I thought again about the dead bodies and the lack of walking dead and I realised that the most likely reason they had not risen and attacked us yet was because it was not time for them to do so.
‘There’s something else here,’ Drake said. ‘The feeling of something tainted and evil. I sense the presence of Nurgle’s daemons.’
‘Grimnar said something similar,’ Macharius said. ‘He caught the scent of an ancient enemy, whatever he means by that. He looked happy about it, though.’
‘He would. He lives to die in battle,’ Drake said. ‘I can think of few things the Space Wolves count as ancient enemies that I would like to meet.’
‘If it is our fate to do so, it is our fate,’ said Macharius. He sounded at once mocking and resigned. There was weariness in his voice and in his manner. ‘All I ask is to settle my score with those who have betrayed me.’
I wondered if it was worth the lives of all the men who were going to die for that to be accomplished. I pushed the thought out of my mind. After all I was only there to drive the Leman Russ and put myself in the way of any bullets aimed at Macharius. I wondered at the fact that I had become so cynical. Had I been infected with something more than illness when I came here? Anton’s death had hit me hard and made me all too aware of my mortality.
Ivan had been silent since we mounted the Leman Russ. We were not a cheerful crew as we pushed on deeper into the hive of the dead.
There were more and more corpses as we made our way down. They looked as if they had fallen to some disease. We drove for hours and everywhere we found death.
No one engaged us. No one attacked us. The hive lights were dim and flickered as if still on emergency power. The air had a greenish tinge to it that was in no way natural.
I don’t know what Macharius was expecting but I doubt that it had been this. I could sense the tension when Grimnar’s signal came in. It seemed some of his Wolves had taken prisoners.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘We found them holed up in a hab-block,’ Grimnar said, indicating the huddled group of pale-faced humans cowering in the shadow of the Space Marines. ‘They’re the only ones we’ve found alive so far. They must know something.’
Drake nodded. His security people had already scanned them to make sure they had no sub-dermal explosives and were not assassins. Looking at them I would have said they were typical hive workers or what passed for such on this world. They were about medium-sized for humans, pale-skinned, blond, with pinkish-tinted eyes and a look that reminded me of albino rats.
‘Very good,’ said Drake. ‘Let us find out what they know.’
He strode up to the nearest, making no attempt to reassure them. A nimbus of light played around his head. When he reached out, a second halo of light jumped around the local’s head. The man’s face contorted, the tendons on his neck stood out, sweat appeared on his brow. He looked like a man losing a deadly struggle, which he probably was.
Drake’s breathing became shallow. When he spoke his voice held the tension of a man who was trying to concentrate on performing two difficult tasks at once. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘There was a plague. It struck down the local population after the moon-strike. This one thinks the world has come to an end. That these are the end-times.’
‘As far as these people are concerned he could be right,’ said Grimnar.
‘He thinks we are daemons,’ Drake said. ‘More specifically he thinks you are.’
It was easy to see how a heretic could have got that impression of the Space Wolves.
‘Was the plague released deliberately?’ Macharius asked.
Drake’s expression went blank for a moment. The local ground his teeth. ‘He does not know. It’s possible. The plague could be a weapon.’
‘Even if it is,’ Grimnar said, ‘it might not have been released deliberately. The hive took terrible damage when the moon-strike hit. If the plague was being stored in an incubator it might have got loose by accident.’
‘How did this one survive when so many died?’ Macharius asked.
‘There are always those who are immune to diseases,’ Drake said. ‘They have resistance. Even to the most virulent of plagues. This one may have it and there will be others. It should be possible to create a serum against the disease from his blood.’
Macharius spoke into the comm-net, ordering all precautions against contamination to be redoubled. We had all been exposed to the plague now.
‘How long did it take to strike people down?’ Macharius asked.
‘It all happened within hours of the impact.’
‘Right through the hive?’ Macharius said. ‘That does not sound like an accident.’
‘You’re right. I also suspect that the whole population might have been particularly susceptible to this plague.’
‘You mean it was intended to harm them.’
‘Yes. Tailored to their genetic runes, so it spread swiftly and fatally.’
There was silence. There was no need to ask why. It was a recruiting drive on Richter’s part, to bring about an army of the dead. I had no doubt that it would only be a matter of time before we met them. I thought of all the corpses on the fields outside. They had been activated by the gas shells fired upon us.
‘Gas,’ I said. ‘They will introduce it into the life support systems once the disease has had time to do its work.’
‘They’ve probably started already,’ Drake said. ‘That’s what that greenish stuff is.’
‘We need to find Richter and quickly,’ Macharius said, ‘otherwise we will be cutting our way through a whole city of the walking dead.’
Drake smiled. ‘I know where to find Richter.’
Macharius looked at him. ‘How?’
‘His palace is below us. Everyone in the city knows where the Chosen One lives. Even these maggots.’
‘The Chosen One?’ Macharius asked.
‘The warlord from the sky. He bears the Sacred Amulet of the Lord of Mortality,’ Drake said. His eyes were closed once more and he seemed to be plucking the words directly from the hiver’s mind. ‘He was the first living man in ten thousand years to enter the Vault of the Great One and live. He came out bearing the symbol of their daemon god’s power. That is why they follow him without question. That is why the plague priests believe he will lead them forth from this place to conquer the galaxy.’
Grimnar laughed. ‘I have heard such stories before on a hundred worlds. They have all ended the same way.’
The hiver must have understood the Space Wolf’s tone. His religious sensibility was outraged. He did something braver than I could. He spat on the ground at the Space Wolf’s feet and gabbled something angrily in his local tongue.
‘He says the Chosen One will kill you. He is invincible. He cannot be slain.’
Grimnar took no offence. ‘I have heard that one before too. I will tear his heart out and make him eat it.’
‘We move,’ Macharius said. ‘Now.’
Not even the Space Wolf disagreed with him.
Richter’s palace was located exactly at the centre of the hive, spread over multiple levels, with an enormous dome above it. The area around it looked as if it had once been a park or a garden of a very strange sort. There were fungal trees which looked as if they had once been landscaped. Clouds of spores swarmed the air and webs of slime clung to the great mushroom-like structures. Everything looked diseased and strange. There were bodies strewn everywhere, blotched with black mould. Some of the corpses hung on what looked like ropes of snot. Others had become so overgrown with fungus that they were being held upright by it. The mould appeared to have emerged from within their bodies and turned them into strange pillars. In some places a dozen or so of the overgrown corpses had been piled together and looked like a disturbing many-headed, many-limbed statue.