Fall of Macharius

Chapter Sixteen

It takes a lot of work to prepare a feast for a company of Space Wolves. The tables groaned under the weight of sides of beef, of whole sheep roasted on spits, of Lacedomean calix basted in their own blood and stuffed with steaks. Whole chickens sat on plates. Broached barrels of ale and tankards full of strong, fiery spirits sat beside every plate.

I looked out at the crowd of awed humans and mortal gods and I pledged I would not make the same mistake as last time. At the high table Ulrik Grimfang and his retinue sat with Macharius and all his generals. Cardinal Septimus was present too, smiling his too-satisfied smile, the servo-skulls still orbiting and seeming to take in everything with their dead, empty eyes. Across the chamber I saw Grimfang looking at me. His nostrils flared and he smiled, revealing massive fangs. He beckoned to me with one gauntleted hand and I could do little else but approach.

‘You do not seem to be drinking so fiercely this time as you once did,’ he said. It could have been taken as an insult by a man more suicidal than myself, but he was smiling in a way that was clearly meant to be friendly. It was hard to take the words in the spirit they were intended. Being smiled at by a Space Wolf is like being smiled at by a sabre-tooth.

‘I am older now and perhaps wiser,’ I said. He laughed. There was wild mirth in the sound that echoed through the room. It was a contagious sound, although from anyone else it would have sounded crazed. ‘I find my stomach cannot take strong drink as well as it once did.’

‘You did not dishonour yourself the last time,’ he said.

‘I thank you,’ I said. There seemed little else to say.

‘Logan Grimnar speaks well of you,’ the Great Wolf said. ‘You would do me honour by serving as my cupbearer.’

I looked over at Macharius. Much as I disliked the idea of refusing the Great Wolf anything, Macharius was my commander and it was him that I obeyed. He nodded almost imperceptibly.

I stood beside the Great Wolf and poured his drinks. It was a sign of favour, not a form of being demeaned, and I recognised it for what it was. Thus I came to be standing by the high table during the last exchange between Macharius and the Great Wolf.

‘We have come to bid you farewell, General Macharius,’ said Grimfang.

‘Farewell?’ Macharius frowned slightly. He was clearly calculating all the possible consequences of this declaration.

‘We depart for the Gothic Sector. There is an orkish invasion there and we must fight.’

‘There is fighting to be done here yet and glory to be gained,’ said Macharius. He raised a glass and toasted the Great Wolf. Grimfang responded in kind, then said, ‘It is as you say, but we have a duty to the Imperium and its defenceless people. Succour has been requested and we must grant it.’

I tried to imagine all that must be going through Macharius’s mind at that point. He had just been told that his crusade was of less importance than this new invasion. The fact that this might well have been the truth in no way diminished the scale of the blow. The support of many Chapters of Space Marines, most importantly the personal support of the Space Wolves, had lent him great prestige, had made it seem to many that his campaign had enjoyed support at the highest spiritual and martial level. Its abandonment could not help but undermine that impression. It made a statement that more important things were happening elsewhere, that the crusade was not the focal event in the galaxy.

If these thoughts ran through Macharius’s mind, and I am sure that they must have, he gave no sign of it and he knew better than to protest to Grimfang or attempt to change his mind. Not even Macharius’s powers of persuasion or his great charisma were up to that.

The drinking continued, songs were sung, tales of the great battles were retold, but a cloud had descended on the feast and did not lift for the entire evening.

The last song was sung, the last ale was drunk. With many protestations of friendship the Great Wolf and his retinue rose to make their departure, seemingly none the worse for wear from the vast amounts of ale and beef they had consumed.

The same could not be said for the mere mortals present. All of them, even Macharius, were showing signs of having consumed too much, to the extent that many of them seemed to have their thoughts written on their faces. Sober as I was, I took the opportunity to study them, knowing it would be a rare occasion indeed.

Macharius was all controlled charm. His words were not even slightly slurred and his movements had all their usual grace, but there was a narrowness around his eyes, and a grim twist at the corners of his lips that spoke of his anger to those who knew him well.

Drake’s face was a mask. His eyes were pits into which you could stare and lose yourself. He seemed unusually thoughtful, as if he were measuring and weighing the events of the evening in his mind, turning things over from every angle, looking for some fault or advantage.

Cardinal Septimus’s face was masked by a bland smile. Since his conversation with Macharius, he had been amiability himself, and he was quite as capable of interpreting the Space Wolves withdrawal of support as I was; more so. It all played towards his purposes. Indeed, at that moment, I asked myself whether the departure of the Space Wolves, the request for their aid, might not have had something to do with him. It certainly removed one of the great props of Macharius’s power and prestige. Who would have dared oppose him openly when it was quite clear he enjoyed the support of the Emperor’s Angels?

Things had just become a lot murkier.

I thought I detected a look of satisfaction on General Crassus’s toad face. Anything that weakened Macharius’s position must strengthen his. Just at that moment his mask slipped a little and I knew who the chief conspirator against Macharius must be. As luck would have it, he glanced around and caught me looking at him. Our eyes met for a moment and he seemed to be weighing me up, considering me, then he let his glance slide away. I was not fooled – he knew who I was and he would remember me.

Logan Grimnar rose from where he had been sitting, the last of the Space Wolves to depart. His small retinue remained watching him as he loped over to Macharius and extended his hand.

‘We have shed blood together, and fought beside each other. I owe you a debt of honour and it will be repaid.’ I thought then that he was merely being diplomatic, throwing a sop to the Lord High Commander to soften the departure of his Chapter, but events were to prove differently.

Suddenly Cardinal Septimus looked a little less smug and General Crassus considerably more wary. Macharius smiled and said, ‘I thank you, my friend. I will not forget this.’

He looked directly at Crassus and at the cardinal and said, ‘I will not forget any of this.’

After the feast we escorted Macharius to his chambers. Once he was through the doors he seemed to shrink in on himself, to become a smaller man. He looked tired and angry and somehow diminished. I could see how much of a strain the banquet had been on him. He walked over to a cabinet, opened it and poured himself a drink, then slumped down in his chair.

He looked up at me and said, ‘The Great Wolf did you more honour than he did me, Lemuel.’

I met his gaze and wondered how angry he was. There was a skull-like quality to his appearance, a gauntness I had not really noticed before, a tightness to the skin of his face. It came to me then that Macharius was very old, and he was finally showing his age, perhaps even dying. Even juvenat has its limits, after all.

‘I am sorry about that, sir,’ I said eventually. There did not seem to be much else that I could say. Macharius looked down at his regicide board, lifted a piece and toyed with it. ‘They think it’s over,’ he said, so softly that no one but me could have heard it.

‘Sir?’ I was not sure whether he wanted to be overheard, whether he was even talking to me.

‘I said they think it’s over, that I am finished, that they can simply replace me and that things will go on.’

‘I don’t think they can, sir,’ I said. They could, but it did not seem my place to say it.

‘The Space Marines are going because they think there is no longer glory to be won here. The vultures will see this as a sign to attack.’

I kept quiet. He was speaking to himself, as old people sometimes do, as I could recall them doing back in the hive cities of Belial in my youth. More than ever I found myself wondering about Macharius’s health, mental and otherwise.

‘I will not be replaced until I am ready,’ said Macharius. ‘My work is not yet done.’

Looking at him then I wondered if he would think his work was ever done. He had lived on the absolute peak of power for so long I do not think he could imagine living anywhere else. And yet perhaps he was close to realising that in the whole Imperium there was only one man who was irreplaceable and he was encased in the Golden Throne. He rose from the chair, prowled over to a cabinet, produced a map and smoothed it out on the surface of a table. I recognised it at once. It was a map of Loki. He studied it with the intensity of a man contemplating his soul’s salvation. I noticed that parts of it had been marked in blood-red ink. I suspected the map was part of the parcel of documents Drake had brought earlier.

After a moment, he seemed to realise that I was still there. ‘That will be all, Lemuel,’ he said.

I saluted and left him to himself.

Inquisitor Drake awaited me in my rooms. There was no need to ask how he had got there. There were no security systems he could not bypass and he was capable of ensuring that Ivan and Anton would not notice him. I was sure the pair were snoring away in their own chambers.

‘You have come from the Lord High Commander’s chamber,’ Drake said. It was not a question. He knew everything that went on within the palace.

‘Yes,’ I said. I stared at him, and considered demanding that either he told me what he wanted or he got out. The feast, the departure of the Space Wolves and my last glimpse of Macharius had left me depressed. In the end, though, it turned out I was not quite so depressed as to be tired of living, so I remained silent.

‘What did you think?’

‘He is not best pleased by the Space Wolves departure,’ I said. ‘He sees it as a blow to his prestige.’

‘Obviously, Lemuel. Obviously. I meant what did you think of him. How did he seem to you?’

‘Tired.’

‘Tired? Is that all?’

‘Is that not enough? For a man like Macharius to be tired is unthinkable. I have never seen him like this before. It’s…’

The word had left my mouth before I could recall it. Drake stood taller and more attentively. It was too much to hope that he had not noticed.

‘It’s what?’ he said. ‘You were going to say something.’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Do not lie to me, Sergeant Lemuel. We have known each other too long for that to work.’

I supposed it was true, but I found myself resenting this calm, authoritative man with his aura of absolute certainty, of knowing me better than I knew myself.

‘Speak!’ he said and I am sure there was some powerful compulsion laced into his words, backed by his strange psyker powers.

‘He seems old, as if the juvenat has ceased to work, as if he is wearing out.’

The words hung in the air for a long time. Neither of us said anything. Drake took a seat in one the chairs. He poured himself a drink from a hip flask and then much to my astonishment, he offered me one. I took it, wondering if perhaps it was poisoned. I dismissed the idea. If Drake wanted me dead, I would be dead.

‘The juvenat has ceased working,’ he said, at last.

‘No,’ I said. I simply did not want to believe it.

‘It stops working for everybody, eventually,’ Drake said. ‘Otherwise we would all live to be as old as the Emperor.’

He took a sip of his drink then raised it to the light and turned it with his long slender fingers. He looked at it from all angles and I began to wonder whether despite appearances the inquisitor might not be somewhat drunk. His powers enabled him to process as much alcohol as a Space Marine with as little effect if he wished it, but perhaps he did not wish it, this night of all nights.

‘I have seen the medical reports,’ Drake said. ‘His body is suffering from advanced metabolic deterioration. It does not really show yet, but the process is accelerating. It will affect him mentally eventually, if it has not already.’ There was a certainty in his manner that made it impossible to doubt him.

‘You are saying that he is dying, that all those halted years are going to catch up with him?’

Drake nodded. ‘In a way that will likely be most unpleasant.’

‘Why are you telling me?’

‘Because you are as close to him as anyone. You will notice it sooner or later, if you have not already.’

Once it had been pointed out, it was impossible not to remember the tiny slips, the small failures.

‘Do you really think he would have lost on Loki if he had been the same man as he was on Karsk?’ Drake asked.

‘Is this why the Imperium wants him replaced?’

Drake shook his head. ‘The Imperium does not want him replaced. People want him replaced, people with a great deal of power within the Imperium. And the people who want him replaced want him replaced so that they can have his power, prestige and position. Some of them want to be the next Macharius. Most of them simply want power. Macharius is just an obstacle in the way of their ambitions.’

‘He cannot be replaced,’ I said. ‘He is a great man. None greater.’

‘You know that. I know that. There are people who choose to believe otherwise. Worse, there are people who would disgrace him if they could, for they do not like to live in a world containing those greater than themselves. They would pull him down to their level if they could. He has outwitted them for a long time but he is slipping. Everyone does eventually.’

‘Even you, inquisitor?’

‘That remains to be seen,’ he said, ‘but yes, one day perhaps, even me.’

‘Once again I ask you why you are telling me this.’

‘Perhaps because I have to tell somebody, and you at least are trustworthy. Also, you are close to Macharius. If you notice anything, you will tell me.’

‘You are very certain of that.’

‘It is in Macharius’s best interests and it is in your best interests. These are dangerous times, for all of us.’

I wondered then at the pressure Drake must have felt himself to be under. He was a friend and long-time comrade of Macharius, one of the architects of the crusade, and yet he too was a servant of the Imperium and somewhere he too must have hidden masters with their own agenda.

‘You won’t let them replace him, will you?’ I don’t know to this day why I asked. Perhaps I simply sought reassurance.

‘Replace him, no. You were correct earlier. He is irreplaceable.’

He departed, leaving me with much to think about.