‘I would not say that too loudly if I were you,’ I said.
‘Why not? It’s true.’
He was right. The Death Spectres had departed. No one knew why or where. Or if they did they were not telling us. They had been summoned elsewhere or else were being dispatched.
‘For one, if you say it too loud, they’ll never adopt you into their Chapter. For another, a commissar might hear you and decide to put you on bullet-stopping duty.’
‘I don’t see one here,’ said Anton. ‘You planning on reporting me?’
‘The only thing I will report is your stupidity. You seem to be scaling new heights of it at the moment.’
Ivan whistled ironically to show what he thought about our bickering. The New Boy rushed into the room and said, ‘Macharius is here!’
‘In the building?’ Anton asked.
‘In Irongrad. He was flown in from the battle front. He’s at the Hospice of Saint Oberon.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Word just came in to Command. I heard one of the company scribes talking as he was on his way to give the report to the captain.’
‘You sure?’ Anton asked.
‘If you don’t believe me, go ask him yourself. Where is the hospice anyway? Isn’t that where the girls are?’
‘Yeah, it’s down by the cathedral, near the hive core-zone,’ Anton said. He picked up his lasgun. ‘I’m going down there.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘In case any of those Angel worshippers show up and...’ He looked embarrassed now.
‘And?’ I said, not willing to let him off the hook.
‘And so I can pray for him.’
‘You can do that just as well here,’ I said.
‘I’d feel better doing it there.’
Ivan stood up. ‘I’ll go with you.’
‘Me too,’ said the New Boy.
‘What about you, Leo? You coming?’ Anton asked. I considered it for a moment. After all, what difference would my presence down by the hospice make? I felt all three of them staring at me. There was something accusing in their gaze.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
Apparently we were not the only people with the idea. The square outside the Hospice of St Oberon was full of off-duty Guardsmen. There were thousands of them. We looked like an army about to lay siege to the place. Soldiers stood around and smoked and ate street food and talked in subdued voices. You would have thought we were all in the sick room of a dying relative from the expressions on everyone’s faces.
The hospice itself was a massive building made from an orange local stone. It looked more like a fortress than a hospital. It was twenty storeys high, low compared to the surrounding hab-blocks but massive all the same. It felt enormously solid. It seemed to have been designed to resist a siege or withstand a direct hit from heavy artillery.
There were Leman Russ tanks drawn up all around it and I could make out ratling snipers on the balconies and in among the metal angels that clutched the thick walls. It seemed that no chances were being taken with security. Soldiers on guard checked everyone who went into the building. The girls had not been exaggerating. It was a famous place apparently, with the best chirurgeons on the planet.
For once there were more than the statues of the Angel of Fire to look at. The entrance was a massive arch. On one side was the inevitable flame-winged angel ten times the height of a man. On the other side was a massive muscular warrior who looked more like a master-sergeant than a saint. In one hand he held a bolt pistol, in the other he held a blazing torch. His foot was on the neck of an ork. Five ork heads hung from his belt. He gazed on the Angel with a face rapt in worshipful contemplation. I was guessing this was the Blessed Oberon of local legend.
Looking around I saw many of the soldiers came from the same regiments. They were all part of the old Guard who had followed Macharius right from the beginning. They wore green uniforms with gold trim and their helmets were an odd shape, an odd, ancient-looking shape more suited to a tribe from a feral world. They had nose and cheek guards but left the lower half of the face visible at the front while sweeping all the way down the neck at the back. Many of them wore the lion’s head insignia of Macharius’s family on their gear.
There were soldiers of the Grey Legions of Asterion all in silver and grey, with their metal collars on their neck symbolising servitude to the Emperor. There were short solid men from Trask in the red and black of the Ninth Hussars. Some of them had brought their horses. They had just come from crowd control duty in the Cathedral Square. There were ogryns and ratlings and one or two commissars. I don’t know whether they were there out of respect for Macharius or to keep an eye on the rest of us. I am guessing it was the former but you never know.
There were moments when all conversation seemed to stop and everyone looked towards the great arched doorway. It was not silent. You could still hear the industrial noise of the hive city, the roar of the gas-jet flames, the wheezing bellow’s breath of the air-circulation systems, the distant rumble of the elevated railroads. It was odd and awe-inspiring to see so many quiet men with rapt faces, lost in thought, and you’ve got to remember that many of these were not the sort of men given over to brainwork. I think we were all wondering about Macharius, and his fate in an odd way was a mirror image of our own.
It was not difficult for us to empathise with him. Every soldier in a Guard regiment dwells on wounds and death at some point. Many of us have taken a hit and all of us have known someone who has. All of us dread that wound that will cripple us, leave us limbless or blinded. All of us fear it as much as death. Many of us have waited for comrades to die of their wounds. In that moment I think everyone present saw in Macharius a reflection of all the wounded brothers, friends and comrades we had lost, and all of us were waiting to see if we had lost another.
We waited for hours, but no word came. In the end we departed, summoned back to duty, still not knowing how things went with the Lord High Commander.
Our temporary captain of our temporary company summoned us into his august presence the next morning. All of us wondered what was going on. We could not think of anything we had done to earn his wrath but, as ever, the fact that we could not conjure up anything did not mean there were not reasons. It’s a rule in the Guard that they can always find a motive for punishment if they want.
The captain did not look annoyed when we entered his chamber. It was a large room that had once been some sort of scriptorium by the look of it. Dozens of desks lined the walls and dozens of clerks made notes in great ledgers still. This time they were probably totting up the ammunition we had used rather than the number of cogwheels shipped.
The captain was sitting on a great padded leather chair while his batman shaved his cheeks with a cut-throat razor. The usual cabal of junior officers preened themselves around him, admiring their reflections in the array of portable mirrors the batman had set up. Some of them had more gold on their epaulettes than I would get if I looted a bank vault.
‘Ah there you are, lads!’ he murmured as if delighted to see us. His voice was very quiet for an officer and you had to strain to hear him. I suspect that was the effect he desired. It made him stand out in an army where those in charge could be reliably expected to boom, bellow and shout. We stood at attention and waited for him to clarify the situation. The batman towelled his face and the captain ran his hand over his tanned cheeks to check for any remaining stubble. A small tight smile told us he had not found any. He stroked his well-clipped moustache for a moment as if encouraging it to speak.