Deyers looked around again at the fury surrounding him before he answered. He was an insect caught in a volcanic eruption. Destruction had reached a paroxysm, and there was no sign of the storm abating. As overwhelmed as his senses were, he could still read patterns. There was a current to the conflict.
‘I think we’re winning,’ he said to Platen.
But if this was the approach to victory, he could not imagine the pyre of defeat.
Captain Gregor Seth moved from his desk to look out the window. His office was at the top of the central barracks. It was high enough that it had a view over the wall of the base, on the street beyond. ‘The reports of violence have been multiplying,’ he said to Ornastas. ‘I wasn’t sure what to think. I didn’t imagine it could be as bad as you say.’
‘You believe me, though?’
‘Of course I do.’
Ornastas breathed more easily. He and Seth knew each other from many campaigns. He’d had every expectation Seth would listen to him. Even so, the fact of the old veteran’s belief was a balm to his soul. ‘Have you been in contact with the Adeptus Arbites?’ he asked.
Seth nodded. ‘Just beginning to hear from them when you arrived.’ He waved his arm at the city. ‘The incidents are widespread, but there’s no concentration. It’s taken until now to realise this is more than a spike in street violence.’ He turned back to Ornastas. ‘But this is a cult, you say?’
‘I’ve seen the heretical runes. The adherents bear ritualistic wounds.’
‘Then the question is what can we do?’
‘What forces are still here?’
‘Not enough to mount anything except focused raids and the defence of a very limited number of targets. It would help if we knew what to go after. Does this cult have a leader?’
‘If it does, I don’t know who it might be.’ Ornastas thought for a moment. ‘It would help if we could speak to someone in the palace. There might have been some hints they didn’t notice until now. Political malcontents…’
Grasping at straws, he thought. There was no time to investigate, yet what could be done without a clear sense of the enemy? ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked, hoping Seth could see his way to some clarity of action.
The captain shrugged, his face drawn, unhappy in his helplessness. ‘We’ll make a show of force in the streets,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to head for the palace. We…’
Seth trailed off. He met Ornastas’ gaze. They both heard it – a roar, coming closer. It sounded like a flash flood, some huge and fast-moving wave rushing through the streets. Ornastas stood up from where he’d been sitting before Seth’s desk and joined the captain at the window.
The roar grew louder, closer. The streets in front of the barracks gate filled suddenly with a violent crowd coming from both directions. The mob was ragged, clothing shredded into tattered robes. The faces blended into indistinguishable expressions of rage. The two streams met in front of the gates.
‘They’re armed,’ said Seth.
Ornastas saw the clubs, the blades made of scrap metal. But also the shock mauls and the lasrifles.
Sentries on the wall opened fire on the mob. They might as well have been shooting into a river. The crowd howled and fired back. A massive concentration of las took the individual soldiers down. At the corners of the wall, turrets opened up. They carved swaths through the crowd. Trenches exploded with blood, then filled again as still more heretics pressed in. A few moments later, the entrance exploded. Fire and smoke rose above the wall, obscuring Ornastas’ view of the street. The iron gates flew across the mustering ground before the barracks. Troopers were already streaming from the barracks. They formed up and trained their fire on the chaos at the shattered entrance. For a few seconds their steady, disciplined, coordinated fire held back the mob. Then the frenzy and the numbers of the heretics took their toll. Screaming cultists stormed through the gateway. Many fell as soon as they entered the barrack grounds. Many more ran over their corpses, some shooting wildly, others hurling their blades at the troopers, still more charging with nothing but their fury, their hands outstretched to rend the flesh of their prey.
The mob was too great for the troopers to take it down.
‘You need tanks,’ Ornastas said.
‘There’s no time,’ said Seth.
He was right. The storm had come for the Kataran Spears. His warning had come too late. Everything was too late.
Seth pulled his plasma pistol from its holster and left the window. He and Ornastas moved to the doorway. Seth paused before he opened the door. ‘You have to run,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Don’t die here. The fight is already lost.’
‘What about you? Aren’t you going to fight?’
‘I’m going to fight to see you live. You were right. This is heresy of the worst kind. We will need the strength of faith to combat it. This is just the start.’
‘So I fear.’
‘So run, confessor. Run for the salvation of Katara.’
The Imperial Hunters came at last. With them came the certainty of victory. The proud war-horns of the maniples boomed over the battlefield. The sound penetrated Krezoc’s consciousness, finding her in the maelstrom of smoke and flame. She paid little attention to it. She knew what it meant. It brought her no joy. Instead, she felt only bitterness that this pride should arrive now, so shining and so late, when so much had been lost.
For a moment, at the sound of the horns, she hated Syagrius more than she hated the tyranids. They, at least, fought according to the imperative of the species.
They did not sacrifice their kind for glory.
Chapter 3
The Feasts
Lord-Governor Fleiser’s banquet was held in a great hall immediately below his private quarters. The hall took up an entire level of the spire. Its windows presented a circular panorama of Gelon and the land beyond, a grand display to the victors of the world they had saved. The span of armourglass was interrupted only by the gold-filigreed plasteel of supporting columns, and in the north east by the grand entrance, beyond which lay the vestibule and the grav lifts to the rest of the spire. Three long tables took up the centre of the space. An army of serfs moved along their lengths, delivering more than a dozen courses to the assembly. Chandeliers hung from a painted ceiling. The fresco was an allegory, depicting Khania as an armoured saint taking her knee before the Emperor. Her outstretched arms held a bundle of swords, the offering of Khania’s industry.
Contingents of each of the armed forces that had come to Khania sat at the tables. Fleiser was at the head of the central one with the commanders. Syagrius was at his right, and beside him was Admiral Veline Menas of the Imperial Navy. Krezoc sat with Hans Deyers at the lord-governor’s left. The rest of the seats were occupied by members of Fleiser’s court, alternating between other officers of the Kataran Spears and the Navy. More Khanian nobility and Administratum hierarchs dined with the princeps and moderati of the Imperial Hunters at the right-hand table, and with the Pallidus Mor at the left.
Krezoc mentally congratulated Fleiser on his political acumen. The dining arrangements had been made before the lord-governor had met with her and Syagrius, yet he had had the foresight to put as much distance as possible between the two legios. The wisdom of the separation was clear to everyone in the hall. The Imperial Hunters were celebrating with loud, pointed gusto. The Pallidus Mor ate in almost total silence. The Kataran 66th were subdued too, but the sergeants kept up a steady flow of conversation with their hosts, as if the performance of conviviality would preserve the peace. Krezoc saw the strain on the faces of the Khanians. The evening was not the observance of victory they had expected it to be. They simply wanted it to run its course without incident. Fleiser looked both exhausted and guarded, but he did well to shore up the civility, moving smoothly from one pleasantry to another with all four senior officers. Even the
decision to place Syagrius and Menas on the same side of the table seemed the product of careful planning. Krezoc suspected Fleiser and his staff must have carefully gone through personnel data-packets in the process of preparing the reception. The marshal and the admiral were cut of the same aristocratic cloth.
Syagrius was aquiline, the lines of his face sharp enough to draw blood. His age was difficult to guess by sight, but Krezoc had done her reading too. She wanted to know everything she could about the fool whose selfish strategy had precipitated Balzhan’s death. Syagrius was younger than she was, but he looked even younger. Juvenat treatments, with a special attention to the aesthetic, had all but erased the lines of age. A single scar ran across his forehead, visible as a faint white line. He wore it like a medal, the lone flaw reminding all who gazed on him that he was a veteran of the battlefield. He had risen through the ranks of the Imperial Hunters quickly, as was the traditional right of his family. The House of Syagrius had an unbroken line of marshals reaching back through centuries of Imperial Hunters history. He spoke with the round, slightly arch tones of the educated noble. He was a man who knew precisely how to converse with his social class and how to demonstrate his superiority effortlessly to everyone else.
Menas was older, more taciturn. Her white hair was as severely cut as Syagrius’, and as perfectly in place. Her features were not as sharp, but there was a cold precision to her bearing that implied she tolerated the presence of inferiors only out of painful necessity. She was a fine officer, though. Krezoc could find no fault with her conduct of the void war. The Imperial forces planetside would have been doomed if she had not destroyed the tyranid bio-ships. She had done so, and though the Navy losses had been considerable, they were far from the worst it had suffered against other tyranid attacks of the same scale. The admiral had earned her laurels.
Krezoc chose a moment when Fleiser was occupied with Syagrius and Menas to turn to Deyers. In sharp contrast to Syagrius, he had many scars. He also had plenty of fresh wounds. They had been treated, but he was clearly a man who had recently seen battle. He looked around the room as if half expecting a bioform to smash its way through the windows. Krezoc suspected he didn’t even realise he was doing so. ‘Your troops fought well,’ she said.
He nodded his thanks. ‘They did,’ he said, his pride understated and shaded by grief. ‘They died well, too.’
‘How bad are your losses?’
‘Almost half my troops and vehicles.’
‘I see.’ She looked up and down the table. ‘Without implying disrespect to you, captain, where are the senior officers?’
‘Dead,’ he said. He looked down at his plate and stabbed at the food without eating any. ‘General Vargas died when the bio-titans first attacked. The colonels fell during the last charge.’
‘They led from the front,’ Krezoc said, approving.
‘They did.’
‘Then I am sorry for their loss, but their legacy is in good hands.’
‘Thank you,’ said Deyers. ‘How badly were you hurt, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Very close to the same degree as your regiment.’ Of the twenty god-machines the Pallidus Mor had brought to Khania, twelve remained. Ferrum Salvator, two Reavers and five Warlords had fallen to the hierophants. Killed by pride, Krezoc thought.
‘Khania owes you a great debt,’ said Deyers.
‘Which it is acknowledging, it would seem.’ Krezoc gestured with her fork, indicating the meal. A course of amasec-braised seafood was in the process of being replaced with roast loin of grox. ‘The same debt is owed to the Spears.’
‘Perhaps.’
Krezoc raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps?’
‘I’m not selling the sacrifice of my soldiers short,’ Deyers explained. ‘We were fighting for more than Khania, though. If it fell, Katara would have been next. We answered Khania’s call, but if we hadn’t fought here, we would have at home. Now we don’t have to.’
‘So Khania was sacrificed to save Katara.’
Deyers grimaced. ‘I wouldn’t put it that way to our host.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You understand, though?’
Krezoc nodded. ‘The Spears saved two worlds today.’
‘So did you.’
‘We thought only of one.’
A bright flare through the eastern windows caught Krezoc’s eye. She turned her head. The deep rumble of a massive lifter’s engines sounded faintly through the hall. Krezoc watched the ship rise slowly. She had been waiting for this launch. Inside the vessel’s cavernous hold was the salvaged corpse of Ferrum Salvator. Balzhan and his moderati were dead, but some of the crew in the main body of the Warlord had survived. More importantly, the god-machine was whole. Aboard the transport Nuntius Mortis, the tech-priests and enginseers of the Pallidus Mor waited to begin the healing process. Ferrum Salvator would walk again. Its history was not done yet. A memory of Balzhan would survive with it, Krezoc thought. The lineage of the Warlord’s princeps would not end with him. That was cold comfort, but it would have to do.
‘You are thinking of your marshal’s legacy,’ Syagrius said.
Krezoc looked at him, startled. Syagrius’ lips were pressed in a thin line. ‘I am,’ she said warily.
‘You are mistaken. He has no legacy. None worth commemorating.’
Beside Krezoc, Deyers held his breath. Conversation at this end of the table ceased. Menas’ expression was neutral. Fleiser, though, looked as if he had swallowed an insect. His wide face had turned pale. ‘I think…’ he began.
‘I’m sure you’ll explain yourself,’ Krezoc said. With a slow, deliberate motion, she placed her knife and fork on her plate.
‘The battle of Gelon was a poor showing.’ Syagrius turned briefly to Fleiser. ‘You have every reason to celebrate the overall success of our campaign, lord-governor,’ he said. ‘This is despite the shame that covers the land before the gates of this city.’
‘I think…’ Fleiser tried again, turning grey. No one interrupted him this time. His sentence faded into nothing.
‘Shame,’ Krezoc repeated. She forced her fingers not to clench into fists.
‘That is correct.’
‘How?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
At first, Krezoc had thought Syagrius was baiting her for his amusement. She realised now she was wrong. She saw a faint twitch below his left eye. The tendons of his neck stood out. He was not laughing at her. He was furious.
The idea that he had any right to anger made her see red. Through clenched teeth, she said, ‘Make yourself clear, marshal.’
‘Very well, princeps. Marshal Balzhan’s strategy was poor.’
‘It was the correct one for the foe we were fighting.’
‘And when the nature of the foe changed?’
‘Our formations turned the tide.’
Why are you dignifying his remarks like this? Krezoc asked herself. Because I want to know. I want to see his logic unfurled. I want to know the truth of this man.
Syagrius snorted. ‘At what cost? It was the duty of the Pallidus Mor to defend Hive Gelon. You failed. Marshal Balzhan failed. Your losses were great. They are regrettable, but they are also of your making. As are our losses.’
So that was it. In the final stages of the battle, the tyranids had managed to bring down one of the Warhounds of the Imperial Hunters, and a Warlord, Aurea Sagittariis. That was the reason for Syagrius’ anger. He had chosen to blame the Pallidus Mor for the destruction of the Sagittariis. He was acting out of wounded pride again. He was taking the Warlord’s fall as a personal insult.
‘I will be frank,’ Syagrius continued.
‘You haven’t been until now?’ Krezoc asked.
He ignored her. ‘Your failures have besmirched the honour of the Pallidus Mor. Such as it was.’
Krezoc didn’t know if he me
ant her failures or those of the entire demi-legio. She decided it didn’t matter. The statement was fatuous in either case.
Menas remained silent and impassive. Fleiser was squirming, and kept trying to say something, but the inadequacy of whatever he came up with choked the words before he could utter them. Deyers was vibrating with indignation. He was barely holding back from launching himself across the table and seizing the marshal by the throat. It was likely that the only thing keeping him quiet was the fact that the first punch was Krezoc’s to throw, not his. The rest of the guests at the table had stopped talking and were watching the argument. An uncomfortable quiet was falling across the entire hall.
Krezoc’s contempt for Syagrius had reached such an intensity that it was almost calming. For the moment, she felt more disgust than anger, and she was actually curious to see where he would take his reasoning. ‘How has victory led to dishonour?’ she asked.
‘Through the pointless losses.’
‘Pointless,’ Krezoc repeated. ‘Marshal, we appear to have very different conceptions of honour.’
‘So it would appear. Personally, I see little reason for celebration in this victory.’
‘If you think the Pallidus Mor is celebrating, you are greatly mistaken.’ Celebration, festivity, revelry – these were foreign concepts to the legio. Victory was not taken for granted, and it was an event to be learned from. So was defeat. Every battle of every campaign was studied afterwards. The Pallidus Mor had long learned to prepare for and expect the worst. The legio’s philosophy was one that had been shaped by millennia of long, grinding sieges and drawn-out, exhausting campaigns. There was little room for glory in war. There was, instead, the duty to prepare for the next battle. ‘Your accusations mean nothing to me. They are not just wrong, they are nonsensical. Such thoughts within our culture are simply incoherent.’
Syagrius sniffed. ‘I have read of the culture of the Pallidus Mor.’ He was no less furious, but his tone took on inflections of ostentatious erudition. ‘I have even read of your legends. They are full of hardships and those long sieges. The more ancient ones have their share of shameful associations.’
Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine Page 6