‘The next time we speak, I shall provide a time and coordinates for Archmagos Cawl and I to meet, by lithocast if not face to face. It has been twelve years since our last direct consultation.’

The machine was silent. The flapping mouths of the heads hung still.

‘The Cawl Inferior?’ said Guilliman. A machine coughed under the floor. The red light shone brighter, tinting the golden light of the mind circuits orange.

‘That may not be possible, my lord.’

‘Where exactly are you, Cawl? What are you doing?’

The servitor was silent. Cogitator datawheels chattered behind the walls of the chamber. The red light glowed brighter. The gold faded.

‘This unit does not possess that information.’

Guilliman stared at the servitors. Dead eyes in dead heads stared back, oblivious to his suspicions. Could they see him? Could the thing lie?

‘I have no more information to impart,’ said the Cawl Inferior. ‘Good day, my Lord Guilliman.’

The machine shut off. The glimmering light in the channels died. With one last spastic jerk, the heads went slack in their tanks. The doors slid shut over each armourglass compartment. Suddenly, the painful pressure of the machine was reduced back to its merely uncomfortable background level.

Guilliman breathed hard through his teeth. These consultations made him tense.

For all his usefulness and his desire to save mankind, Guilliman could foresee a time when Belisarius Cawl became a problem.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

The Triumph at Raukos

Upon the martial square of 108/Beta-Kalapus-9.2, the whole of the Indomitus Crusade was arrayed in full. They faced the August Victorium, the vast edifice, framed by gigantic statues, carved into the remodelled hills solely for this day.

A single cannon boomed. The bell on the highest tower began to toll one hundred and twelve times: one for each year of the Indomitus Crusade.

At this signal, a bizarre flock burst from the pillared upper gallery of the August Victorium. Servo-skulls, cyber-angels, elder prelates on grav-powered sermonisers and vat-grown gene-constructs flew out over the square. They emerged in a fog of incense, the banners they carried stirring the scented mist into curling vortices. A dozen different hymns, sung all at once and with varying degrees of loveliness, competed with shouted exhortations to worship. As this aerial flock dispersed to soar over the martial square, down the steps of the August Victorium floated, walked, crawled, rode and sang priests of every kind, accompanied by all their attendant devices. There were hundreds of them, from the richest to the poorest, from moderate cardinals to firebrand preachers. Between them, auto-preachers crabbed sideways on clanking legs, the mouldering brains of the martyrs within roaring out religious epithets through primitive augmitters. Behind the priests, unruly hordes of flagellants beat at themselves. Every sect of the Adeptus Ministorum with any pretension to power had members present at the Triumph of Raukos. They followed Roboute Guilliman like flies followed cattle, and no matter how often he swatted them away, they always came back.