Fist of Demetrius

Chapter 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 silently 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 utter, 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.

General Cyrus rose slowly, ponderously. It was like watching a volcano heave itself up from the ocean floor; there was a suggestion of something vast, slow and irresistible in the movement. He paused to let a disapproving glance pass over Lysander, Arrian and Macharius, as if he considered the Lord High Commander not strict enough with his errant followers, sighed and began to lecture us. ‘At 12.09.4078.12.00 local time, the forces of the rebellious provinces of Sindar surrendered to the commander of Battlegroup Cyrus. This ended the unfortunate period of rebellion and satisfactorily returned all one hundred billion souls in the subsector to the Emperor’s Light.’

I rather liked the phrase unfortunate period of rebellion. It made it sound as if those worlds had been beyond Imperial rule for only a few months or years and not several millennia. I suppose in the general’s mind there was very little difference. And perhaps he had a truer grasp of the way the rulers of the Imperium view time than many of the others in the room.

General Crassus was on his feet before Cyrus had received Macharius’s acknowledgement and sat down. ‘Battlegroup Crassus reports mission accomplished, sir. All tactical and strategic objectives as covered in the overall campaign plan have been achieved.’

He was back in his chair almost at the same time as General Cyrus was. Macharius looked at the great holo-map on the table.

‘You are to be congratulated, gentlemen. You have all done your usual superlative jobs. I expected nothing less, and you have not disappointed me.’

He paused to let that sink in, and you could see all of them puff up with praise while at the same time looking a little disappointed that they personally had not been singled out for more. Macharius smiled.

‘Don’t worry, gentlemen, there are plenty more worlds for you to conquer. Indeed, there are a virtually limitless number. He indicated the holo-map. It seemed to contract as the point of view pulled back. The huge area already conquered by the crusade shrank to a tiny pattern of light. ‘A whole galaxy is out there,’ Macharius said. ‘There are places not even the Emperor reached.’

Again he paused, just for a moment, to let his audience see what was coming, the way a skilled matador will let the bull see the blade before he kills it. It heightened the moment of drama. I was following the line of his thoughts myself. There were worlds out there that had never seen the Emperor’s Light. Macharius intended to bring it to them.

‘There are more worlds than one man could conquer in a lifetime, in a hundred lifetimes. There are worlds enough for all of you and then some.’

There was something else in his voice now, a promise. Worlds enough for all of you. I am sure I was not the only man there who read something into that. Did Macharius intend to carve out an Empire here at the edge of the galaxy? Were these men to be his satraps? I looked at Drake. He had steepled his fingers on his stomach and his eyes were half closed. He had exactly the same look a great predator has before it springs.

I noticed I was not the only man looking at the inquisitor. The generals, too, were trying to judge his response. I wondered if this was some kind of test Macharius had set up, to see who would stand with him even in the presence of a representative of the distant Imperium.

And perhaps this was as much for Drake’s benefit as the generals’. Macharius had a gift for setting men up as if they were pieces on a regicide board, of arranging scenes in a drama that he controlled the outcome of. I found I was holding my breath as I waited to see what would happen next.

Macharius gestured to the huge swirl of stars on the holo-map. A large patch of it became illuminated. ‘This, gentlemen, is where we will be going next. This is what we will reclaim for the Emperor. There are thousands of systems, trillions upon trillions of souls, entire civilisations of xenos to be crushed or driven off.’

I saw General Crassus licking his lips. I wondered if he were thinking what I was: that the plunder of such a campaign would be immense, on a scale that had not been seen since the time of the Emperor. Or perhaps he was contemplating saving all those souls.

General Cyrus said, ‘It is a huge area, Lord High Commander, enormous. Perhaps too great even for the armies of the crusade.’

‘My scouts have been out there among its people. There are human worlds who crave the blessing of the Emperor’s Law. They will side with us. There are thousands of worlds which can be recruiting grounds for new armies, factory worlds to equip those armies, agri-worlds to feed them. There are empty worlds that can be colonised with veteran troops. There will be gigantic new estates created. There will be need of men to rule these new realms.’

And there it was. The promise of empire, of estates that were greater than anything currently extant in the human realms, of new fiefs for those bold enough to take them, lands for veterans. I found myself, insanely, turning over possibilities in my own mind.

A man who had the ear of Macharius might be well rewarded. I did not need a world. I would settle for a hive. I suppressed a laugh at this sudden outbreak of megalomania and ambition, but looking at those generals I could see the temptation being waved in front of them. If I could think such thoughts, how much more potent must they be in the minds of those men who had only to stretch out a hand and grab them.

I realised it was not just the generals who were tempted. Drake was staring hard at Macharius. He heard the promise there too. Trillions of souls to be reclaimed for the Emperor, a gigantic expansion of the Imperium. He could be part of it as well. I thought I saw the glitter of ambition in his eyes, quickly suppressed.

‘It might be possible,’ said Tarka. ‘Might. But it would be fatal if our reach exceeded our grasp.’

Was he talking in code now? Did his words have a double meaning. He was looking at the inquisitor. Macharius’s words could easily be interpreted in a treasonous fashion if Drake chose to do so. Perhaps it was a test of where the inquisitor’s loyalties truly lay after all these years.

Lysander said, ‘If we strike quickly and hard it is possible. We could overrun these sectors before they knew what hit them. Amass a big enough hammer and you can crack any nut with one swing.’

‘The scale of your ambition is breathtaking,’ said Drake, and at his words the generals’ faces froze. They waited to hear what he had to say. ‘I have seen no additional requisitions for men and materiel put through to the Munitorum, though.’

‘The campaign can be funded by the worlds we have already conquered,’ said Macharius. ‘And supplied by the worlds we have added to the Imperium, and will add. The crusade will be self-sustaining and self-funding.’

‘And your authority for this?’ Drake asked.

‘I was tasked with returning worlds into the Emperor’s Light. I will do so, and I will not slack.’

‘Very good,’ said Drake. ‘I shall see that the scale of your ambitions are reported to the appropriate authorities.’

‘By all means do so. Be sure to add that my ambitions are in the service of the Imperium and not of myself.’

‘I will certainly report your words accurately,’ said Drake. ‘But in my enthusiasm I have interrupted your council. Pray, gentlemen, return to your planning.’

Macharius stood and walked over to where the inquisitor sat. He stood looming over him. There was a smile on his face, but his shadow fell upon the other man. I can still remember the sense of ominous forces gathering about the two of them even now. There was a tension in the air. The two of them seemed to have come to a fork in the road they had walked along for so long.

At that moment, the door burst open and something huge erupted into the room.