Sign In
Create Account
Calliphone threw up her hand and looked away. 'What happened to the man I knew who wished for no more war? The boy who drew such wonderful things?'
'Nobody wanted them,' he said. 'The Emperor uses me for the most thankless tasks. My men are thrown against the worst of horrors, given the most gruelling roles. We are divided, our talents ignored, our might reduced to splitting rock. My father ignores me. My men go unsung. Our triumphs are unremembered. My brothers mock me as my men bleed. Nobody cares.'
'Is that so?' she said. 'Let me present a different hypothesis to you, brother. Use that fine mind of yours to judge its worth. Here is my version of the story - the Emperor of all mankind came here and found a son whom he valued. He saw an indomitable will, with unshakeable determination. He recognized that you would not give up, that you would rise to best any difficulty, that the tedious to you is as necessary a challenge to overcome as the glorious, and neither are to be shirked. Seeing these qualities in you, your father set you difficult tasks, not because he saw no value in you, but the exact opposite - he can trust no one else to get them done.'
'That is not true,' said Perturabo, though the acid of uncertainty began to eat at him. 'He underestimates me. They all do.'
Calliphone went on. 'For a long time, I thought you a fool to follow the Emperor. After all, he is a tyrant like all the rest. Look what he has done to you, I thought. He has brutalised you, and your wars have brutalised your home. But the truth is, brother, I have followed your campaigns carefully, and I noticed a pattern that disturbed and then alarmed me. Always you do things the most difficult way, and in the most painful manner. You cultivate a martyr's complex, lurching from man to man, holding out your bleeding wrists so they might see how you hurt yourself. You brood in the shadows when all you want to do is scream 'Look at me!' You are too arrogant to win people over through effort. You expect people to notice you there in the half-darkness, and point and shout out 'There! There is the great Perturabo! See how he labours without complaint!' [...]
'You came to this court as a precocious child. Your abilities were so prodigious that nobody stopped to look at what you were becoming.' [...] 'Perturabo, this will anger you, but you never truly grew into a man.'
'I am not a man,' he said. 'I am far more.'
'In those words is the poison that spoils your potential. It is not the Emperor who has driven this world into rebellion. It is not he who has held it back. It is you and your woeful egotism. Let me tell you, my brother, you who affects to despise love so much yet must certainly crave it over all other things, you are the biggest fool I have ever met.'
-Guy Haley, Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia
Back to top
