Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion

by Chris Wraight

  He was studying me. Just then, I saw what he had been doing. My words made no difference at all, and it had always been the utmost hubris to think they might do, but he was interested in me.

  ‘Why does this drive you so much, chancellor?’ he asked.

  ‘My duty is to serve.’

  ‘Impartially. And yet you are so desperate to see the motion pass.’

  I floundered a little. ‘I wish to see the war won. Surely all of us do.’

  Valoris drew closer to me then. He was looking at me almost hungrily, as if I were one of his many hunt-targets. ‘You were a cynical man,’ he said. ‘You were loyal, but you never took sides. For you, it was simply about the wheels of the machine. And now you are ready to die just to meet me. Have you never considered what is happening to you?’

  Jek had asked me the same thing. For once, I was lost for words.

  ‘There is a maxim,’ said Valoris, ‘that you may be familiar with. It states that the Emperor is within all of us, and that all of us are within the Emperor. If you wish to discern His desire, then look to the desire of those who serve. He no longer speaks to us with a mortal voice, but may yet act through the devotion of those who do.’

  This sounded dangerously like heresy. If it had come from any other but him, I might have turned away then. As it was, all I could do was listen.

  ‘We are not blind to this,’ he said. ‘When Valerian reported back to me after his meeting with you, I might have summoned you then, but did not, wishing to see how far you were willing to go. That sounds like a cruel game? It was not intended to be. We have learned to be wary, for there are more false prophets than true. But your zeal is unfeigned, for if it had not been, you would be dead already.’

  I cracked a dry smile. ‘Nice to know that,’ I said.

  ‘I do not see the way ahead yet,’ Valoris went on, ignoring me. ‘All paths are dark now, and if I had known the route to take with clarity, it would have been taken fifteen years ago. But I cannot ignore what you have done. It may be nothing, just the weakness of an old man, but then again it may be something else.’

  I didn’t speak. By then I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

  ‘So I will take the seat on the Council,’ he said. ‘I will listen to what they have to say. And when it has been considered, I will cast my vote. Consider your task accomplished – for now.’

  I felt a surge of joy well up within me. All we had worked for, week after week of dangerous toil, had paid off, at least for now.

  I could have no certainty that it would go as intended, but I had the ineffable sense, just as before, of rightness. For the first time in my long career, perhaps ever, I was doing something that I truly believed in.

  ‘I will ensure all is made ready, lord,’ I said, slipping back into my well-trod role as factotum to the powerful.

  By then he was already reaching for his helm. His scarred face disappeared behind the mask of gold, ending the brief sense that I had been talking to something more human than demigod.

  ‘Then we will speak again,’ said the Captain-General, taking his spear up as if ready to use it. ‘And let us hope your vision does not lead us awry.’

  Valerian

  I felt many things, after that day.

  Shame, of course. Even some degree of anger, but mostly confusion. Heracleon was not given to flights of fancy. Even if I had not been present in his visions as he believed, I should still have been able to cross the threshold. I was one of the Ten Thousand – that place was my spiritual home, and all of us, to one degree or another, belonged there in the end.

  After leaving the catacombs I returned to my duties. I participated in the Blood Games. I resumed my meditations. I attended the rites of armour, blade and shield. I completed my study of the philosophy of Ustiandes of Thar, and consigned my monograph to be stored in the archives.

  And yet the episode nagged at me. My sleep was disturbed. Every time I blinked, it seemed, I would see those metaphysical chambers again, the great iron vanes, the ancient flesh clinging to the bones of older machines. I felt that my inability to enter must reflect some lack within me. In some way, as yet undetected and undefined, I must have failed.

  The most immediate consequence of the episode was that I did not even begin preparation for induction into the Hataeron Guard. Heracleon visited me once several days had passed and held open the possibility of reconsideration. He told me the fault may have been his, for misinterpreting the symbols. I appreciated that, but did not believe him. In any event, we agreed that for the time being my duty should remain as it had been – in the Outer Palace,­ as one of the many thousands who guarded the walls against the external enemy.

  Navradaran, too, visited me before his labours took him away again. I was honoured to have had his friendship at that time. Perhaps, looking at us from the outside, you will think our lives somewhat cold and unrelenting, but they are not devoid of the greater human characteristics, and even some of the baser. There were those of my brothers whom I disliked, and those whose fellowship I cherished. Navradaran was one of the latter.

  I was in the Library of Ancients when he found me. I had been so engrossed in the tome before me that I only heard his distinctive approach from thirty metres away, far less than was required by standard battle-readiness.

  He saw what I was reading, raised an eyebrow, then sat opposite me. All around us, the vast library continued in its ancient rhythms – the shuffle of robes, the tick of iron-tipped fingers, the echoing thud of volumes being replaced on the high shelves.

  ‘The Master of Mankind,’ Navradaran read, softly. ‘Diocletian Exemplar. You must have read it many times.’

  ‘Just once. A long time ago.’

  ‘Does it give you answers?’

  I slowly turned the great pages, each one a single sheet of thick vellum inscribed in faded inks. This was a copy of a copy of a copy, yet still more than five thousand years old.

  ‘It tells me that our service was not always like this,’ I said. ‘We were not always fighting with silence.’

  Navradaran nodded. ‘And yet, even then, there was error.’

  ‘With greater excuse.’

  ‘Was there?’ He smiled faintly. He was older than I was, and had the scars to show it. I did not know how many names he had inscribed on the interior of his armour, but I guessed there were a great number. ‘We have become too used to regret, I think,’ he said. ‘We have become too used to thinking that the time before was so much greater than our own. And yet, you are reading ­Diocletian. You can see that even before the Failure, there were doubts.’

  ‘When I think what has been lost–’

  ‘–then you do not remember what has been gained.’ Navradaran placed a heavy gauntlet on the polished wood between us. ‘They lived in a time of plenty, and we in a time of strife. Consider how much greater our faith must be, compared to theirs.’

  The words did not bring me much comfort, though neither did I wholly disagree with them.

  I looked up at him. ‘I could not pass. I saw what lay within, and I could not pass.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Take it as a sign you are unworthy, and you only harm yourself. We are so ready to believe that we are not good enough.’

  ‘Because once we–’

  ‘Once! Once, ten thousand years ago, we were faced with an impossible task, and we performed better than any could have ever demanded.’ He laughed. ‘Do you know, there is some advantage to spending time outside this place? I have met men with no discernible talent who believe themselves kings. I have met the sick who think themselves healthy, the wicked who think themselves righteous. They are so weak, all of them, weak as chaff, yet they do not torture themselves with our doubt. They live, they squabble, they laugh, they blaspheme, and I have come to think that this, somehow, is the greatest sense
of all.’

  I could not help but smile. ‘You will go back out there, then,’ I said.

  ‘I find it invigorating.’ He looked around him. ‘More so than these places.’

  I could not agree with him then. Here, surrounded by the oldest words, the heavy-set parchments, the theology of the long ages, I felt at my greatest peace. The universe outside was like an inchoate sea, ephemeral and ever-shifting, but in these sites were the eternal verities, warded and preserved forever. There could be no more sacred calling than to keep this safe.

  ‘Go in His will, then,’ I said, reaching to clasp his hand.

  ‘As you, brother,’ he said, returning the gesture. ‘And do not read too much.’

  As it turned out, that did not prove a danger. From that point onwards, I had precious little time for any kind of study.

  I remembered my meeting with the mortal Tieron. He had been agitated when we had spoken, no doubt with much reason. What I did not appreciate immediately was quite how far that agitation had spread.

  We, in our privileged echelons, knew of the worsening war at the Cadian Gate. Piece by piece, we became slowly aware of the disaster on the Planet of the Wolves. The Captain-General was detained much with consideration of both great battle zones, as well as many other older campaigns, and it was said then that he spoke at length with the serving High Lords on the provisions made to contain them. The two tribunes were kept informed, and in their own ways made preparation for what might come next.

  I do not know how word of this spread beyond the walls. We live in a galaxy of uncertain communication, where the screams of a billion voices might disappear into the void while a single whisper travels securely to its destination. Even the greatest were capable of having their judgement blunted by such extreme variations in transmission failure, and yet I never failed to be astonished at how the rumour of war could spread even among the least educated. Like rats, the populace somehow knew. We did what we could, as the guardians of the species, to ward our charges from hearing harmful tidings, but our efforts failed more often than not.

  Of course, it was certain that the Enemy had a hand in such dissemination. We were not so blind that we discounted the presence of seditious cells on Terra. However many inquisitors we deployed, though, and however many pyres they constructed, there were always more traitors waiting to take their place. For all Navradaran admired the mortal human spirit, it was also capable of truly pathetic weakness.

  And so, almost as soon as we knew it ourselves, word of the worsening state of the war began to filter, by some strange process of osmosis, into the slums and the hive-towers. The enforcers were soon run ragged trying to keep up with it. We received tidings of more rioting across the southern hemispheric zones, fuelled by both panic and long-stoked resentments. The downtrodden impoverished could put up with much if they believed that the Imperium could at least keep them safe; once they lost that sense, our grip on their loyalty was loosened.

  My first direct experience of this came two days after Navradaran had left the Palace. Tribune Italeo requested my presence at the south-eastern wall-zones, following entreaties made to him by the regular garrison commanders. These were the Outer Palace walls, you understand, running around the gigantic estates for hundreds of kilometres. Even if all ten thousand of my brothers had patrolled those walls there would still have been gaping swathes of emptiness, and so instead many regiments of psycho-conditioned mortal soldiers were used to bolster our limited numbers. Some were drawn from regiments famed in the outside Imperium, such as the Lucifer Blacks, while others were virtually unknown outside Terra, like the white-robed Palatine Sentinels.

  I answered the call, and was met at the landing site by the captain of the 156th regiment, the Tramman Standards, a man with a name badge reading Leovine Werrish. We arranged our rendezvous just inside the vast concave sweep of the curtain wall, the wide landing site falling under its shadow as the sun struggled to climb over the eastern horizon. Above us, the grey screen of Terra’s unquiet skies churned away, and hot-ash wind danced around us.

  He did his best not to be daunted by my presence. Even for those who served within the sacred confines of the Palace, though, we were a rare and imposing sight.

  ‘My lord Custodian,’ he said, kneeling.

  When he rose again I could see how drawn his face was. He had the kind of fatigue that only comes from long periods of near-constant action without respite, the kind that gets into the bones and never loosens its bite.

  ‘They tell me you are having trouble, captain,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know where it all comes from,’ he said, too tired to make any attempt to hide the scale of the problem. In fact, I could hear the size of it for myself – a dull rolling roar from the far side of the massive walls, the telltale sound of thousands of voices raised in anger. ‘There’s a madness out there.’

  ‘You have done your best, I am sure.’

  He looked hollowed out. ‘I’m glad you’re with us, lord. Will… ah, the rest of your detachment be here soon?’

  If I smiled at that he would not have seen it, for I was wearing my full panoply of war and my face was enclosed in gold. There was no detachment. It was unusual for us even to consider deploying as a ‘detachment’ – my chamber would come with me when they were called, but the need for that was rare and I would only consider summoning them in the utmost extremity. He could not possibly know that, though. Perhaps he had served with the Angels of Death in some other warzone, and had seen how they used their bonds of brotherhood to multiply their unique prowess, and it was logical enough for him to assume that we operated in the same fashion.

  ‘Let us see this, then,’ was all I said.

  He bowed hastily, signalled his departure to an escort of thirty equally weary staff officers, and the two of us moved to where my Talion grav-lander was waiting on the apron. I took the pilot’s seat, and Werrish strapped himself into the counterpart, looking ludicrously small among restraint strapping designed for one of my kind.

  We lifted off, and headed for an egress gate built into the wall’s structure. For a little while, all we had ahead of us was the gently curving slope of pure black adamantium. Steps were carved every two hundred metres, zigzagging up the windswept face towards the walkway at the top – thirty metres across and overshadowed by a high, embattled parapet. Defence towers loomed at hundred-metre intervals, massive gun-citadels crowned with lascannons and heavy bolters, all angled outwards into the cityscape beyond.

  Then the egress gate opened – twin blast doors sliding apart to reveal the glowing red innards of the wall itself. We passed within, and saw the racks of attack craft hanging from launch-cages within the dimly lit interior, then the ammunition trains for the towers above, then the strobing power beams for the void shielding. The wall here was less of a solid barrier than an incredibly large contiguous fortress, one that was garrisoned and active and home to hundreds of thousands.

  The gate opened on the far side, and the Talion emerged into the dull grey of the Terran dawn. The landscape beyond the walls was open, scoured of the usual hard press of hab-towers and hive spires by ancient ordinances prohibiting building right up to the ancient wall-line. In that rarest of things on this world – open space – thousands of people had gathered. They were chanting something in semi-unison, mobbing the walls in stages before falling back. I could see Werrish’s troops down among them, holding the tide back in thin lines of pale grey.

  There was no risk of such a rabble penetrating the wall themselves. The danger was that they would overrun the urban zone leading back from the perimeter, triggering a degradation of the secure cordon and making clearance operations necessary. Even from the flyer’s closed cockpit I could taste mania in the air, a stench that rose higher than the fervid chants.

  The sky above us was, as ever, filled with aircraft, adding their own contrails to the film of soot that hung over us. I could
see Arbites scrutiny landers among them, hovering watchfully. Beyond the disturbance rose the behemoths of the eternal city, a jungle of both squalor and magnificence. Glancing ahead at it, I suddenly had a vision of dry tinder, heaps of it, piled up against the foundations of our walls, ready for the spark.

  ‘That crowd is preparing to charge your men,’ I observed, noting a basic swarm-pattern developing amid the mobs.

  Werrish nodded wearily. ‘I’ll order another volley. We have air support now.’

  He had ordered his forces logically. They were spread out in a long ragged line against the base of the wall, with reserve units dug in on either flank. They looked to be equipped with lasguns for the most part, and evidence of their use was everywhere – a tidemark of bodies where the crowd had last pushed up against them.

  I brought the lander down towards ground level. I could see the leaders of the rabble now, stirring the crowds up to charge at the hated bringers of discipline. Some of the mob were carry­ing burning braziers, others power staves that snapped with faint curls of plasma. One of them was wearing pale blue robes, streaked with dust and dirt. His eyes were blank, like pearls, and his bald pate had a false third eye daubed across it.

  Things were escalating. The throngs were furious, and a great many of their number had already been shot. I estimated perhaps eight thousand were present versus a few hundred of Werrish’s soldiers. Most of the front-rank rioters would die in a rush, but a lasgun could only down so many before its bearer was overwhelmed.

  The senselessness of it saddened me. Those gathered there could have had no true idea what they were rioting about; their latent rage and fear had been whipped up by more cynical souls. The chants rose in volume. The braziers spat with dirty flame. The skies above us ran with the faint crackle of lightning, lancing from the turning gyre over the Sanctum Imperialis. It was all ready to explode.