Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion

by Chris Wraight

  Then I was running. I was not a good runner, you will not be surprised to hear – I waddled like an overfed fowl, my loose shoes slapping on the polished floors. As I went, as part of standard procedure, I was joined by members of my household guard, who jogged along behind me in deference to my uncertain pace.

  The destination was close. I reached an internal groundcar transport and we bundled inside it, then hurtled down the transit tubes towards the inner ring of the Palace interior. Through brief flashes from the armourglass portals I saw the high spires streak by through the night, their flanks lit with sodium glare-points.

  My earpiece was by then full of shouted orders, incoming reports, exclamations of surprise and horror. They had all known about the widespread disorder beyond the walls, but to have something take place inside – that was something else.

  I let them jabber. I was already ahead of them, notified first and in the best position to act. The groundcar slammed into its terminus, now deep inside the Senatorum Imperialis complex itself, and we disembarked. The six guards fanned out around me protectively, and we plunged further in, racing through half-lit anterooms and audience halls.

  I knew them all. Perhaps more than any mortal man then living I knew how to get from one side of the labyrinth to the other, and so we made swift progress. By then I could already hear the snap of lasgun impacts, followed by the crash and splatter of priceless things breaking.

  We broke into a semi-ruined chamber, thick with old dust and the faded remnants of some Telech-era frescoes. The suspensors had been blown, and so we saw what happened only through whirling pools of head-mounted lumens.

  They were servitors – huge, vat-bulked servitors with heavy chainglaives. They had been stamped with the livery of the Palace, wore their ragged uniforms over obscenely muscled bodies, and were rampaging, storming down the centre of the long room like enraged groxes. I estimated twenty of them were loose, charging at a nervous line of Palatine Sentinels arrayed at the far end.

  My guards crouched to fire, levelling lasrifles.

  ‘Hold,’ I said, walking out beyond their protection. The barrage of comm traffic in my audex-feed was giving me information they couldn’t have heard, and I felt a tremor of excitement, tinged with terrible fear.

  I knew, you see, what was coming next.

  He broke through at the far end of the chamber, where the Palatines were, and instantly rendered them superfluous. Great panelled doors smashed back on their hinges, rammed hard against the walls and splintering. Light flooded through the opening, dazzling and iridescent.

  He looked magnificent. If I’d not been so blindsided I might have fallen down and worshipped that apparition. He moved like something out of legend – far faster than I was able to follow, impossibly fast for his huge bulk, a whirlwind of gold and black. The air screamed around him, blazing from where his great blade scythed and burned.

  He cut through the servitors as if they were nothing at all, just random tatters of useless machinery thrown up as an affront to his immortal dignity. I could barely even follow how he did it – the movement was so ludicrously quick, so horrifically powerful – and even then I had the sense that he was barely tested.

  He flung his spear out wide and sent three of them – three of them – sailing into the far wall to crunch and slither in a tangled mess. He punched out, breaking the neck of a fourth, then blasting a fifth with the stave-mounted bolter. The noise was incredible, a wall of snarling plasma-burn that seemed to wreathe him in a cloak of distortion, and yet he said nothing at all.

  Only mindless servitors would not have fled shrieking then, but these flesh-automata just kept on coming, zeroing their targeting sensors and blundering to get a shot. He barrelled in among them, now twisting, now lunging, slicing his blade clean through the knots of grey flesh and burning metal. Another servitor was hurled into the air, limbs cartwheeling, before it crashed into the floor in a cloud of splintered tiles. Two more were decapitated with a two-handed heave, then more were blasted apart by the bolter. He worked almost casually, and yet nothing was casual at all – it was choreographed with such remorseless precision that it was more art than combat.

  And it only lasted seconds. That was all he needed. The echoes of his destruction took longer to die down, drifting over a smouldering scene of absolute annihilation. I had barely even fully registered his entrance before I was trying to make sense of what had just happened, marvelling at the volume of wreckage generated in such a tiny slice of time.

  Afterwards he stood at the centre of it, his spear held loose, his black cloak sinking back around his shoulders. His helm-lenses glowed like rubies in the dark, giving a faint red tinge to the baroque majesty of his closed-face helm. His armour was even finer and more intensely adorned than Valerian’s had been – a veritable hulk of heavy gold, emblazoned with thunderbolts and lightning strikes, the oldest of our ancient symbols, surrounded by astrological embellishments that seemed to writhe and grin in the flickering gloom.

  The guards beside me had not even had the chance to open fire. They were as stunned as I was, but then they had never been a significant factor here. The only two souls who mattered in that room were him and me.

  He knew what had happened even before his blade’s energy field had kindled. That had always been the risk, and there were more risks to come, but desperate times required desperate remedies.

  He walked towards me. Every move he made was still bleeding with barely contained menace. I wanted to throw up then. I could feel saliva pooling at the back of my throat, and swallowed thickly.

  ‘Get out,’ he said.

  He wasn’t talking to me. The Palatine Sentinels obeyed instantly, clattering out of the chamber in disciplined files. To their credit, my own guard hesitated for a moment or two, but their resolve was only human, and so they too withdrew.

  I was left looking up into the helm-visor of Trajann Valoris, Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes, perhaps the deadliest individual warrior in the entire Imperium, and one whom I had just made very angry indeed.

  I started to blurt something out.

  ‘Silence,’ he commanded, and I stammered to a halt. ‘How did you know?’

  Somehow my external comm-feed had been closed by then – I assume he’d done that – and I felt terribly vulnerable. His voice, booming out of a vox-emitter, made my bones shiver. I wanted so badly to kneel, though that gesture would have achieved nothing.

  ‘Forgive me, lord, I–’

  ‘How did you know?’

  I swallowed again. I felt light-headed. This was a gamble too far, and I cursed myself for daring it. Perhaps it would have been better to acknowledge defeat.

  ‘I arranged the transit of the Fabricator General’s entourage to this zone,’ I said, trying to keep a lid on my fear. ‘He was the last one to arrive. I knew you would have been overseeing the security for his installation in person. I also knew the access codes, and had the means to circumvent the security protocols. I needed to get you here – you and me.’

  By then he was standing over me. I could smell the blood and oil from the servitors slowly cooking on his still-hot blade. I could feel the actinic tang of the energy field. I could trace the lines of that impossibly crafted armour, and see just how achingly beautiful it was up-close. I wondered if it might be my last sight. Not a bad one, I thought, grimly.

  ‘I have killed men for less than this,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Your rank will not protect you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then why do it?’

  That was the question I’d been waiting for. If he’d truly made his mind up to execute me then and there, he would not have asked it. It was my only way in, though whether I would be able to take it was still very much moot.

  ‘Because my life really means very little,’ I said, trying my best to hold things together. ‘Alm
ost nothing, I suppose, but I do know things. I can see how things are going. And I have a duty, when the call comes, to do what I can to aid the workings of the Council.’ I still felt nauseous, and had to fight the urge to vomit. ‘I’ve been trying to speak to you for weeks. All my other avenues are exhausted. This was the only thing I had left, and it had to be dared.’

  He never made a move. After seeing just how astonishingly powerful he could be when in motion, watching him remain perfectly static was intimidating in itself.

  ‘I asked your shield-captain for five minutes,’ I went on, doing what I could to look less than ridiculous. ‘The request remains in place.’

  He waited a long time. I was clammy with sweat by then, and feeling dizzy, and expected at any moment for the spear to come plunging into my neck. I wouldn’t have even felt it, I imagine. I’d have never seen it coming.

  I felt my knees begin to give out. The last twitches and pops of the dying servitors were the only sounds in that place then, save for the faint grind of the power armour before me.

  I began to make my preparations. I had never been devout, but there were certain prayers one should recite at the hour of passing, and I still remembered some of the words.

  ‘Come with me, then,’ he said.

  He turned on his heel, and stalked back through the bodies. Mouthing a whispered thanks to whichever saint was watching over me that day, I pulled my robes about me and hurried to follow.

  Let me tell you what I knew of Trajann Valoris.

  The second of those use-names was, I think, an honorific earned in battle, a prestige title that had long since passed out of use by the rest of the Imperium. Of course, he would have had a thousand other names too, all inscribed within that carcass of auramite, but it was standard protocol to refer to him as Valoris on the rare occasions when any of his appellations were used directly.

  While the two tribunes of the Adeptus Custodes were generally occupied with the many ritual purposes of the order, the Captain-General had no set remit, but governed the forces under his command with complete freedom. To the extent that if the Ten Thousand had dealings with any part of the Adeptus Terra, they were carried out through him. The High Lords might seek to gain an audience, as might other great warriors or the mightiest of our inquisitor lords, but only those of equivalent seniority.

  And that was it. There were no records in the Imperial databanks on his martial conquests or his ascent into the order. I didn’t know what his name had been before he was taken into the Sanctum Imperialis, or where he had been born, or when. It might have been a hundred years ago, or it might have been five thousand.

  For as long as I had been alive, though, his name had been spoken of with nothing short of reverence. Even the High Lords might be mocked, when in wine or in anger, but to do so with the Captain-General was simply beyond imagination. In the Age of Wonder, it was said that the Emperor had employed a regent – a powerful figure who set in train the vast bureaucracy that would one day become the Administratum – and to speak ill of the Emperor’s regent was a breath away from speaking ill of the Emperor. So it was with Valoris. While not officially numbered among the High Lords himself, there was little doubt that he was the closest thing we still possessed to the Emperor’s own representative.

  And so, even when the fear of imminent death had subsided a little, I remained daunted by this figure. I was not generally swayed by reputations, for I had seen how often they were false masks hiding small minds, but this one was quite literally a breed apart.

  He led me deeper into the Palace, and soon we were down in the crypts below one of the great battle-chapels commemorating the first Ullanor triumph. By the time he stopped walking, it felt as if we had descended into the heart of the planet. The stone around us was cold and cracked with age, and the only light came from the glow of his helm-lenses and the residual aura of his magnificent armour.

  ‘You wanted five minutes,’ he said.

  I might have asked if this place was secure from listening devices, but immediately thought better of it. He had brought me here. Of course it was.

  ‘I hear reports from every corner of the Imperium,’ I started, trying to control the shake in my voice and remember who I was and whom I worked for. ‘In truth I hear more than anyone else, even the High Lords, for they all have their fiefs to watch, and I have allegiance to both none and all. And, though I risk telling you what you already know, I see a tipping point being reached now. I see the losses we’re taking becoming irrecoverable. And I can’t stand back and do nothing.’

  He was silent as I spoke, but slowly reached up to his helm and took it off. I don’t know what I was expecting to see – perhaps something like Valerian had been, with his smooth skin and pleasant complexion.

  Valoris was nothing of the kind. His visage was hard-edged, broken by scar tissue, the skin veined and vivid. His lips were thin, his nose flared, his neck sinewy. In that low light, no doubt amplified by my own fear, he looked almost ghoulish.

  ‘It is not your task to tell me this,’ he said. Once free of his helm, his voice was low, considered.

  ‘In the normal run of things, yes, that’s right,’ I said, working to keep my composure. ‘But the composition of the Council is within my purview, and the Lord Brach is gone – Throne preserve his soul – and there’s no consensus on who should replace him. And then there’s Dissolution, which has been discussed and discussed but never been ruled on.’

  Valoris placed his empty helm on the altar beside him. He leaned his great spear against one of the columns, and the cutting blade clinked against the stone. Then he regarded me with those terr­ible bloodshot eyes.

  ‘And you wish me to settle the issue,’ he said. ‘None of this is new to me.’

  ‘But since then, lord, we have had word of catastrophe on Fenris. And two fleets have been lost en route to the edges of Segmentum Solar to reinforce the supply lines of Warmaster Katask. These are hardly trivial setbacks. And then there is–’

  ‘Cadia. The Gate into the Eye. You seem to think, chancellor, that we are unaware of this.’

  ‘No, not at all, but you may not have the perspective I do.’

  His gaze, as unbending as the granite around us, never wavered. I wondered what it might look like if he tried to smile.

  ‘I know what you wish for,’ Valoris said. ‘And you know we had this chance before, when Speaker Lestia died. We did not take it then. The reason was simple – the High Lords rule the Imperium, and we are not of the Imperium.’ I remembered that Valerian had said the same thing. ‘There was a time when His vision was mani­fest. All you see around you now, all that has been built over ten thousand years, none of that is His. While you have forgotten, we remember.’

  ‘But there were captains-general on the Council before.’

  ‘When the need was greatest.’

  I could not help myself – I let slip a wry smile. ‘And now the need is great, lord. The need is very great indeed.’

  ‘For the Imperium,’ Valoris agreed. ‘If my first duty were to your mortal realm, the case would be strong. But my first duty is to the Emperor. We are His guardians, not an army under the Council.’

  ‘Yes, that is what you have become, but it was not always the way.’

  And then, for the first time, I detected the smallest indication of surprise. Knowledge of the Great Crusade was vanishingly rare even in the highest levels of the hierarchy, but I had access to many obscure libraries and had made it the subject of much study. Once, I knew, the Custodians had waged war in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, and not invariably with the Emperor at their head.

  ‘Things were different then,’ he said.

  ‘Of course they were. The many ages are always different.’ I was somehow forgetting my fear. The debate had reignited something within me – love of an argument, perhaps. ‘But how can the Throneworld remain safe if its fortress wor
lds fall, one by one? I hear the entreaties from those we send out into the void. One of them, a fine man who is almost certainly dead now, said that we can no longer afford our old laws. He’s looked the Enemy in the eye. I’d trust his judgement.’

  I was getting carried away then, and I recognised it immediately.

  The Captain-General remained impassive. I doubt I could have done anything to seriously discomfort him – I was so far below him in the scale of majesty that I was lucky he even deigned to talk at all.

  ‘You may be right, chancellor,’ he said, evenly. ‘Everything you say may be right, and yet it is all irrelevant. Wars and tactics are for our generals – for me, they are nothing. A thousand worlds might fall, and still it would be nothing. You understand this? Only one thing would compel me to change the ancient law that governs us – if it were His manifest will.’

  I hesitated, unsure what to make of that. ‘But… how do you–’

  ‘That is the task of our lives to unravel.’

  There was something exhausting about talking to one with such unbreakable certainty. They had to be that way, no doubt, but I was used to the world of politics, where the art of the possible was all and a person might believe one thing in the morning and another by dusk, and so it was hard to engage with.

  ‘The High Lords will discuss it anyway,’ I said, clutching at what I could.

  ‘Yes,’ said Valoris. ‘Your doing, I understand.’

  ‘Only partly.’ I looked him directly in the eye, as closely as I could bear to. ‘If you’re not there, they’ll debate these issues without full understanding. They’re currently divided, but that might change. I’ve known it before. Suppose they vote to withdraw the law – what then? You’ll be a part of this war, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘None may compel us.’

  ‘Maybe not, but the vote would create division. Now, when we really don’t need any more of it.’ I felt myself warming to the theme, and some of my confidence returned. ‘This is the issue, Captain-General – you have control. You can end this for a generation, if you choose. If you’re so sure of your stance, come to the Council. You can take Brach’s seat. You can say what you have said here, to me, and none could gainsay you. Is that not worth it?’