‘It’s not about modesty and decorum,’ said Grizmund. ‘You don’t restyle yourself as a lord of men out of arrogance.’
‘Well,’ said Blackwood, ‘some do.’
‘I heard that, Blackwood, you dog!’ Lugo called out.
‘It’s a matter of apparent status,’ said Grizmund, laughing.
‘My men have never had a problem discerning my authority,’ Gaunt said.
‘In a company of five thousand?’ said Urienz. ‘Perhaps not. But in a warhost of a hundred thousand? Five hundred thousand? You look like a commissar.’
‘I am a commissar.’
‘You’re a militant commander, you stupid bastard!’ roared Van Voytz. ‘When you step upon the field, you need for there to be no doubt who wields power. You don’t want men asking, “Who’s in charge here?”… “That man there!”… “The commissar?”… “No, the man standing with the other commissars who isn’t just a commissar”…’
‘It’s not pride, Gaunt,’ said Grizmund. ‘It’s necessity. You need to look like what men of all regiments will expect.’
‘You need to stand out,’ growled Bulledin.
‘A cloak, perhaps?’ suggested Tzara. ‘Not that ratty rag you wear.’
‘Perhaps an enormous void shield parasol supported by battle-servitors!’ cried Lugo.
‘I will take the wise advice of my lords and turn myself at once into the most colossal target for the enemy,’ said Gaunt.
The table shook with laughter.
‘Take the address of my tailor, at least,’ said Urienz. ‘He’s a good man, in the Signal Point quarter. A clean jacket, a sash, that’s all I’m talking about.’
As the meal ended, the generals began to leave, one by one. Duties and armies awaited, and some had been from their HQs too long already. Every one of them shook Gaunt’s hand or slapped him on the back before they left.
It came down to Van Voytz, Cybon, Bulledin, Blackwood, Lugo and Tzara.
‘I feel I should return to my company,’ said Gaunt, finishing the last of his amasec. ‘They’ve barely disembarked.’
‘There are still some matters to discuss, Bram,’ said Van Voytz. He shot a nod to the house staff waiting on them, and they withdrew, closing the doors behind them.
‘The state of the crusade, and the campaign here?’ asked Gaunt.
‘Oh, yes, that,’ said Cybon. ‘We’ll get to that.’
‘I was eager for full intelligence reports,’ said Gaunt. He gestured to his crest on the table. ‘Now, more so, for I believe it is my duty to review.’
‘My man Biota will furnish you with everything you need,’ said Van Voytz. ‘A full dossier, then a briefing tomorrow or the day after to examine strategy.’
‘And when do I get an audience with the warmaster?’ Gaunt asked.
Logs crackled and spat in the grate. Bulledin reached for the crystal decanter, and refilled his glass and Gaunt’s.
‘Our beloved warmaster,’ said Van Voytz, ‘may he live eternally, is a very removed soul. Few of us see him these days.’
‘He abides alone here, in the east wing,’ said Tzara. ‘He was ever a man of tactics and strategy–’
‘Brilliant strategy,’ put in Lugo.
‘I do not dispute it, Lugo,’ said Tzara. ‘How one man can assemble and contain the data of this entire crusade in his mind and make coherent sense of it is a marvel.’
‘It was always his chief talent,’ said Gaunt. ‘To see the Archenemy’s intent five or ten moves ahead. To orchestrate the vast machineries of war.’
‘An obsession, I think,’ said Blackwood. ‘Isn’t there some obsessive quality to a mind that can negotiate such feats of processing?’
‘It is an obsession that consumes him,’ said Cybon. ‘He withdraws more and more each day into a solitary world of contemplation, ordering scribes and rubricators to fetch him the latest scraps of data constantly. He scrutinises every last shred with fearful precision, looking for that clue, that opening, that nuance.’
‘You speak as if he’s ill,’ said Gaunt.
‘These last years, Bram,’ said Van Voytz, ‘the machinations of the foe have increasingly made less and less sense.’
‘I have heard speculation that they are driven by a madman,’ said Gaunt.
‘You do not think that bastard Sek mad?’ asked Lugo.
‘Of course,’ said Gaunt. ‘But deviously so. There was a cold logic, a strategic brilliance that could not be denied. Sek is an unholy monster, but like Nadzybar before him, he is undoubtedly an able commander of war. As good, dare I say, as any we have.’
‘I’ll summon the ordos, shall I?’ sniggered Bulledin.
‘I mean to say, sir,’ said Gaunt, ‘at least, he was. His record was undeniable. Of course, my knowledge is ten years out of date.’
Light laughter ran around the table.
‘If Sek is insane,’ said Blackwood quietly, ‘if he has fallen into a despairing insanity and lost that touch which, I grant you, he did possess… then what do you suppose happens to a man who studies Sek’s plans in obsessive detail, day after night after day, searching for a pattern, for the sense of it?’
‘Are you saying…?’ Gaunt began.
Van Voytz sipped his amasec.
‘If you look into madness, Bram, you see only madness, and you run mad yourself seeking a truth in it, for truth there is none.’
‘Maybe I should summon the ordos,’ said Gaunt stiffly.
‘Macaroth’s great weapon is his mind,’ said Cybon, his voice almost a whisper like steel drawn from a scabbard. ‘I deny it not. The man is a wonder. But his mind has been turned against him by too many years of gazing on insanity.’
There was a long silence.
‘This is the matter you wished to discuss?’ asked Gaunt.
‘We are the inner circle, Bram,’ said Van Voytz, his good humour gone. ‘The six of us here. Seven, if you sit with us. Among us, some of the most senior commanders of the crusade. A warmaster is only as good as the lords militant who surround him, lords who follow his orders, but who also check his decisions. We keep him true.’
‘He shuts us out,’ said Bulledin. ‘Not just us, but all thirty who were present tonight, and other revered lords too. He takes no advice. He takes no counsel. He takes almost no audience.’
‘We keep him true,’ said Bulledin, ‘but he will not let us.’
‘The Sabbat Crusade is in crisis, Gaunt,’ said Cybon. ‘We do not speak out of disloyalty to Macaroth. We speak out of loyalty to the Throne, and to the hope of triumph in this long campaign.’
‘You plot, then?’ asked Gaunt.
‘Your word,’ said Blackwood. ‘A dangerous word.’
‘I don’t like what I’m hearing,’ said Gaunt. ‘Are you contemplating a move against the warmaster? To force his hand and oblige him to change his policy? Or are you planning to depose him?’
‘Macaroth does not listen to us,’ said Van Voytz. ‘We have tried to advise, and he will not take our recommendations. His rule is absolute, far more than Slaydo’s ever was. Bram, this happens. It’s not unprecedented. Great men, the greatest, even, they burn out. They reach their limits. Macaroth has been warmaster for twenty-six years. He’s done.’
‘Warmasters may be replaced,’ said Cybon. ‘Too often, they fall before it becomes necessary, but it is the very purpose of the lords militant to watch their master and check his thinking. If a warmaster begins to falter, then his lords militant are failing in their solemn duty if they do not remedy that weakness.’
‘We are the inner circle,’ said Van Voytz. ‘This is not a conclusion we have come to easily or quickly.’
‘And not because he has overlooked or slighted so many of you during his mastery?’ asked Gaunt.
Tzara looked at Van Voytz.
‘You said he was bold,’ she said.