‘The palace does not look after itself,’ Ivan said. ‘They still have duties to perform.’
‘Aye, and food to eat and wine to drink, while we’ve been out in the trenches killing heretics.’ Anton sounded bitter in a way I had never heard him before.
‘What’s got into you?’ I asked. Behind his head, through a great arched window, I could see a mirrored black starscraper. On its side pictoglyphs formed and faded, spelling out some unguessable message in a tongue long lost to mankind.
‘Nothing,’ said Anton. His lips were compressed tightly. His scar looked livid on his forehead. His eyes were narrowed at their corners.
‘You sound angry,’ I said, just to goad him.
‘I am not angry.’
‘Petulant, then.’
‘I am not petulant.’ Of course, denying it made him sound exactly that.
‘He’s just annoyed there was no victory parade,’ said Ivan. ‘There’s always been a victory parade before.’
‘I am not worried about any sodding parade,’ said Anton.
‘It’s the lack of cheering crowds then. You miss them.’
‘I don’t give a toss about crowds, cheering, booing or otherwise.’
‘Then why are you so annoyed?’
‘It’s them…’ Anton said. We paused in front of a mural depicting yet another of Macharius’s triumphs. In this one, as in so many others, he was accompanied by his most important generals, each head of one battlegroup of the crusade. They were all there: Sejanus, Tarka, Crassus, Arrian, Fabius, Lysander and Cyrus. All of them looked only marginally less a supreme commander than their great leader.
‘Them?’
‘The generals, the nobles, the politicians, the high muckety-mucks.’
‘What about them?’
‘Yeah, what about them?’ Ivan asked. ‘They’ve always been frakkers. Why have you picked today to notice it?’
‘They’re talking about replacing Macharius. You heard what Drake said… It’s treason.’
‘It would only be treason if they were plotting against the Imperium,’ I said.
‘They’re plotting against Macharius.’
It hung in the air. I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was listening. No one looked like it, but that meant nothing. In a palace like this half the servants were probably in the employ of someone or other, reporting back every word they heard.
‘Macharius is not the Imperium,’ I said. Was it my imagination or did one servant girl’s eyes widen slightly? I doubted that she could understand the dialect of Belial but you never know – if someone wanted to place an agent badly enough they might find someone who could.
‘What have all those other frakkers ever done for the Imperium?’ Anton asked.
‘Led its armies to victory.’
‘I am talking about the bureaucrats who stayed at home and counted their money while we fought and bled over half the galaxy.’
I said nothing. I looked at him disapprovingly, more for discussing this where we could be overheard than because I disagreed with what he was saying. The servant strolled off down the corridor. I told myself it must have been my imagination.
Chapter Fourteen
The Drunken Ratling was a new tavern pretending to be old. It was in a basement bunker deep beneath one of those old black, mirrored starscrapers. Its walls were covered in murals of Imperial Guardsmen winning great victories in the face of orks, eldar, and a bunch of equally strange-looking xenos the likes of which I had never seen before and which most likely came direct from the imagination of some artist.
The place was full of men in uniform, drinking grog and pivo and brown beer. Hundreds of uniformed soldiers sat at long tables and clutched steins and jabbered at each other in the tongues of their home world. Anton and Ivan and I were no different. We spoke in Belial Hive dialect even though we had less and less use for it down the years. Most of Macharius’s guard came from his home world or had been co-opted in from other regiments when they had distinguished themselves in the service of the crusade. Still, it was nice sometimes to speak the old tongue and tell the old jokes and reminisce about a world that none of us had seen for thirty years or were ever going to see again. Sometimes it was good to be reminded of our youth, when life had seemed so simple.
We grabbed a corner table and a serving girl brought us the local beer, a very dark brew that fizzed slightly on the tongue as if there were some strange chemical in it or the water it was brewed from. I raised my glass and spoke a toast to the cog manufactorums of Belial and all those who laboured in them, and Anton and Ivan echoed it. We slopped a small libation onto the table in memory of all those who had fallen beside us on Loki. I don’t know where we had picked that habit up, but it seemed to take on more and more meaning as the years passed. We had seen a lot of faces pass and a lot of comrades fall and it seemed appropriate somehow to mark their passing even in such a small way.
I stared through the clouds of lho-stick fug and soma fumes. All around me were soldiers who seemed more subdued than normal, and I noticed that many of them were slipping furtive glances in our direction. One or two of them were even pointing at us and sniggering. I did not think too much of it at the time. In any large drunken gathering there’re always going to be a few who behave like idiots.
‘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.