The workmen’s platforms were still in place. Normally they would have been filled with labourers plastering and painting and chipping away with chisels or working gold filigree into the statues, but today they were filled with cheering, red-faced people, waving scarves and banners, throwing offerings, chanting the name of Macharius. Perhaps it was the same workmen in their feast day finery, for a planetary holiday had been declared to celebrate the triumph.
The crowd’s cries blended together until they filled the air with their vibration. I could feel it rumble in my chest in the same way as I could the vibration of the tank’s drives beneath my feet. I must confess that gave me a certain nostalgia for older and simpler days, when Ivan and Anton and the Undertaker had merely been part of the crew of a Baneblade. It made me remember Oily and the lieutenant and Corporal Hesse and the New Boy and Snake, and all the others who had died along the march to this triumph. The thought did not make my mood any less sour.
Something flashed on a platform above us. I looked up startled, but it was just a man raising a silver drinking flask to his lips and catching the reflected light of the sun. I told myself to relax, that no one wanted to kill Macharius, that these people loved him, for leading the crusade, for returning their world to the Emperor’s Light, for restoring the stability and certainty of Imperial rule.
Anna’s words wriggled into my mind again. I thought of all the nobles who had ruled this world and the surrounding systems before the Imperium came. How did they really feel about their privileges being usurped, their absolute authority being denied? There had been those who fought to the death against it. There had been others who surrendered reluctantly. There had been others who had been only too willing to embrace the new order that Macharius had brought. Who could tell what was going on behind the smiling masks of their faces?
All of the nobles on all of these worlds were schemers. It was what they did, who they were. Their families had remained in power for millennia because of that. They had been born into a world where they plotted before they were torn from their mother’s breasts. They probably conspired against the other babies in the creche to get a bigger share of the milk. Some of them had aligned themselves with Macharius because they had seen which way the wind was blowing, where temporary advantage was to be seized. They might jump the other way if circumstances changed. Things were still fluid. How could they not be?
Macharius had brought more worlds into the Imperium than any man since the time of the Emperor. A new order was being born out here on the edge of the galaxy. Macharius had within his disposal entire systems and subsectors to grant as fiefs, the sort of rewards that made a few inconvenient deaths a negligible consideration for most nobles. I began to understand, to truly understand, what Anna had been getting at.
The seeds of an empire were all here. It would not have been the first time that an Imperial commander had set himself up as an absolute ruler, had splintered away from the Imperium. Such things had been one of the causes of the Great Schism, which Macharius had set himself to mend. From listening to him I understood that the reins of empire were the last thing Macharius intended to seize, but if I was an Imperial bureaucrat lolling in my palace in the distant heart worlds would I believe that? Would I assume that Macharius would not do what I myself would?
And, what if Macharius were lying? He did not confide in me. He did not confide in Drake. He did not confide in anyone, really. He kept his own council. What if all of this was an act? That his charming visage hid a ruthless will and the talent of a master manipulator, I already knew. I had seen plenty of evidence for it. He might be merely biding his time until he had consolidated his rule and then…
I looked at the cheering crowd. I thought of the planetary audience, of those cherubim focusing the mechanical eyes of recorded history on this spot. I thought of the gigantic war machine rumbling across the stars at his command. I thought of the sheer power that Macharius had within his grip. What man would not be changed by such things? It would be inevitable that he came to take such things as his due, to believe himself worthy of adulation and of worship.
I told myself that it did not really matter to me. It was not my role in life to worry about such things. I was just a bodyguard to the Lord High Commander. It was my job to see that his enemies did not kill him, nothing more.
I scanned the crowd looking for threats. I saw nothing. I felt they were there, nonetheless. Macharius waved, eyes unreadable above the glittering smile.
The Baneblade approached the steps of the cathedral. Barriers kept back the press of the crowd, preventing them from being crushed to jelly beneath our tracks. A signal was given, the massive tank rumbled to a halt. Behind us, the line of garlanded vehicles pulled to a halt. Overhead the Valkyries and Vulture gunships soared by.
Under normal circumstances Macharius would simply have leapt down from the side of the vehicle. I had seen him do it before with the casual athleticism of the supremely fit man. Not today, though. A long ramp with a banister of moulded metal angels was wheeled into place. Macharius stepped forwards, waved to the crowd and strode down. The rest of us were right behind him. A contingent of his bodyguard, who had been waiting at the foot of the steps, moved to meet him. They were accompanied by a delegation that consisted of the archprelate of the cathedral and his entourage. The clerics smiled unctuously, only too pleased to be taking part in this ceremony and come to the notice of the great man.
Macharius moved to greet them like long-lost comrades. I scanned the face of the crowds behind the barriers. They were not the same locals we had seen in the streets and on the balconies of hab-blocks. They were garbed with the elaborate formality of the nobility, wearing the richest sparkle-cloths, shimmering with wealth and good health. I reminded myself that these were still relatively minor functionaries. They had only managed to cajole and bribe a place on the steps. The truly influential would be within the cathedral, waiting to see Macharius invested with his honours and to listen to his speech of triumph.
I caught one man staring at me with hot-black eyes that seemed full of hatred. I gave him my most annoying grin, for it was obvious he envied me my place at Macharius’s side. Doubtless he was thinking of the use to which he could put the influence granted by being so close to the general’s presence. I almost smiled at the irony that a slum boy from Belial should be on the general’s side of the barrier and a wealthy nobleman should be on the other. In another time or place our positions would not even have been reversed. I would have been one of those hanging from the statues outside. Then again, that’s the thing about events like a crusade; they disrupt the ordered nature of the universe.
We moved up the steps to the arched entrance of the cathedral. The face of some local saint looked down on us from the stonework. I took another glance around. Part of me was glad to get Macharius out from under the sky. There were too many places for snipers to lurk. Part of me was worried. The entrance to the cathedral would be a good choke point for an ambush, and the press of bodies we would soon be moving through could easily hide a killer whose concealed weapon security checks had missed.