The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,35
I suppose, but I do know things. I can see how things are going. And I have a duty, when the call comes, to do what I can to aid the workings of the Council.’ I still felt nauseous, and had to fight the urge to vomit. ‘I’ve been trying to speak to you for weeks. All my other avenues are exhausted. This was the only thing I had left, and it had to be dared.’
He never made a move. After seeing just how astonishingly powerful he could be when in motion, watching him remain perfectly static was intimidating in itself.
‘I asked your shield-captain for five minutes,’ I went on, doing what I could to look less than ridiculous. ‘The request remains in place.’
He waited a long time. I was clammy with sweat by then, and feeling dizzy, and expected at any moment for the spear to come plunging into my neck. I wouldn’t have even felt it, I imagine. I’d have never seen it coming.
I felt my knees begin to give out. The last twitches and pops of the dying servitors were the only sounds in that place then, save for the faint grind of the power armour before me.
I began to make my preparations. I had never been devout, but there were certain prayers one should recite at the hour of passing, and I still remembered some of the words.
‘Come with me, then,’ he said.
He turned on his heel, and stalked back through the bodies. Mouthing a whispered thanks to whichever saint was watching over me that day, I pulled my robes about me and hurried to follow.
Let me tell you what I knew of Trajann Valoris.
The second of those use-names was, I think, an honorific earned in battle, a prestige title that had long since passed out of use by the rest of the Imperium. Of course, he would have had a thousand other names too, all inscribed within that carcass of auramite, but it was standard protocol to refer to him as Valoris on the rare occasions when any of his appellations were used directly.
While the two tribunes of the Adeptus Custodes were generally occupied with the many ritual purposes of the order, the Captain-General had no set remit, but governed the forces under his command with complete freedom. To the extent that if the Ten Thousand had dealings with any part of the Adeptus Terra, they were carried out through him. The High Lords might seek to gain an audience, as might other great warriors or the mightiest of our inquisitor lords, but only those of equivalent seniority.
And that was it. There were no records in the Imperial databanks on his martial conquests or his ascent into the order. I didn’t know what his name had been before he was taken into the Sanctum Imperialis, or where he had been born, or when. It might have been a hundred years ago, or it might have been five thousand.
For as long as I had been alive, though, his name had been spoken of with nothing short of reverence. Even the High Lords might be mocked, when in wine or in anger, but to do so with the Captain-General was simply beyond imagination. In the Age of Wonder, it was said that the Emperor had employed a regent – a powerful figure who set in train the vast bureaucracy that would one day become the Administratum – and to speak ill of the Emperor’s regent was a breath away from speaking ill of the Emperor. So it was with Valoris. While not officially numbered among the High Lords himself, there was little doubt that he was the closest thing we still possessed to the Emperor’s own representative.
And so, even when the fear of imminent death had subsided a little, I remained daunted by this figure. I was not generally swayed by reputations, for I had seen how often they were false masks hiding small minds, but this one was quite literally a breed apart.
He led me deeper into the Palace, and soon we were down in the crypts below one of the great battle-chapels commemorating the first Ullanor triumph. By the time he stopped walking, it felt as if we had descended into the heart of the planet. The stone around us was cold and cracked with age, and the only light came from the glow of his helm-lenses and the residual aura of his magnificent armour.