. Her mouth was so close Macharius must have felt her breath on his neck. Her rival reached out and touched his arm, letting her fingers rest there moments longer than were strictly necessary to get the general’s attention. He turned to look at her, and she looked up at him with wide trusting eyes. Her lips were red and full, and parted invitingly.
Before she could say anything, a great gong sounded, and all were summoned to the feast.
The banqueting hall held thousands of people at hundreds of tables, but there was really only one that mattered and that was the one at which Macharius sat. The whole pecking order of the conquered sector was set out there. The most important governors and planetary nobles were at the table. The closer they were to Macharius, the more important they were. The nearest tables had the nobles of only slightly less importance, and those with relatively small influence in the great scale of things were relegated to the furthest corners of the room.
I stood behind Macharius’s chair in my most smartly formal uniform. I was not there to eat. I was there to look impressive and protect Macharius. The fact that I was allowed to stand at his back with a shotgun in my hands must have impressed a few of the notables because I could see them giving me considering looks. Little did they know, I thought, that Anton and Ivan and I took turns doing this.
Actually, they probably did, as I realised when I came to consider the matter. The planetary aristocracies had their own intelligence systems. They might even have known why we were there, but I doubted that they knew the whole truth of it: that ever since Karsk Macharius had considered us a form of personal, living lucky charm. He had kept at least one of us close to him at all times.
I was not the only one being noticed. I could see the local nobility studying Drake under their eyelashes as well. The less well informed were probably wondering how they could get close to him and find out what influence he had. There were, no doubt, rumours as to his identity circulating behind the lady’s fans and out of the corners of men’s mouths in every part of the room.
I glanced at the faces of the people closest to Macharius at the table, the ones close enough to speak with him. There was Drake. There was Blight. There was Raymond Belisarius, the factor for the great Navigator House. I wondered where his cousin was right now.
There were hundreds of nobles from the various worlds Macharius had conquered, the most important people politically in the sector. All of them were the heads of various factions, most of them were opposed to each other, and they spent their time glaring daggers at those they thought of as their rivals.
It was like observing a gathering of predators at a savannah waterhole, except that here there were no herbivores, only flesh eaters, all of them looking to tear a chunk off each other. Of all the people present I could not see the expression on Macharius’s face. I was standing behind his seat so I could only guess it from the tone of the remarks I heard him addressing to the assembled throng. He spoke of the return of Imperial rule, of the reconstruction of the old order, of a new age of faith and unity to come. The crowd cheered and applauded while all the time thinking about what it could gain.
I thought once again about what Anna had told me. There were very few in the Imperium beyond the reach of its rulers. Possibly only the Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes, who were a law unto themselves. The great bureaucratic wheels of the Imperium were beginning to turn. The attention of that gigantic entity was being focused on this corner of the universe. How many of those people out there would still applaud Macharius if they knew that it might soon turn against him? How many potential assassins would there be then?
I thought about the generals of the crusade who would soon be arriving. How many of those would be truly loyal to Macharius?
Thirteen
We moved through the palace in the wake of Macharius. Overhead, great murals depicting scenes from Imperial history looked down on him. In the massive Atrium, a portrait of one-eyed Saint Teresius being nailed to the burning World Tree of Ydrasil by orks brooded overhead. As we passed into the reception chamber we saw a titanic depiction of the Emperor within his Golden Throne surrounded by a halo of light, while primarch angels watched over him. The paintings had been done by the greatest artist on the world Tyranticus, a genius with a liking for wine and theology. He was up there hanging from the roof like a spider in a wire harness even now, brushing away at some tiny corner of the painting, bringing some minuscule cherubim into being with his pigments and brush.
We had other things to think off. The warlords of the crusade were gathered in the conference chamber. They had come to report to their master and be rewarded for their excellence.
The high valves of the great bronze double door were open. We strode through. Multicoloured light from the stained glass windows threw beams down the vast chamber. Angels of glass in armour reminiscent of Space Marines trampled the necks of orks and heretics. After we passed through, the doors closed silen
tly behind us.
The masters of the crusade sat at a huge circular table, as large as a Baneblade and carved from the vitrified remains of a section of the World Tree. An aquila was graven in its surface. Chairs were set out along the wings, only the one at the aquila’s head vacant. As Macharius entered, the occupants of the chairs rose at once and saluted smartly. All of them except Inquisitor Drake, who was not part of the military command structure. Macharius returned the greeting and took his seat.
‘At ease, gentlemen. Be seated,’ he said. ‘It is good to see you all again.’
His voice was clipped and commanding, and his face was set as stone.
I took up my position behind Macharius and gave my attention to the newcomers. They were an impressive and terrifying bunch of men.
Immediately to Macharius’s right was Sejanus. He lounged back on the great leather-upholstered command chair and looked as if he were going to put his boots on the table. A few times I saw him raise one leg, remember where he was and then put his foot decisively back on the floor. Sejanus, who had obviously been drinking late last night, had bags beneath his eyes and looked at the room with an odd mixture of good humour and pained menace, as if he wanted to order everyone to be quiet but could not because they were all of equal or higher rank.
To the right of Sejanus was General Tarka, resplendent in his hussar general’s uniform. You could have cut yourself on the creases of his trousers. His boots were spotless. The brasswork on his sash and buckles was polished mirror-bright. His narrow face was lean and severe. His moustache perfectly framed his mouth as if it did not dare grow one millimetre beyond its assigned place. He wore white gloves, which he inspected through his glittering diamond glass amplification monocle as though checking them for spots of dirt. He looked like the very caricature of the military martinet, one of those dress-up parade ground soldiers who knew nothing about the blood and mud of fighting.
I knew for a fact that he was not. He had fought hand to hand with orks and cut his way out of a heretical ambush with only his pistol and a shard of screen-glass salvaged from the wreckage of his ground car. In a regiment famous for its tradition of duelling he was the most famous duellist. It was said he had killed over a hundred men in affairs of honour and was not above accepting a challenge now if one was offered to him. His wife was a famous beauty and famous, too, for her affairs, so he still got the opportunity now and again. There were those who said he encouraged her just so he could duel. I doubted it. There is no end to the malice of gossip.
Beyond him sat General Fabius. Fabius looked half asleep, a state accentuated by his drooping eyelids, which ensured that even at his most alert he never looked particularly awake. He had a reputation for liking the good life and for taking the choicest selection of loot, but he was a general of fantastic skill, a specialist in siege warfare, who had taken more cities and hives than anyone alive. He had lost an arm in battle with an ork warlord, and its mechanical replacement was said to be strong enough to crush metal and bone in its grip.
To Fabius’s right was Arrian. He seemed a scruffy-looking man until you looked closely at him and realised that his dress uniform was not creased or lined. It was something about the man himself that gave the impression. Perhaps it was the unkempt hair or the way he leaned an elbow on the table and propped his head on his fist. He drummed the fingers of his other hand on the tabletop and twisted his head around on his long neck to focus first on one person then another. Many people thought him mad. Many thought him touched by a holy light. Nobody was sure what he thought. Everyone remembered he had ordered the massacre of a million heretic children on Gamara 12.
Lysander seemed inclined to tell Arrian to stop looking at him. He was a tall man, handsome, more so even than Macharius; but where Macharius was golden-haired and golden-skinned, Lysander was black-haired and pale. He had the narrowest of moustaches, which he was always stroking. He appeared to be admiring his own reflection in the mirrored tabletop, but he looked quite capable of wrestling an ork should one choose to enter the room and do battle right now.
Next to him was Cyrus, the tallest man in the room by far. His features were craggy and stern, and his silver hair fitted his head like a Guardsman’s helmet. His eyes were a chilling blue. He gave the impression of great age and great wisdom, although with the juvenat treatments many of the others were almost certainly as old as he was. He was writing something on a pad of papyrus, probably making a note of the fact that Macharius was twenty-two seconds late for the meeting.
By that time I had looked all the way around the table. On Macharius’s left sat General Crassus, a man of medium height, who was almost as broad as he was tall. His face was pockmarked and a scar ran from over his right eye to the middle of his cheek. It caused the corner of his mouth to pucker up constantly. It seemed unlikely that a man in his position could not have had the scar removed by medical adepts, so he must have kept it for a reason, to remind himself of something. Crassus had a reputation for annexing more than his fair share of the spoils of war. He kept winning his battles, though, so no one had thought to lodge a charge.
All of the assembled generals looked at Macharius and at each other, assessing potential rivals and their relative strengths. It was as if this table were a battlefield and their opponents were each other. The prize was favoured commands in the next part of the crusade.
Macharius played his underlings off against each other. In some ways, their rivalry was a good thing. It kept them sharp and competitive. In another way it sowed the seeds of the ensuing disaster, for many of the men in that room hated, feared and detested each other. Even though they were nominally in the same army, they regarded each other as the foes and rivals they had on occasion been, back before Macharius had ended the Great Schism. At that moment, though, there was no sign of disunity.
‘Gentlemen, let us have your reports as to the progress of Operation Centurion,’ said Macharius. He looked at Sejanus.
Sejanus smiled, and his booming voice filled the room. ‘Total victory for Battlegroup Sejanus. We have smashed the krull in their home worlds, driven their axe lords deep into the mountain fastnesses. A few guerrillas hold out in the volcanic sectors of Indoland, but they are being hunted down. All of the productive cities are under Imperial control, and output is running at eighty per cent of pre-reclamation norms. I expect it to be at one hundred and five per cent by the time we are done. Without the axe lords tithing productivity for their own personal projects, we can direct the output of the Deep Mines into arms and equipment production far more efficiently.’
He smiled, looked around at all of the other generals and sat down again.
‘General Fabius, pray report,’ said Macharius. Fabius rose slowly with a slight grunt and looked at Macharius somnolently. ‘Battlegroup Fabius reports complete success. The main agri-worlds of the Elaric Combine are occupied by our troops. The remainder have agreed to terms now that they have seen the futility of resistance. The local nobles would rather keep their perks under Imperial rule than see their estates go to their rivals under redistribution law if they are declared outlaws and traitors by the Imperium.’
His eyes were focused on Macharius all the time. He looked like an amiable bear slowly rousing itself from hibernation.
For myself, I was wondering whether anyone here was going to report less than perfect success. To do so would be to cede an advantage to their rivals.
That said, Macharius was known for his ability to get to the truth behind his commanders’ reports, and the penalties for false information would be far worse than letting a rival steal a march. General Xander had been demoted and reassigned to supervising a prison world for doing so. No, I thought, in essence these reports would be perfectly truthful, albeit burnished to make their presenters shine.
‘General Arrian?’
General Arrian writhed to his feet and surveyed the assembled generals with glittering eyes, as if he thought they might be disguised heretics plotting against him. ‘I report utte
r, crushing Imperial victory over the worms of the Hectacore. The heretics burn. Their ungodly spawn are in re-education camps,’ his tone let everyone know what he thought of this particular piece of false mercy, ‘their wells and reactor cores are assigned to righteous purpose. Battlegroup Arrian is ready to bring the Emperor’s will to more heretics.’
He sat down as abruptly as he had stood. His gaze turned upwards to look at the armoured angels overhead, rather than contemplate the sinners surrounding him. General Fabius suppressed a smile. General Cyrus looked at him with his stony gaze. Macharius did not seem in the slightest bit perturbed.
General Lysander was already rising to his feet. He clicked his heels, saluted, stroked his moustache, contemplated his reflection on the table’s surface for a moment and said, with a trace of mocking humour, ‘It pains me to report less than total, crushing victory. Battlegroup Lysander can only report complete success. It was enough to merely encircle the assembled forces of the Hegemony of Iskander, cut their lines of supply and then defeat their ground armies in detail. Sadly, there proved no need to imprison the defeated in death camps or burn their children as heretics.’
His mocking gaze met that of Arrian. I half expected them to go for each other’s throats. Here were two men who really hated each other. Lysander was one of those Imperial officers who thought honour was important and that there was a proper way to win a war. Personally, I would rather have followed Arrian: at least he had no illusions and did what was necessary to achieve victory whatever the cause.
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ was all Macharius said. The reproof was delivered in a mildly paternal tone, but I knew him well enough to sense the steely anger beneath. He was not about to tolerate friction between his high commanders. It was a measure of how feared and respected he was that Lysander immediately turned and made a small heel-clicking bow to him and Arrian returned to his study of angels at once.