Chapter 163 - Priest, Saint, Chess Piece
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They reached the square.
More people here than in the rear garden, but the atmosphere was something else entirely.
The survivors back in the garden wore their despair like a sickness, every pair of eyes a candle flame on the edge of guttering out. The people in this square were just as ragged, just as hollow-cheeked with hunger, but something moved among them. A strange, stubborn vitality.
Their spines were straighter. Their gazes sharper, more focused. As if an invisible pillar stood at each of their backs, holding them upright in the middle of all this ruin.
Because that pillar was standing on the raised platform at the center of the square.
A priest. His vestments had long since faded, the edges fraying to loose threads, but the Imperial Cult insignia on his chest was polished to a mirror shine.
He stood before a crude broadcasting rig, his voice pushed out through the amplifier and across the whole square, landing in the ears of every Imperial subject gathered below.
He praised the Emperor of Mankind. He praised Guilliman. He praised the primarchs who had walked back out of myth.
His voice was raw and hoarse, but every word had been forged in the fire of belief.
Kaelen recognized him.
"Fratre Mathieu. Lord Guilliman, your Militant-Apostolic."
"I know." Guilliman's voice gave nothing away, perfectly neutral, but Kaelen caught it, the faint tightening along the Lord of Ultramar's jaw. That small tell. Guilliman suppressing something he didn't want to show.
"He arrived before you, my lord." Guilliman's guide, a city defense general named Tavik, spoke up. "Pastor Mathieu came here to preach, to lift spirits. Look at their faces. These people have endured on this rotting planet for months. Anywhere else, they would have broken long ago. But they're still standing. Still praying. Still holding their guns. They are ecstatic."
Guilliman gave a slight nod and said nothing.
His gaze moved across the faces in the square, unreadable. Then he turned to Koken, the Custodian commander at his side, and gave the order in a few words.
"Detach two men to escort General Tavik out. His command node must stay open. No accidents."
Koken nodded. Two golden-armored Adeptus Custodes stepped silently from formation and guided the city defense general out of the square.
Their job was to keep the command chain running between the ground forces and the void fleet above.
Guilliman turned his gaze back to the priest on the platform. He was quiet for a moment.
Then he spoke to Kaelen.
"I have made many mistakes in my life." His voice was low, carrying a rare edge of self-mockery. "Appointing Mathieu as my Militant-Apostolic was one of them."
"Because he disobeys your orders and acts on his own judgment, my lord?" The corner of Kaelen's mouth twitched.
Guilliman's response was a short, displeased sound.
"He constantly acts in the Emperor of Mankind's name. Disobeying orders, fine, but he disrupts my plans. Every single time. The Emperor of Mankind guided me to do this, the Emperor of Mankind needs me to go there. The Emperor of Mankind, the Emperor of Mankind, the Emperor of Mankind..."
There was a grinding quality to the Lord of Ultramar's voice now.
First time in a long while he'd found his pathologically controlling father genuinely irritating.
"Is it mainly because Mathieu preaches your divinity, and the other primarchs'?"
Guilliman was quiet for a beat, then nodded.
"Sanguinius is enough. There's no need to turn it into a grand production." He paused, and something like genuine concern threaded into his tone.
"This zealot has already gathered a following. He used theocratic authority to take command of the Cadian 402nd Armored Regiment, and more people are joining him every day. An unconstrained armed force, coalescing on its own around bonds of religious power, Kaelen, you understand what that means. I worry about where it leads."
Kaelen didn't answer right away.
He looked out at the priest on the platform, the man preaching himself ragged. There was no disgust in his eyes. No contempt.
He didn't dislike Mathieu.
If anything, what he felt was something close to respectful pity.
Mathieu was a martyr by design. A piece the Emperor of Mankind had placed on the board long before any of them arrived.
Every step he took. Every word out of his mouth. All of it written into a script he'd never been shown.
And yet the man was still worth respecting. Among the bloated, corrupt bishops of the Ecclesiarchy, Mathieu was a rare thing, clear water in a foul river. He went to preach among the poor. He gave them his own clothes, his own food. He never treated one believer differently from another based on their rank or name.
He believed, down to the bone, that every Imperial subject, high or low, noble or base, was an equal servant of the Emperor of Mankind.
In this age, people like that were as rare as diamonds in a coal heap.
"Rest easy, my lord. He will die."
Kaelen said it the way you'd read off the weather.
Guilliman blinked, but didn't interrupt.
"He'll die by the Emperor of Mankind's design. Pastor Mathieu has his own duty. His own mission. Out of something like mercy, let him carry it through."
Kaelen turned his head. His gaze met Guilliman's.
"This priest will be the hinge that decides the Plague War."
"With respect, Lord Kaelen — I disagree." Felix's voice came from behind Guilliman.
This hero, born ten thousand years ago, had nothing but contempt for the Imperial Cult's current doctrine, the one that dressed the Emperor of Mankind in the robes of a god.
"The outcome of a war rests on overall strategic deployment. On the command genius of a primarch. On every combat unit working in concert. Not on the heroic acts of a single individual. Pinning victory or defeat on one person — no matter how devout — is a violation of the logic of war."
"From a strictly military standpoint, you're not wrong, hero," Kaelen said, and smiled. "But in this age, the favored of gods tend to accomplish things that logic doesn't account for."
"Do you believe the Emperor of Mankind is a god?" Felix pressed.
Kaelen shrugged.
"That question gets complicated fast. Broadly, in my eyes, he's a powerful human being who has grasped something vast. But he can ascend to godhood. Whether that's already happened is a matter of perspective."
He looked back toward the platform.
Mathieu had spread his arms wide, as if trying to gather every suffering soul in the square into an embrace.
And under that call, something surfaced on those numb, worn-out faces. A quality that had been absent for a long time. A faint, tentative light.
Kaelen spoke quietly.
"Hero, you have to admit, in the eyes of these people, the Emperor of Mankind is a god. And that belief is exactly what binds them together, what pulls their strength into a single point. Every god has His plans, His pieces on the board. That's how He reaches into mortal affairs. Is that not so?"
"That girl who saved Lord Guilliman, Keeliah, is a clear example."
At the girl's name, Guilliman closed his eyes. A pained expression moved across his face, there and gone.
This had happened during the Parmenio Campaign, before Kaelen and Horus had made it back to the Imperial Sanctum. The battle where Guilliman faced his fallen brother Mortarion for the first time. The girl who had saved him then.
A mortal, possessed by his father's will. She had saved Guilliman's life at the cost of her own.
The Saint of Tyros.
➤ Next: Mustering at Iax
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