It was noon by the time the marching ranks of the rest of Aurora Chapter, all in full, polished imperator armour, moved by. The massive cheering had not yet diminished. After the Space Marines came sixty thousand Thracian troops, thirty thousand from Gudrun, eight thousand from Messina, four thousand from Samater. Breastplates and lances glittered in the sun. Then the navy officers from Battlefleet Scaras in neat echelons. Then the White Consuls, glittering and terrifying.
Then the endless files of the Munitorium and the Administratum, followed by the slow-moving trains of the Astropathicus. A dull psychic discharge, like corposant, slithered and crackled around their carriages and their heads, and left a metallic taste in the air.
The titans of the Adeptus Mechanicus followed them. Four Warlords, blotting out the sun, eight grinding Warhounds, and a massive Super-Titan called Imperius Volcanus. It was as if significant sections of the hive itself had detached and begun walking. The vast crowds hushed as they thumped past; man-shaped mechanisms as tall as a steeple, taller yet in the case of Volcanus. Their massive legs rose and fell in perfect synchronisation. The ground shook. Unperturbed, six hundred tech-priests and magos of the Adeptus paraded casually between their feet.
The tank brigades of the Narmenians and the Scuterans followed the god-machines. Five thousand armour units, rolling forward under a haze of exhaust, barrels raised in salute. Tractors towed Earthshaker cannons behind them, three abreast, and then a seemingly endless flow of
Hydra batteries, traversing their multiple barrels from left to right, like sun-following flowers.
The Ecclesiarchy followed, led by Cardinal Rouchefor, who srode ahead of his two thousand hierarchs barefoot. Cardinal Palatine Anderucias awaited us all for the blessing at the monument.
From its muster point at the old Founding Fields, tire Inquisition fell in line behind the priesthood, six hundred strong.
We were the only part of the Triumph not to march in ordered ranks. We simply strode behind the Ecclesiarch in a sombre wedge. We were not uniform. All manner of men and women filled our ranks, all manner of appearances and aspects. Individuals walking, dressed in dark robes or leather capes, some with great entourages holding up the trains of gaudy robes, some on lifter thrones, some alone and dignified, some even hidden by personal void shields. Ravenor and I walked together in the press, behind the extravagant ensemble of Inquisitor Eudora.
Lord Orsini, the grandmaster, led us, his long purple vestments trained out behind him and supported by thirty servitors. At his side strode Lord Rorken of the Ordo Xenos, Lord Bezier of the Ordo Malleus and Lord Sakarof of the Ordo Hereticus, Orsini's triumvirate.
Sonic booms sounded over the hives as honour escorts of Thunder-hawks flashed down above us. Fireworks banged and fizzed, staining the sky with quick blooms of colour and light.
At our backs came the triumphal procession of the Warmaster himself. Honorius rode with Lord Commander Helican, standing in a howdah built upon the humped back of the largest and most venerable auro-chothere warbeast. Ten thousand men from their personal retinues marched together. Two hundred grunting, snuffling behemoths from the aurochothere cavalry. Eight hundred Conqueror tanks. Lifter bikes skimmed alongside their line. The frenzied crowd strewed thousands of flowers in their path.
Behind them all came the prisoners.
Like the honoured dead in the funereal Rhinos, the prisoners were an open show of Imperial heroism in general, and the Warmaster's heroism in particular. Honorius delighted in displaying their torment to the adoring populace. The sight of these great, potent creatures cowed and submissive made his own power manifest.
There were several hundred foot soldiers, chained together at the hands and feet, shambling along in two wretched lines. Veterans of the Thracian Guard marched around them, lashing out with force-poles and neural-whips to drive them on. The crowd booed and howled, and pelted the subjugated foe with bottles and rocks.
