‘Don’t bother. It’s getting dark and I feel a bit dizzy.’ He stopped for a moment. ‘At least I got to see the Space Wolves fight again,’ he said. ‘How many hivers from Belial can say that?’ He sounded proud and pleased and his eyes were wide open.
‘Shut up and I’ll get you down to Drake,’ I said but I knew it was too late. His skin was cold and his breathing had stopped and I knew that the idiot boy had contradicted me for the last time. I piled some rocks up over him and stuck his sniper rifle in the cairn to mark the spot.
It took me some time and then I made my way back to Macharius and waited for instructions. There did not seem to be much else to do.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
With a mighty rumble of engines the first of the Leman Russ roared over the ridge and slammed down into the enemy position. It was at that moment they were most vulnerable, when their underbellies were temporarily exposed by the climb. That’s when the enemy should have hit them with every anti-tank weapon they had. But the time for that had passed. The Space Wolves had descended from the assault guns they had captured and were ripping through the enemy lines. Macharius’s small force kept up what fire they could in support while the Thunderhawks swooped overhead like great birds of prey, turning their guns on the enemy positions from above, slaughtering ground targets by the score, constantly in motion to stop them from becoming easy targets.
Once our armour arrived the battle was over. The terrified and distracted enemy infantry had their hands full trying to cope with the constant strike and withdrawal of the Space Wolves. They did not think to defend themselves against this new enemy until it was too late.
By then, the Space Wolves all seemed to have somehow moved out of the killing ground. They were fighting their way towards the entrance that Ivan had partially sealed earlier, moving forward squad by squad, giving each other supporting fire, striking with a precision and assurance no mortal soldier could match.
Macharius moved into position nearby and surveyed the battlefield through his magnoculars, picking out points of weakness, giving directions to the tank commanders, acting as a spotter even as he read the tactical situation. He stood tall and confident and radiated power and assurance. It was as if he fed from being on the battlefield, a god of war drinking mead distilled from blood and terror. In some ways he reminded me of the Space Wolves, with his more than human ferocity and energy.
‘It is done,’ he said. And at that moment, as if he had commanded it, there was silence. I looked down on the field and saw that he was right. Every heretic was dead or fled. We were in command of the entrance to the hive. He had achieved his victory.
We walked up to the hive entrance. The Space Wolves had settled into easy possession of it, standing or sitting in small groups amid the rubble and the corpses. They seemed as much at their ease as they ever were.
‘Well met,’ said Macharius. Grimnar rose from among his companions. He walked over to Macharius and loomed over him. He was one of the few men I had ever seen who could make the Lord High Commander seem small.
‘Perhaps not,’ Grimnar said.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Macharius.
‘I do not like the way this place smells.’ I doubt anyone else would have dared to say something like that to Macharius but Grimnar not only did so, but he also made it sound serious. And, truth be told, we all took him seriously. His instincts had been proven correct too many times in the past.
‘What don’t you like?’ Macharius asked.
‘There is the stink of old Darkness here, of ancient enemies, of the foes of the Allfather.’ Something told me that by that he did not simply mean heretics. He pointed to the fast-decomposing corpses of our former enemies. I remembered all too clearly the way such bodies had come back to a hideous unlife. Perhaps I should have wondered why it had not happened here yet. ‘These ones have been twisted,’ the Space Wolf said. ‘There is something unclean about them.’
He gestured at the hive with one huge armoured hand. ‘There is something unclean about this whole place.’
Macharius turned to Drake. ‘We must find Richter,’ he said, ‘he must face the Emperor’s justice.’
I felt sure Macharius was more concerned with the traitor escaping his justice than the Emperor’s, but it did not seem my place to say it.
Drake nodded. ‘We must go below,’ he said.
‘It will take some time to clear the way,’ Macharius replied. He turned to us and said, ‘Get some rest.’
‘We have only just arrived,’ said Grimnar. He looked up at the turrets higher on the hillside. They had continued to fire down into the killing zones. ‘I think, though, I can find something for my men to do while you recuperate from your labours.’
He turned on his heel and marched away, bellowing orders to his fellow warriors. I stood there, feeling numb. For the moment the fighting was over and I had some time to think.
It was cold. Ice had formed in the shadows of the rubble. Snowflakes were crystallising in the air. A vast cloud still hovered overhead and the dim greenish lights of the hive flickered on emergency power. A drumbeat of thought sounded in my mind. I had not seen Ivan since I drove the Hydra through the heretics. No one else seemed to have seen him either. It looked like he was another casualty.
I refused to accept it. The three of us had not gone thirty years in the Imperial Guard together just so I could lose them both in one day – it just did not seem possible. The pair of them had always been indestructible, emerging from every deranged adventure with a collection of scars and stories. I told myself to be realistic, that I had seen enough death to know that it came to everyone and often at random. Stalk around battlefields long enough and your number will come up. You’ll find yourself in someone’s sights.
I needed to find out what had happened to Ivan. I could not rest till I had done so. I got up and tried to retrace my path away from the brewed-up enemy gun where I had last seen him. It was not going to be easy.
I felt pressure build up on the back of my legs from the strain of moving downslope. Somewhere above us a turret fell silent and the sound of shelling dropped off a fraction.
I came to the burned-out remains of the Hydra chassis. It was just a pile of scrap metal now, twisted and fused and blackened by the passing of war. Bodies lay all around it. Most of them were in the state of advanced decomposition I associated with the heretics. One or two of them were the torn remains of more normal mortals.
I walked over and inspected the nearest. It wore the grey of one of Drake’s storm troopers. Its mirrored visor was cracked and broken with droplets of blackened blood congealed on it. Within I saw the face of the storm trooper, for the first time ever. It looked normal and peaceful in death but it did not look like anybody I knew. I thought about burial, of saying the funeral rites, but I was just too weary.
I tried to recreate the path along which I had driven. You’d think it would be easy, what with tanks leaving tracks behind them and all, but there were bodies and signs of blasting everywhere. And that realisation did make it easier for I could trace from the blast circles every impact point at which the tank had been hit.
I studied the corpses of the fallen and noticed something familiar lying downslope and off to the left. I had found Ivan’s body.
My heart sank when I saw the shattered remains of the broken bionic that lay close to the fallen figure. Ivan lay face down, his back bloody, coils of wire and metal emerging from his shoulder. Heart in my mouth I walked over to where he lay.