‘This is all to the good.’ He paused and smiled and as he had expected the whole army laughed at the joke, feeble as it was. Then his expression was grim again. ‘I am serious. It is all to the good. While we are doing this, the second part of our force will be assaulting Hive Irongrad from the south, along the easy route, the way they expect us to come. They will not expect a massive armoured assault from the north-west, and we shall hit them where we know the defences are weakest. We will have the pyrite refineries and the weapon factorums. We shall bring millions of lost souls into the Emperor’s Light.’
He paused again, to give what he had said time to sink in. We knew now where we were going, a hive city. He had even told us why.
If you have never had any experience of being a soldier in the Imperial Guard, you will probably not realise how unusual it was for a ranking general like Macharius to say things like this to an assembled army. He was telling us the plan – personally. He was letting us know that there was one and that it was a good one, that he and his officers knew what they were doing, and that he personally was taking the time to communicate the details to you so that you understood your place in it, and you shared his faith in its efficacy.
He had the trick of pitching his voice and casting his eye over the crowd in such a way that you felt he was talking directly to you. You felt as though you mattered. As if you had a central role to play in this great scheme. Everyone present was as important as Macharius himself.
He spoke on, outlining the plan in broad strokes and making it clear where each major battlegroup was to move and strike. By the end of it, every man present must have felt as if they had as clear an idea of what was going to happen as Macharius himself and all of them shared his certainty of success.
When he vaulted down from the side of the Baneblade, you could probably have heard the cheers in Irongrad, hundreds of leagues away.
That was my first exposure to the legendary charisma of Macharius. It was not to be my last.
That evening we sat around the table in the galley again. We did not play cards.
‘So that was Macharius,’ Ivan said. A trickle of drool puddled in the rusty corner of his metal jaw. He took a swig of the coolant fluid. ‘Impressive.’
‘Yes, he was,’ said Anton. For once he looked thoughtful, and he sounded impressed.
‘I am surprised he never mentioned making you a Space Marine,’ said Ivan.
‘Don’t be a dick,’ Anton said. There was something in his voice that stopped the smart reply short in all our mouths. We had never seen him this way before. He was like a zealot whose faith has been called into question. It took a moment for it to sink in, exactly how impressed Anton was with the Lord High Commander. He looked like one of the newly converted in the Holy Temple meetings the preachers used to give back on Belial.
Anton grinned, showing his missing teeth, and the moment passed. ‘You should not make jokes about the man. He is going to lead us to the greatest victory in Imperial history.’
Normally we would have fell to mocking him but not this time. Everyone in the galley had listened to Macharius. Everyone knew he was something special. He would have to be, to make someone like Anton speak with the conviction and vision of a prophet.
‘Let’s play cards,’ Ivan said. None of us were in the mood. All of us were filled with visions of victory, of what we were going to achieve. I believe if anyone had suggested prayer, we would have gone down on our knees on the spot.
‘I hear the speech was recorded on vision crystal and is being sent out to every unit in the army,’ Oily said. ‘That’s what all that Holy Mechanical Paraphernalia was for. Those words will be on record somewhere for as long as the Imperium endures.’
‘Aye, but we were there,’ Anton said. ‘We saw it for real.’
It was the first time I ever heard a veteran of Macharius’s armies speak in that tone you would hear afterwards, ever and anon, across the stars, in that mixture of pride and awe. We were there. We stood in his shadow. We were part of his legend.
It’s the truth too.
Exhibit 107D-21H Abstract of Report VII – XII – MIVI
To: High Inquisitor Jeremiah Toll, Sanctum Ultimus, Dalton’s Spire.
Source: Drake, Hyronimus, High Inquisitor attached to the Grand Army of Reconquest.
Document under seal. Evidence of duplicity on the part of former High Inquisitor Drake. Cross-reference to decrypted personal journals. See Exhibit 107D-45G.
Walk in the Emperor’s Light.
I watched Macharius speak to the troops yesterday, his words recorded for posterity and to be broadcast to every soldier in this great army. To describe the man as impressive is an understatement. He is utterly certain in his faith and utterly convincing in his manner and he communicated all that he sought as vividly and clearly as my old preceptors in the training school on Telos communicated basic theology.
I am convinced that the Council has made the correct decision placing this man in command of our Great Crusade. He seems worthy of the trust placed in him and I say this as one trained to judge all men with the greatest of scepticism and the most extreme wariness. It is possible, but only possible, that he is the prophesied one, whom we have so long awaited. There are many milestones to pass on that particular road before the truth will make itself known.
My agents within the Grand Army assure me that morale is at the highest it has ever been and that the troops are full of righteous zeal to perform the Emperor’s Will. Even discounting the natural tendency of such agents to exaggerate when reporting to a high inquisitor, the tone of their reports is very encouraging.
Macharius seems to have decided to trust me, at least in so far as he treats me amiably and explains his plans with the same forthrightness as he would explain them to any of his troops. I am allowed to attend all the staff meetings and there are no signs that anything is concealed. After so many decades of back-corridor intrigues I find this refreshing. It seems that Macharius is sincere in his attempt to forge a new army here and bury old rivalries among his commanders. It looks like this really is something new under the sun.
I digress. The plan for the reclamation of the Karsk system is under way. The army is ready to drive towards Irongrad arrayed in tight formation. Every company of troops has its own vehicles. All of them are in the highest state of maintenance and readiness. Progress will be swift. The main bulk of the battlegroup assaults Irongrad from the south. This force will sweep in out of the north towards the more lightly guarded parts of the great fortress city. All is to be done in accordance with Macharius’s doctrine of attacking with the greatest of speed and the maximum of force at the enemy’s weakest point. There are feints within feints.
Victory will be ours. It is what we will find once it is achieved that causes me disquiet. I have studied preliminary reports from our advance agents and negotiators and there is much here to recommend the attention of the Inquisition. What I have heard about the Cult of the Angel of Fire causes me some concern. It follows a pattern all too familiar to me from my early career. There are reports of human sacrifice of a most horrific sort. Such things often go hand in claw with the worship of terrible things.
Still we shall deal with such horrors when and if we encounter them. Sufficient unto tomorrow the problems of tomorrow.