‘You remember when we found Corporal Hesse asleep under Old Number Ten?’ Ivan was saying. ‘Now there was a man who could snooze under any circumstances.’
‘A valuable skill in a soldier,’ I said, taking another sip from my beer. It fizzed on my tongue. I saw one lad glance at me, nudge his mate with his elbow and then laugh. He was wearing a uniform with a lot of gold braiding on it. The buttons of his elaborate coat looked as if they might be made of gold. Most likely they were just plated, although some soldiers like to carry their wealth on them in easily transportable, easily visible fashions. Me, I think it just sets you up as a target for thieves.
‘Not as valuable as drinking,’ said Anton. ‘Being able to hold your booze is a talent to be admired.’
‘You’re talking to the man who tried to outdrink a Space Wolf,’ said Ivan. That was something the pair of them were quite clearly never going to let me forget.
‘I played my part heroically,’ I said.
‘I still remember you throwing up in an old helmet the next day.’
‘That’s a clear misrepresentation of the facts,’ I said.
‘True,’ said Ivan. ‘It wasn’t a helmet. It was a bucket.’
‘Obviously you are both jealous because you lack my prowess,’ I said, taking a deeper swig from the beer, ‘which commands the respect even of Space Marines.’
It was a slight exaggeration, but neither of them had been present at the banquet in which I had made the mistake of accepting a drink from Ulrik Grimfang of the Space Wolves. I could tell them anything I wanted, but it seemed best to keep things within the bounds of probability.
‘You think we are ever likely to see Space Marines again?’ Anton asked. He sounded suddenly like a young lad again, keen to get off-planet and meet the legendary heroes of the Imperium.
‘We’ve already met them more times than most Guardsmen will ever encounter them in a lifetime.’
‘Ten lifetimes,’ Ivan corrected.
‘A thousand,’ said Anton, not wanting to be left behind in the exaggeration. He banged his glass on the table to emphasise the point. Some of it spilled out, slopped along the table and dripped down onto the highly polished boots of a soldier who was standing there.
Perhaps ‘looming there’ would have been a better description. He was a huge man, almost as big as an ogryn, with a massive walrus moustache and a bald head. He had lamb-chop whiskers and a ruddy face and tiny eyes of porcelain-blue that looked out at the world with a slightly insane glaze. Beside him were the young man and his mate who had been giggling at us earlier. Behind them were a group of soldiers all in the same elaborate gold-braided uniforms.
‘Watch what you’re doing,’ said the moustached giant in accented Imperial Gothic.
Anton looked at him. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said, “Watch what you are doing”.’
Anton looked at me then looked back at the giant. I could not help but notice that he had arms as large around as my thighs and fists the size of small ham hocks. ‘Could you repeat that?’ Anton said, putting a hand to his ear. ‘I can’t understand a word of your turdkicker accent.’
He didn’t use the exact word turdkicker, but the Belial equivalent. The sergeant clearly did not understand the word but he understood the tone.
‘I don’t like you, greencoat. I don’t like your attitude.’ His voice boomed out and his words cut through the general babble. Heads turned to look at us. A few men smiled. A few cracked their knuckles. I noticed that there were a lot more men from the giant’s regiment than there were from ours.
‘There’s no need for any trouble,’ said Ivan. His voice was as flat and emotionless as it always was. The sight of his sharp mechanical teeth was enough to give anyone pause.
‘Scared we’ll kick your ass?’ said the laughing youth. ‘Just like the heretics on Loki did.’
I considered his appearance and I realised that there was something about his face that really made me want to punch it.
‘It’s good you’ve brought twenty friends to back you up,’ said Anton. ‘Always makes rats braver.’
The laughter stopped and a look of pure vicious spite passed across his face. I knew that he was one of the sort that was always stirring up trouble. ‘I’m not scared of you,’ he said.
‘Of course you’re not,’ said Anton. ‘That’s why you brought your big buddy here to hide behind while you shoot your mouth off.’
That was a reasonable shot and things might have calmed down but he could not resist adding, ‘And he looks stupid enough to let you do it.’
‘He’s not the only stupid one around here,’ I said. Unfortunately the giant heard me.
‘What did you say?’ he asked. His tone told me that he did not suspect me of passing any compliments. Behind him I recognised a group of men in green tunics approaching. They all had the tall golden look of warriors from Macharius’s home world. There were not as many of them as there were of our new friends but the odds had changed a little.
I took a deep breath and I thought about what I was seeing. No one, but no one, had tried to pick a fight with us in a bar since we put on the green tunics. We’d picked a few ourselves, but it just was not done to show disrespect to the Lord High Commander’s personal guard. Only now apparently it was. More than anything else this told me how much Macharius’s star had fallen.
At that moment, the giant took a swing at me. It was sudden and it was fast. It might have taken my head off as well, if Ivan had not reached across and caught his wrist. The servo-motors in his arm screeched as he halted the blow and the two of them stood there straining across the table. The smirking youth took it upon himself to break a glass at this point and try to slash me with the splinters. I rolled back off the bench and when I picked myself up I could see a full-scale brawl was in progress, spreading across the room, involving the gold-braids, the green tunics and everybody else. By the time the chaos had reached the edge of the room no one had any idea of who was fighting or why. They were just joining in for the fun of it or to make sure no one got the drop on them.
Ivan stood straining with the giant, his mechanical limbs matched against enormous strength. Smirking youth took a slash at him. The splinters of glass ripped his uniform and revealed the plasteel and ceramite beneath the tunic. I decided I had had enough of this. I raised my glass and threw it at Smirker’s head, which it tumbled through the air, spilling beer as it went, and caught him right between the eyes, sending him toppling back onto the floor.
‘Waste of good beer, that,’ said Anton. He jumped onto the table and head-butted the giant, dropping him.
‘Thought you were taking too much time with that one,’ he said and dived into the brawl. There was nothing else to do but follow him.
The cells were small and dark and dim and full of men who all looked the worse for wear. A single glow-globe flickered overhead. Duty guards looked at us through the visors of their riot helms. I had learned a respect for them and their nightsticks a couple of hours back when they had broken up the brawl and thrown us all into the cells to cool off.
‘Just think,’ said Anton. ‘We’d still be drinking beer if Leo here could hold his temper. He had to go starting brawls.’
‘I seem to remember I was not the one who insulted the big bald fellow,’ I said.
‘Classic – trying to weasel out of responsibility for his actions. How you ever made sergeant is beyond me,’ he said.
‘Now that I can believe,’ I said. ‘You certainly don’t have the intelligence to understand how I did it.’
‘See what I mean – can’t resist the sarky remarks. Always causing trouble.’
‘It was a good fight though,’ said Ivan.
‘You’re only saying that because you broke that big guy’s arm when he grabbed you,’ Anton said.
‘And I would have broken his jaw if you hadn’t nutted him,’ Ivan said.
‘He deserved it and so did his buddies,’ said Anton with a sudden change of tone. ‘He
was disrespectful to our fallen comrades on Loki. And we did not get our asses kicked.’
I let out a long sigh. I did not see any other way of explaining our precipitate withdrawal from Loki but I was not going to say that out loud. I was starting to sober up a little and thinking you never knew who might overhear you and how they might choose to interpret it.
‘Not tonight anyway,’ I could not resist saying. ‘We taught them a lesson.’
I glanced around. Most of the men in the cells with us wore green tunics. The duty guards knew better than to put men from different regiments together. Too much chance of a killing if the brawl restarted. I did not know any of them, but I was glad they had been there and taken our side in the fight. Of course, under the circumstances, there was very little else they could have done.
The door opened and an officer strode in. I recognised his tall, upright figure and his blank-seeming expression. It was the Undertaker. He walked right down to the door of our cell as if he knew exactly where to find us. Beside him were a couple of guards.
‘Sergeant Lemuel,’ he said, ‘you are in trouble.’
I saluted him as he indicated the doors should be opened and we should be released.
I did not expect to be taken straight to Inquisitor Drake. I was shown into his office and the Undertaker departed.
‘Brawling, Sergeant Lemuel? I expected better of you.’ Drake’s voice was dry. There was a faint hint of disapproval in it but something else as well, a note of curiosity that made me even more cautious.
‘As you have every right to, sir,’ I said, doing my best to sound contrite.
‘Tell me what happened,’ he said. I did so, all the while wondering why this powerful man was taking an interest in a tavern brawl. I am not sure whether he read my mind or simply deduced what I was thinking from my expression.
‘Because you are a member of the Lord High Commander’s personal guard,’ Drake said, ‘you should not be engaged in such fights. It reflects badly on General Macharius.’
‘You are correct, sir.’
‘Of course I am correct. The question is, why did you get involved in this brawl at all?’
‘I believe I am correct in saying we did not start it, sir.’
‘The eternal excuse. Who did then?’
‘A group of soldiers from General Crassus’s regiment.’
‘Did they provoke you?’ Even through my hangover I was starting to wonder where this was going.
‘A little. They came over to our table. They seemed to be spoiling for a fight.’
‘I can see this is going to be a problem.’
‘Sir?’
‘Dissension in the ranks, Sergeant Lemuel. I suspect it reflects dissension in the upper echelons.’
‘You think General Crassus is at odds with the Lord High Commander, sir?’
‘I think there are people who are making it their business at least to make it look that way.’ I was starting to wonder why he was telling me this. Again he seemed able to pick the thought right out of my mind.
‘Macharius trusts you, Lemuel. And I trust you. You are reliable. It would be a loss to us if you were to be killed in some bar-room brawl.’
‘I don’t think that was very likely, sir.’
‘Men never do until it happens to them, and it happens all the time.’ My eyes widened a fraction. The secret world of stealthy killing was more his business than mine.
‘Why would anyone bother to remove me?’
‘These are strange times, Lemuel. You have spent a long time close to the centre of power in the crusade. Killing you might unsettle the Lord High Commander a fraction and this is a game where those fractions can affect the fate of billions. Also, killing you might open up a space to put someone else close to Macharius.’
I felt suddenly out of my depth. Even after all these years of following Macharius, it was odd to be talked about in this way, even though I could see the sense of some of what he was saying.
‘It might all just have been a random brawl, sir. Such things happen all the time.’
‘It might, Lemuel, but it is my job to look for unwelcome surprises concealed within the seemingly random.’
‘I don’t envy you that, sir.’
‘We all have our tasks to perform in the service of the Emperor,’ he said. ‘You have yours and I have mine. Try to keep yourself alive, Lemuel.’
I looked at him then and I wondered at the warning in his words. He actually seemed a little concerned. I dismissed it at the time, thinking I must be imagining things, but I am not so certain now. All of us in that small charmed circle surrounding Macharius had known each other a long time. We were part of each other’s lives in all the small intimate ways that long acquaintance implies. Drake was one of the higher ranked ones of the Imperium but he was used to me, as he was probably used to his favourite pieces of furniture. He might indeed be saddened for a few fractions of a second by my loss.
‘Is that all, sir?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Lemuel. You are dismissed.’ I wondered about that too. There was no punishment given. We were not restricted to the palace. We were not given any scutwork duties. Maybe in all the great events sweeping along behind us we had simply fallen through the cracks, but I doubted it. Drake was not a man to let anything do that. Neither was Macharius. I wondered if the lack of punishment was making a statement of some kind, not to us, but to General Crassus.
Fifteen
‘Leo! Leo Lemuel! How are you doing?’ The words were spoken in Belial Hive dialect, a language I had not expected to hear on this street on this world. Not spoken by anyone other than Anton, Ivan or myself.
I turned and saw a familiar face, or familiar enough. It belonged to Sergei Krimov, a man I had known once a long time ago, back when I had served with the Seventh Belial. Of course, he was not the same. Ordinary soldiers in the Imperial Guard get no access to juvenat. He looked more like Sergei Krimov’s father than the Sergei I remembered. His hair was thinner and greyer. His face was leaner. His skin was more lined and tanned. He had sergeant’s stripes on his shoulder.
‘Sergei Krimov, is that you?’ I asked in the tongue of Belial.
‘None other!’ He walked up to me and slapped me on the back. ‘I haven’t seen you since Karsk and the campaign against the Angel of Fire. You haven’t aged a day. Buy you a drink?’
‘Why not?’ I said. I was genuinely pleased to catch up with an old comrade, and to hear the old tongue spoken. It was a reminder of earlier, simpler days. Sergei grasped me by the arm and led me towards a basement bar. It was a civilian place and it was not crowded at this time of day. He ordered some drinks, slammed them down on the table in front of us, and bellowed a toast before downing his glass in one.
‘You still hanging around with those other two from your old neighbourhood?’ he asked. ‘Ivan and whatsisname, the idiot?’
‘Anton.’
‘Yeah, Anton. They still alive?’
I nodded and grinned. ‘Yes, they are.’
‘They’ve beaten the odds then. Who would have thought it thirty years ago in basic training? Who would have thought we would come this far, conquer so many worlds? Who would have thought any of us would live to see it?’
He was right. The odds against an ordinary Imperial Guardsman lasting so long in the service were great. Of course, neither of us was exactly in the position of an ordinary Guardsman. I was a bodyguard to Macharius. He was in a mechanised unit.
‘You still in Baneblades?’
‘Yes. Although I don’t know how we keep them moving. It’s getting harder and harder to get fuel and ammo and they are great hungry beasts. We seem to be short of everything these days.’
‘We’re a long way from the core and the industrial hives.’ I didn’t say anything about our failure to recapture Loki. I didn’t need to.
‘We’re certainly a long way from Belial.’ He raised his glass again, swigged it down and ordered another. I did the same. ‘Man, it’s been a long, hard road to get h
ere.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said.
‘You’ve done all right for yourself, bodyguard to the Lord High Commander himself. The whole regiment was pleased when you three were selected. It reflected well on all of us, we thought.’ There was something in his tone that suggested that he might have thought it at the time, but not now. I let it hang in the air. I wanted some news of the old regiment.
‘We fought against the orks on Kassari,’ he said. ‘And heretics on half a dozen words – Grommel, Mercator, Selenius, Vindicor, Mayama. Crushed them all. We brought a score of worlds into the Imperium. General Crassus led us to victory in every battle.’
‘You part of his command, Battlegroup Crassus?’
‘Have been since Kassari. He’s a great man. I know Macharius gets all the credit but Crassus leads us on the ground, and he’s never been beaten.’ He paused for a moment, looked long and hard at me. I knew he was seeing the green uniform, not a man from his old world. I took my cap and placed it on the table, unbuttoned my jacket and put it over the back of the chair and ordered more drinks.
‘I’ve always heard he was a great general,’ I said. ‘All of the field commanders are. They wouldn’t be where they are otherwise.’
‘That may be true, but Crassus is the best, and the most generous to his troops with plunder, promotions and bonuses.’
‘You’ve done well then,’ I said. He tapped the stripes on his shoulders and said, ‘I’ve got something squirrelled away for a rainy day. How about you?’
‘I live in a palace,’ I said. ‘I never saw that coming back on Belial.’
‘And you have access to juvenat treatments, unless I am much mistaken,’ he said. ‘Either that or you are uncommonly well preserved.’
‘A little of both, I think.’ I was starting to wonder at his tone. There was a bit of an edge to it now. Maybe he was one of those men who get aggressive when they are drunk. Maybe there was some bitterness in him I had not spotted. I did not feel terribly threatened.