It was curious to Calgar that Guilliman should allow himself to be accompanied by a priest. The primarch had kept his first militant-apostolic as distant from himself as he could. As much as he disapproved of it, the primarch had comprehended the power of the Adeptus Ministorum soon after he awoke, and the office of militant-apostolic was a recognition of their influence, but the primarch’s acceptance had gone no further than that. He had mistrusted the Ecclesiarchy from the beginning. So Militant-Apostolic Mathieu’s presence was a surprise. Maybe the primarch had come to accept the Imperium’s priests a little more while he had been crusading. A century was a long time.

‘Is the hall prepared?’ asked Guilliman.

‘It is, my lord. We await your council. We have refreshments, if you would prefer to eat first?’

‘Let us be about the meeting. Feasting must wait. I cannot afford to be away from the fleet long.’

More engines screamed in the storm. All around the plaza, Thunderhawks descended, and out came all of Guilliman’s lords of war.

‘The others are here,’ said the primarch. ‘We are ready. Let us begin.’

The Strategia Ultima was insufficiently sized to hold all the delegates, and so the edification had been arranged in the Hall of Maxellus, named for the twenty-first Chapter Master of the Ultramarines. The cold, damp smell of the outdoors came steaming off the assembled host of politicians and warriors. Huge heating coils hanging from arches did their best to warm the company, but succeeded mainly in raising an interior fog that ran wet on the stonework. A tall statue of Maxellus at the end of the hall looked on sternly, if benignly. He had been renowned for his wisdom. Emperor alone knew what he would have made of Guilliman’s return, and the changes that had befallen the Imperium since his day. Maxellus had lived in a time roughly halfway between Guilliman’s death and rebirth. Both the 32nd and 41st millennia would be unrecognisable to him.

Guilliman was afforded the place of honour. A massive bronze chair had been taken from the museum vaults deep under the Fortress of Hera and brought forth for his use. Though Calgar had seen the primarch in stasis and was thus aware of how physically large he was, the primarch’s artefacts had always seemed bigger somehow than the being they were made for, as if sized for a titan from a greater age. They were sacred relics all, revered by successive generations of Ultramarines. The Ultramarines did not pray to their primarch, nor venerate him in an overtly religious way. They did not believe either the Emperor or His son divine, but an aura of holiness clung to his effects nonetheless, and it had been the habit of many Chapter Masters to meditate in the museum vaults, looking for inspiration from the things that had known the touch of their gene-sire.