The Fallen (39 page)

But this was no suit for any human. This was made for a unique and terrible figure. The elongated crooked shape of the limbs and back. The tail. The cloven feet.

SEVENTY NINE

R
OME
. I
TALY
.

Georgi wiped Düül's blood from his hands with a cloth the Inquisitor had given to him as he walked to the automobile. He handed it back to the Darkest Hand member and bowed his head to enter the back of the car.

There were two Inquisitors waiting for him in the front compartment of the Sedan, and they both turned to look as he settled himself in the seat.

“It's done,” growled Georgi, looking with heavy eyes out of the partially opened window to the moonlit streets of Rome. “Drive. Let's get out of this city.”

The driver released the handbrake and the car jolted forward, one of his comrades asking, “Everything is complete?”

“Yes, the second ritual is done. Another layer has been peeled back. Just one more remains.”

“And Sister Isabella will play her part?”

“Tacit will play
his
part,” replied Georgi, scratching at his nose and smelling blood. “Sister Isabella will have no say in events, in what happens to her. And Tacit will not give her up easily. He has already proved that once. All will be fine.”

“She has spirit. She will not go willingly,” warned the driver, turning the black wheel slowly in his hands and guiding the car onto the main route north out of Rome.

“And that is why she is perfect. She always was perfect.”

EIGHTY

T
HE
I
TALIAN
F
RONT
. T
HE
S
OČA
R
IVER
. N
ORTHWEST
S
LOVENIA
.

Clouds of sulphur billowed over the butchered mountainside, a sickly grey in colour. It stung eyes and caught in throats, making lungs tighten and shriek against the chemical stench. At every point there were junior officers willing their men on, boys, not men, with wild staring eyes, horrified at what they were witnessing, at what they had been sent to do. To kill or be killed. It came down to that.

The sun had now climbed over the rim of the eastern mountainside to shine on Pablo and Corporal Abelli, and from points all along the summit machineguns and rifles opened up, bristling the lower slopes, tearing the advancing Italians to bits.

Pablo no longer conceived any thoughts. He just did. He no longer fired his rifle. He had no more rounds to fire anyway, even if he had the desire to do so or the initiative to replenish his stocks by stealing from the dead who covered every inch of the mountainside. He kept moving, as he was told to by his Staff Sergeant, always two paces behind him, as he had been commanded to do from the very beginning, days ago. Or was it weeks? Pablo no longer remembered.

He reached the circle of wire which separated the Italians from the Carso summit and, almost on cue, machineguns swept the ground around them. Engineers crumpled and fell, snagging on the mesh of razor wire, their bodies dancing under the torrent of bullets, limbs frayed, chests and stomachs sprayed open, uniforms sagging and oozing blood, as the hard rain tore them apart.

Panic started to catch hold at the wire. The soldiers were wedged in. They could go neither forward nor back. The front row crumpled and fell, followed by the second and then the third wave falling on top of them, crushed by the hail of bullets and the charging ranks of Italian infantry. Wire-cutters were snatched from the gore-churned ground and desperately worked against the wire to cut a way through. The air was filled with bullets and cries and explosions from every angle. A fine drizzle of blood drenched everyone. Men wept and pissed their trousers. Holes were finally made in the defences and the soldiers streamed through, climbing over the mound of bodies.

In the wave behind, Pablo slipped and fell, his right hand sinking up to his elbow in the blasted stomach wound of a dead soldier. The smell and sight made him gag, but nothing came up. He'd not eaten for forty-eight hours. He'd not been able to eat, not since the assault had begun.

Hours passed, perhaps longer. Time had stopped on that mountainside. All he knew was that he was in hell. He swore that should he survive, he would live a good life. Two soldiers to his left were raked with machinegun-fire and without thinking he fell onto his front, the bullets passing over his head and buffeting the men charging behind. He sunk his head into the dirt thinking it was a good time to die, the sun on his back, among all his fallen colleagues.

And then a hand touched him and it seemed that a warmth shimmered through his body.

“Go on,” Corporal Abelli said to him. “Go on. It's not safe here.” There was a light in his green eyes, both reverential and urgent.

“But the gunfire!” cried Pablo, and the Corporal shook his head.

“We will protect you.”

EIGHTY ONE

T
HE
V
ATICAN
. V
ATICAN
C
ITY
.

Cardinal Berberino caught sight of the messenger the instant he appeared at the entrance to St Peter's Basilica and headed him off at the doors leading down into the bowels of the building.

“You have something for us?” he enquired of the young messenger, caked with dust from his hard ride south into the city. He smelt of grass and horses.

“I was instructed to take it to the Holy See directly, Cardinal Berberino,” the messenger replied swiftly, “not linger in the outer chambers.” He clutched a letter tight to his chest in clamped white fingers. Berberino appeared flushed to him, troubled, his skin waxy, his eyes wild and unfocused. “Is everything quite all right, Cardinal Berberino?” the messenger asked.

“No,” replied Berberino honestly. He hung his head and rested gently against the young man's shoulder, shuddering gently as if weeping. “Chaos is erupting. Rome is enflamed. Wolves are running wild. I had hoped for news. Some news. Any news. Anything to give a little hope.”

“I am not sure if it is good news,” the messenger replied, “but I was told to bring it to the addressee within the Holy See with utmost speed. However, considering your anxiety, and as you are a senior member of the Holy See, I see no reason why …”

The messenger tentatively proffered the letter, Berberino snatching it urgently from him. He marched away towards the inquisitional chamber, tearing open the envelope as he walked and reading the contents silently, his darting eyes growing wide and his paunchy face slackening at the news it contained.

EIGHTY TWO

T
HE
I
TALIAN
F
RONT
. T
HE
S
OČA
R
IVER
. N
ORTHWEST
S
LOVENIA
.

They had taken the Austro-Hungarian post, but at a terrible cost. All across the mountainside behind the new Italian front line, thousands of corpses lay strewn among the rubble and shattered rocks of the Carso, the night too dark, the open too dangerous, to clear them away. So instead they lay there, a generation crushed and torn, strewn over and beneath rocks, like seaweed deserted on the shore.

Now all Pablo wanted to do was sleep, hoping he might find a little solace and peace from the roar and seething torment of war.

He dreamt he was in a ward full of other soldiers, all lying prostrate on beds, all bound up in bloody, tight bandages. There was a smelt of disinfectant and the mutter of quiet serious voices, the clack of hard heels on the wood floor, the clatter of surgical instruments as they were placed into metal dishes, the moaning, the constant moaning. While the other noises rose and receded as patients were inspected and doctors swept out into other wards, the moaning remained always, a maddening constant, like the itch beneath the bandages which could never be scratched.

Pablo rose and left his bed, immediately thinking it strange that when his feet touched the floor, his eyes were level with the mattress upon which he had been lying. He looked down and swooned, horrified to see that his legs had been blasted to bloodied stumps, maggot-riddled beneath the greying cloth, just like so many limbs he had witnessed on the climb to the summit.

And then his horror changed to surprise that he was able to walk upon his stumps without discomfort or pain. All thoughts of shock where chased away and he left his bed and walked around it in an awkward waddle, like the dwarf he had become. He stepped down the aisle which ran between the rows of beds and out of the ward, following where the nurses had gone. Something told him he had to go and look, a nagging doubt as to who they really were and what exactly they were doing beyond the confines of the ward. He didn't trust them, not any of them, the way they looked at him, the way they tended his wounds, spoke to him with soothing words.

He reached the exit to the ward and looked out, seeing a corridor stretching off into the far distance. There were no doors leading from it, only a
single point of light at the very end. He made for it, noticing that with every stride closer to the light his stumps seemed to stick more firmly to the floor, as if he were walking through deepening mud. Every stride grew more difficult but also with every stride the light grew nearer and larger.

In the light there was a battlefield similar to the one on which he had fought, and a circle of Priests, a line of ragged trees behind them. A black-bearded Priest stood in the centre, before him a man on his knees, two daggers held to his throat.

“I don't want to go to hell!” the man screamed. “I don't want to go to hell!”

“Then don't,” counselled the bearded Priest, moments before the blades retracted across the man's neck and blood flowed over the ground in front of him.

“What are you doing?” a nurse asked Pablo, one among the circle of Priests who had gathered to watch the murderous ceremony. Her voice was gentle but firm.

Pablo tried to talk, but she shooed him into silence and escorted him back to bed, her arm linked around his.