The deception of the morning is over and as the day climbs high they discuss high treason. Thiel voices things a sane mind should not consider. Roboute does not chastise him.
They have been dissecting the entire battle, from the earliest moments, to the very last. They began with the Campanile, months ago, and have just now reached the final stand at the governor's palace. Would that Ventanus made it offworld – their picture of that conflict is muddy and missing details. They piece it back together as best they can, cross-referencing with other Astartes, with Army, with magi.
On some days Gage joins them, or Erriod Paston, or other captains. Thiel is the lowest rank by far, in every meeting, but he never seems uncomfortable. Paston is Roboute's reference for entrenchment and fortification. In a way, he is a surrogate Dorn. If Rogal were here –
His son's secondment to that honorable Legion is a boon Roboute will not overlook.
Today, however, it is only Thiel, and together they pick apart the positions Ventanus, Selaton, Serotid and Sparzi took up around the governor's palace. A broad table, taken from a rating cafeteria, is their map. Even the Primarch's chambers had not escaped the fighting that had swept the flagship and much of his furniture is splinters. The ephemeral spoor of the invading xenoforms did not long last the death of the creatures and what remained of their erstwhile brothers was dumped into searing fusion fires for eradication. No more than deserved, but less than Roboute might have wished for as retribution.
Charts and datalooms clutter the edges of the table, but they use proxies to represent units and terrain. Thiel takes command of the Word Bearer forces, allegedly under one Maloq Kartho. The measure of this Word Bearer is decades out of date, related by word-of-mouth and recalled campaign tales. None of it is useful now, clearly. Kartho has superheavy assets, many regiments of fanatics and, uncomfortably, several of what they still carefully pronounce as 'daemons'. Roboute claims the position of Ventanus and the handfuls of Army regulars with field pieces.
They are not just discussing Calth or dissecting it – Roboute is winning it.
He is recreating Calth from the first moment to the last and he is winning every engagement.
Thiel punishes him twice. First, when he slaughters his own fanatics at the bridge with an artillery barrage and then a fusillade from Word Bearer berserkers. Then, while Roboute is frowning and trying to pick apart the tactical purpose of halving one's own command, Thiel murders Ventanus and the rest of the command cadre with a daemon summoned from the blood sacrifice.
Roboute is irritated and counters that this function is entirely conjecture. Thiel shrugs and in that the point is well made.
The second time is when Roboute-as-Ventanus is leading a counterpunch, savaging the left flank of Kartho's forces and claiming a baneblade kill. Thiel sends an elite troop of Word Bearers into the palace and slaughters Magos Tawren and thus the last hope for Calth. He entirely ignores Ventanus' strike force and allows the rest of Kartho's army to be comprehensively taken apart. Ventanus claims the field, but the planet is lost. A strategic trade.
'They are still Space Marines,' Thiel observes about the Word Bearers. 'Even if they want to pretend otherwise.'
Another point well made.
After midday Thiel makes his respectful departure. He has his own tasks – forming and training a demicompany of Ultramarines from across company and discipline, all who suit Thiel's temperament. Thiel is recruiting each individually, in person. It is exacting and time consuming work. He is going to need a new rank, one of these days. Guilliman puts it from his mind.
In the next arc of the day, as the sun now descends the far side of the sky, the Master of Macragge tackles the problem of the galaxy. Specifically – that this galaxy is not the galaxy. The complications that spin out from that are incalculable. In this place they are becalmed – the warp is calm, freakishly calm, according to the Navigators who survived the insanity Veridia unleashed, but there are no landmarks. There is no sense, no logic, nothing recognizable.
Without charts or maps, without the Astronomican, to enter the immaterium would be reckless at best, suicidal at worst. There are issues now that stretch far beyond the world he has claimed and the men and warships he commands.
To this he turns his mind, formulating plans and sketching out intentions.
They all point back to one result: return.
He will not imagine any other possibility.
When the sun slips past the far horizon and the stars once more are the only light that touches Macragge's Honour he leaves his chambers. His own flag is still recovering. The wounds of Calth, both internal and external, run deep. It will be years if not decades until the ship begins to resemble her former splendor. Before the taint is truly gone.
Now he needs to be seen. This is his Legion hour. He attends his captains, he meets with apothecaries and techmarines, he even trains from time to time. He has three thousand seven hundred and eighty two Ultramarines with him under new stars. There are twelve hundred aboard Macragge's Honour. The rest are scattered across Samothrace, Fourth Honor, and Mantallikes with squads assigned to the rest of the warships for security.
Three thousand, seven hundred and eighty two. Others survived Calth, he knows. Others fled into the warp as well, all escaping before he finally ordered the group under his direct command to disengage. Yet more lived on in the arcologies, still led, no doubt, by Remus.
And yet.
Three thousand, seven hundred and eighty two, out of close to two hundred thousand.
Roboute Guilliman knows the name of every single son who has escaped with him.
When the time he has allotted for his own Legion is expended, he returns to the audience chamber. It is the earliest hours of morning when night still makes argument of its supremacy. He receives petitioners.