‘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.
Chapter 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 here.’
‘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.