The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,113

have.’

‘They’re taking those worlds, not to use as staging points, but to turn into the bars of our cage,’ said Kerapliades. ‘You see what those signals represent? They’ve done something there, used some device to shatter the warp conduits. Once they control the planets they’re making the ether go dark.’

Guilliman looked back up at the wheeling points of light. ‘Those are not the routes they need to get in, chancellor,’ he said. ‘They are the routes we need to get out. They are throttling us before we can even begin.’

I suddenly understood it. The daemonic attack – it had been to keep our attention here, to make us believe that Terra was the target, and that the enemy already had the power to assault our walls directly. But they didn’t, not yet. They still feared Guilliman, and now bent all their efforts on keeping him hemmed in, preventing the coming counter-stroke that still risked throwing their wider plans awry.

‘Then what can be done?’ I asked, looking from one to the other urgently. ‘What can be done?’

‘One world remains,’ said the primarch, his face grim. ‘While it holds out, we have a path to the open galaxy. You see it yourself, chancellor. That world is Vorlese. When it falls, we are trapped here. The crusade will be critically delayed, and a thousand other worlds will fall before we can overcome the barrier.’

‘Then we must launch! Launch everything!’ I cursed myself then for not doing more – the need had been there for days, but as ever we had been too slow, too cautious.

‘It is already too late,’ said Guilliman, looking at me carefully. ‘Vorlese cannot hold for long enough, even if we launched our ships this very moment. We know who assails it, and there are no defences there capable of resisting them. Unless, of course, you know different?’

Of course they knew. They knew about the Chelandion. They knew about everything I had done and were merely waiting for the confession.

‘They cannot be enough,’ I murmured, suddenly realising what Valerian had travelled into. ‘They cannot possibly hold.’

‘You would have earned death for your actions, chancellor, were the Lex still in force,’ said Guilliman, breaking into that long stride of his and beckoning for me to follow. ‘But it is not, and the Council itself is now dissolved. There are forces under my command that even the gods remain unaware of, and I am anxious to show what they can do. We depart within the hour. If you still hold my father to be divine, you might pray that your Custodians are as proficient as they themselves believe, for they are now the thread on which our fate hangs.’

Everything had already been planned. Everything was already in motion. If I had needed any further proof of the Lord Guilliman’s power, here it was, and Haemotalion had been right to fear his intentions. The crusade was already under way, and any attempt to frustrate it was now entirely pointless.

‘But, lord, why tell me these things at all?’ I asked, scampering to keep up.

He never broke stride. I don’t think I ever really saw him at rest from that point onwards, for his soul was a soul of fire, voracious and dynamic, and he knew the penalty that would be paid for inaction. I guessed then that even as the Lion’s Gate was under attack he had been planning this response, though I would later discover that he had been formulating the broad strokes of it for very much longer than that.

‘Our crusades have always required the services of mortals, chancellor,’ he said by way of an answer, offering me one of those flinty half-smiles. ‘I will need a remembrancer for this, just like the old days. Consider yourself fortunate – I choose you.’

Valerian

I had time to reflect on my decision during our travel within the warp. I drove myself hard, aiming to recover my full spectrum of physical movement and banish the last evidence of my injury, but even so there were still moments of unavoidable reflection.

I never doubted my choice. That is the surprising thing to me. I never doubted that I had done what I needed to. Everything on Terra prior to the Great Rift had been pushing me away from proximity to the Throne. I do not just mean my failure at the threshold, which was the most dramatic manifestation, but also the increasing distance I had felt from the Sanctum itself, from its laws and its history and its