When they reached the grand hall at the base of the tower, his mother turned her matriarchal countenance upon him and said, ‘Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?’
‘Not really,’ he confessed, hearing the swelling sounds of cheering and celebration from the streets beyond the tower.
Before Cebella could berate him for his ignorant behaviour, a host of armed warriors swept into the hall, heavy brutish men, armed with a variety of ferocious-looking armaments designed to kill in a myriad of painful ways. Leading the warriors was a man clad in a heavy suit of gleaming silver fusion armour – the kind a man five centuries ago might have worn on the back of a horse, had he found one strong enough to bear him.
He was powerful and broadly built, jowly where his youthful physique was finally yielding to his father’s genetics. The right side of his face was knotted with burn scars that had healed poorly over the years and his right eye had been replaced with an augmetic implant after a hunt for a rogue mallahgra had ended badly and its furious charge broke open his skull.
Albard Devine, firstborn scion of House Devine, shook his head at Raeven’s attire. ‘You are not war-clad.’
‘Keenly observant as always, brother,’ agreed Raeven with a curt bow.
‘Why are you dressed like that?’ demanded Albard.
His brother formed his words with great deliberation, as the hideous scarring made him sound like a simpleton if he spoke too quickly. Every time Raeven saw him, it reminded him how glad he was to be younger than Albard and thus spared the ritualistic burning of the firstborn male heir’s face upon his coming of age.
‘I am dressed like this,’ said Raeven, ‘because it’s ridiculous that we need to wear that outdated armour all the way up to the citadel just to take it off again. Those reactors are so old, they’re probably leaking radiation into your bones. Mark my words, you’ll regret wearing that clanking monstrosity when you’re trying to sire an heir.’
‘The men of Devine have worn the argent plate since we first rose to rule this world,’ said his brother, stepping in close and glaring at him. ‘You will not dishonour our father by disrespecting their memory. You will wear the silver.’
Raeven shook his head. ‘No, I think I’m fine the way I am.’
Albard’s nose wrinkled in disgust as the scent of the fragrant oils worked through Raeven’s hair finally reached him. Raeven saw a glint of recognition, and suppressed the urge to gloat at the thought of his brother recognising his wife’s oils.
‘You smell like you’ve been out whoring all night,’ said Albard, circling around him.
‘Well, now that you mention it, there was a lucky young lady...’ said Raeven.
His brother’s gauntleted hand snapped out to strike him. Raeven swayed aside.
‘Come now, brother,’ he said. ‘You’re nowhere near fast enough to hit me anymore.’
Albard looked past him to Cebella, and Raeven hid a smile as he saw the depths of hatred and decades of mutual loathing that passed between them.
‘This is your doing,’ said Albard. ‘Your viper’s tongue has made your son a cocksure lout.’
‘Albard, my son–’ began Cebella.
Raeven’s brother cut her off with a bark of anger. ‘You are not my mother, witch. My mother is dead and you are just the whore that shares my father’s bed and gives me unwanted siblings.’
The warriors behind Albard stiffened in expectation of Raeven’s response. They knew him well enough to understand that he was not a man to be underestimated. Raeven’s carefully cultivated air of urbane condescension and louche behaviour concealed a warrior of considerable skill, and many a foolish noble had only discovered that on the end of a charnobal duelling sabre.
‘Careful, Albard,’ said Raeven. ‘A man could take offence at such an insult to his mother.’
His brother at least appreciated that he’d crossed a line, but it wasn’t in Albard to apologise; another trait he shared with their father.
‘Shall we get this over with, then?’ said Raeven, marching past Albard and his entourage of heavily armed warriors. ‘Father will be waiting.’
Cheering crowds lined the Via Argentum as the carriage drew them higher up the valley. Thousands of men and women thronged the streets around the processional route, and thousands more packed the rooftops and windows overlooking it. Raeven waved to his people, blowing kisses to the girls and punching the air with his fist for the men. Both gestures were pure pantomime, but no one seemed to care.
‘Do you have to do that?’ said Albard. ‘This is supposed to be a momentous occasion.’
‘Says who?’ replied Raeven. ‘Father? All the more reason for it.’
Albard didn’t reply, and remained seated, staring stoically from the open-topped skimmer carriage as it plied its stately path uphill. An entire regiment of huscarl cavalry rode ahead of their floating transport, two thousand men in silver uniforms and purple-plumed helms. Each man carried a tall, glitter-tipped lance in one hand, with a fusil-carbine sheathed at their back. Another five regiments of masked infantry followed behind them, marching in perfect lockstep with glittering silver-steel banners overhead and freshly issued las-rifles carried upon every shoulder.
This was but a fraction of the armed forces commanded by House Devine.
Far below, in armoured stockades, hundreds of thousands of mechanised infantry, divisions of superheavy tanks, batteries of artillery and entire cohorts of battle robots stood ready to obey the commands of this world’s Imperial Commander. That someone had seen fit to make Raeven’s father that man was just another example of the absurdity inherent in every facet of this new Imperium.
Streamers and banners in black and gold, ivory and sea-green hung from every window, together with the entwined eagle-and-naga banner that had been the adopted heraldry of House Devine ever since the coming of the Emperor’s Legions ninety-seven years ago. After a bloodless compliance – thanks in no small amount to the meticulous records kept by each Knightly House – the planet’s existing calendars had been scrapped in favour of the new Imperial dating system.
By its reckoning, the current year was ‘966.M30’, and the ‘One hundred and Sixty-eighth Year of the Emperor’s Great Crusade’. It was a monstrously arrogant means of control, thought Raeven, but one which seemed to suit the emergent galactic empire perfectly.
Numerous heraldic devices proclaimed the presence of other noble Houses, most of which Raeven recognised thanks to years of enforced study as a child, but some he did not. Most likely quaintly provincial Houses barely worthy of the name, who could perhaps boast a single warrior of note.
Raeven sat back on the hard wooden seat of the carriage, basking in the adulation of the crowds. He knew most of it was for Albard, but didn’t care. People liked their warrior kings to look like warriors, and his brother fitted that description better than he.
Yoked to the carriage and grunting with the effort of pulling it was a powerful creature with the wide, beast-of-burden shoulders of a grox and a long neck that reached at least four metres from its body. Atop that muscular neck was a ferocious, avian head with a razored beak and hostile eyes. The azhdarchid was a flightless bird-creature that roamed the grassy plains in small family groupings; comical to look at, but a deadly predator capable of taking down even a well-armed hunter.