The Ironclad Prophecy (16 page)

As the party climbed the trail across the face of the hillside towards the valley head, slowed by the fact that they were wearing marching order packs, Atkins paused to look back down across the encampment and at the arthropod army beyond. From this distance, they really did look like insects. It seemed hard to believe that he couldn’t just crush them under his foot.

He felt disconcerted, leaving his comrades behind to face the foe. It felt like they had cut and run, leaving the battalion to their fate, but orders were orders. The chatts would run scared when they returned with the tank.

“I just hope we find it in time,” said Pot Shot.

“I just hope we find it in one piece,” replied Mercy.

“Better hope the crew is in one piece as well,” muttered Gazette, “because I don’t know how to drive one of them things.”

“Shh!” said Prof. “That FANY back there is sweet on one of them.”

If Nellie Abbott was sensitive about the issue, she didn’t show it. “He’d better bloomin’ well be alive,” she called forward. “’Cause I’m going to kill ’im if he ain’t.”

Atkins had assigned Gutsy to be Chandar’s guard, especially during this early part of the trip. They had been uneasy about having one of the Khungarrii along, so they tied the chatt’s long three fingered hands in front of its body and placed a gas hood over its head to prevent it sending any scent signals to those out on the veldt.

“The thing makes my skin crawl, Only.”

“Gutsy, this whole place makes my skin crawl.”

Frankly, Atkins thought, he’d rather be facing the Khungarrii than whatever lay out beyond the confines of their valley. At least here, you knew who the enemy was. Out there, it was everything. It took a toll on a man’s nerves, did that.

He wished he hadn’t looked back, though. He felt the familiar lurch in his stomach as his heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t wistfulness that did that. It was cold, gnawing fear. That small circle of Somme mud with its drifting splash of bright red poppies looked so small and insignificant from this height. What if that small circle should vanish now, going back home and leaving them behind? Feeling sick, he forced himself to turn away and carry on walking up the hillside.

Chandar had stopped to look back, too, and hissed beneath its hood. Atkins’ lip curled. It seemed excited at the sight of its army below. “Do you not see it?” Chandar said in a muffled croak through the gas hood.

“See what?”

“There. Do you not see it?” Chandar touched the heels of its hands to its head beneath the mask and thorax as a sign of reverence.

Atkins squinted and stared at the Khungarrii army, frowned and shook his head irritably.

“No. What? Where?”

“There!” said Chandar. It pointed at the valley below them. “The Sky Web of Garsuleth.” At the name of its god, it made the reverent sign again.

It took Atkins a moment more before he saw it. Not the Khungarrii. Chandar had been looking at the encampment. The circular trenches and the radiating communications trenches did indeed resemble a spider’s web, after a fashion. Out beyond the wire weed entanglement, long paths extended out into the landscape, like anchor lines.

“So it looks like a web, what of it? Why’s that so bloody important?” he snapped.

“It is a sign,” said Chandar, fingering the scent-laden knots from its shoulder cloth.

“Of what, your certain victory?” asked Atkins with a sneer.

“Maybe. Yes,” said Chandar. “But not here, not now.” It said nothing more but its vestigial middle limbs clicked together rapidly. Like a dog wagging its tail, thought Atkins.

Gutsy pushed the chatt on up the path ahead of him. The aerial sight of the encampment had excited Chandar and beneath the gas hood, it went on chittering in its own tongue as it walked.

“Move it, y’bug-eyed Bosche,” said Gutsy gruffly.

“Where are you taking this One?” it asked.

“On a pilgrimage, to meet Skarra, and if you don’t behave you’ll see him a lot sooner than we will.”

T
HE RUSH OF
injured and wounded had slowed to a trickle now, and in the aid post, the orderlies were preparing for the next flood of casualties.

Edith Bell stepped from the tent for a breath of fresh air. She put her hands to the small of her back and arched it to relieve the ache. God, what she wouldn’t give for a nice cup of tea.

Beyond the trenches, in the aftermath of the attack, the bodies of several large battlepillars lay sprawled across the great wire weed entanglements, and might have provided bridgeheads for the besieging army if the wire weed wasn’t already beginning to grow tight about their elephantine carcasses. Nearer, she could make out the occasional flashes of bayonets above the paradoses as men moved about otherwise unseen in the trenches before her, preparing for another assault.

The massed Khungarrii army had retreated perhaps half a mile or so to regroup, and sunlight glinted off a myriad iridescent carapaces until it seemed that the veldt sparkled in a dazzling rainbow display. It’s almost pretty, she thought. But she’d seen them up close and knew them for what they were. She shuddered. The memory of her imprisonment in their nest was still fresh in her memory. She looked back up along the valley in the direction that her friend had left and felt a pang of emptiness. She had grown to depend on Nellie’s common sense and companionship and she hoped she would see her again.

Edith only had a short rest break and hurried over to check on the shell-shocked in the Bird Cage, unsure as to what she would find. The sounds of the fighting had agitated them, and she feared many of them might not have coped at all well.

She found Oliver Hepton, the kinematographer, smoking a cigarette, staring at them through the barbed wire in a contemplative manner. From his demeanour, he might have been on a promenade looking out to sea.

“They’ve calmed down remarkably,” he said, without looking at her. “Don’t they usually, you know...” he mimed a neck spasm and twitch.

She regarded him coldly. “They can’t help it.”

He pulled out a partially crushed Woodbine packet from his top pocket and offered it to her. There were three battered but serviceable cigarettes left in the carton. With supplies running low she recognised the generosity of the gesture. Her father never approved of women smoking, especially in public, but that didn’t stop her aunt from introducing her to the habit and, truth be told, she rather enjoyed the illicit thrill of drawing on the odd cigarette. However, his derision of the patients irked her.

“No, thank you. I don’t.”

He shrugged and put the packet away and Edith immediately regretted refusing.

“I hear when the battle began some ran screaming into their dugout, and some just curled up crying.” The thought seemed to amuse him. He took another drag from his gasper.

The man’s attitude irritated her. “Don’t you have something to film?”

“I already have some battle footage, but I’ve only got two canisters of unexposed film left. I want to save it.”

He turned to look at her.

“Those trousers don’t do anything for you, you know. I can imagine you were quite pretty once.”

Edith felt her hackles rise. She wasn’t a suffragette, and the trousers weren’t a political statement. She left that kind of thing to Nellie, who seemed to have more of a taste for it. However, if Mr Hepton found it distasteful, then right now it was a flag worth sailing under.

“They’re practical, Mr Hepton, as your sex will doubtless admit. Which is more than can be said for you at this particular moment. You obviously have nothing better to do but amuse yourself by watching these poor souls.”

“Oh, I dare say they’ll have me running ammunition or messages or some such if the chatts charge again,” he said, with an insouciant air. “Still, they do seem remarkably quiet.”

Edith looked through the barbed wire fence. Almost all of the shell-shock victims had emerged from the hut or the dugout now. She had to admit, Hepton was right. They all seemed quite calm. Unusually calm, considering the state they were in earlier.

Private Jones was one of the shell-shocked in whose plight Edith had taken a special interest. He suffered from almost uncontrollable spasms, to such an extent that he found it hard to walk, eat or do anything for himself. Yet there he was, sat on an old ammunition box, as still as anything.

Her brow creased into a frown. She strode towards the gate where a soldier stood hastily to attention. She stopped and waited by the gate until he unslid the crude bolt.

She walked through, looking at the lethargic men in the compound around her as she made a beeline toward Jones, a practised smile easing onto her face. The young man looked up with eyes much older than his years.

“Hello, Private. How do you feel?”

“It’s stopped,” he said, holding out a hand, palm down. “See, steady as a rock.”

“So I see. Can you stand for me?” She held out her arm.

He stood up in one smooth motion without taking it.

She turned the young man’s head this way and that, gently, forewarning him of everything she was doing so he wouldn’t become alarmed.

“It feels like such a relief.”

“I can imagine,” she said, holding his wrist and taking his pulse. It was slow and steady.

She felt his forehead with the back of her hand. It was slightly clammy. “A bit of a fever.”

“I have a bad belly too, nurse,” he said, cradling his gut. “It’s started churning ever so bad.”

“Have you been sick?”

He shook his head.

“What about your... bowel movements?”

“Fine,” he mumbled.

Food poisoning of one form or another was a common enough hazard here, but she was puzzled. It didn’t seem to be that.

Jones looked past her at the cigarette in Hepton’s mouth. “Have you got a spare fag, even a nicky would do right now?” he said. “I haven’t been able to hold one for ages.”

Hepton shrugged. “Last one,” he lied. He took a last suck at the fag as it shrivelled rapidly toward his lips, dropped the smouldering dimp to the ground and crushed it into the dirt with his boot.

“Well, as you’re here, Mr Hepton, if you want to help, you can fetch Captain Lippett and Sister Fenton.”

He clicked his feet together, gave her a mocking salute and turned on his heel with a wry smile.

Edith went around the compound checking other patients at random. All had a restful pulse rate. All complained of some gut pain. Most exhibited some swellings or other.

She spoke to Private Miller, his hands now bandaged.

“How do you feel?”

“Unafraid,” he answered, with a smile. “For the first time in ages. How about you?”

The question caught Edith off guard. “I beg your pardon?”

Miller jerked his head towards the gate. Hepton was returning with the agitated MO and Sister Fenton bringing up the rear. “It looks like you’re in trouble, Nurse Bell.”

From the look on Lippett’s face as he entered the compound, Miller was probably right. She knew she should have followed proper procedure and referred this to Sister Fenton first, before sending for Lippett, and knew Fenton would haul her over the coals for the breach of hospital protocol, but had thought this too urgent.

The MO looked from Edith to the shell-shock victims and back again with a bad-tempered glower. “Is this important? I haven’t time for your malingerers and skrimshankers, Bell. I have other things that require my attention. What seems to be the matter?”

Edith bobbed a little curtsey, which looked odd in her part-worn serge trousers. “I don’t know, sir. I wondered if you’d take a look? They don’t seem to be themselves. As you can see, the hysterical tremors seem to have stopped. They all seem calm, although some are developing swellings and all are complaining of stomach pains.”

“Is this what you brought me out here for, a bit of indigestion? Although if something they’ve eaten has eased their ‘symptoms,’ then we can send them back to the front line, can’t we? Lieutenant Everson could use every available man right now, wouldn’t you agree?”

Sister Fenton stepped up with a fierce glance of disapproval at Edith, warning of an imminent telling off. Nevertheless she covered for her nurse. “With respect, Doctor, if that is the case then we should wait and see. We wouldn’t want them becoming hysterical in the trenches again. Bad for morale. And it would reflect badly on you as Medical Officer.”

Lippett considered this for a moment. “Quite right, Sister.” He turned to Edith. “Nurse, as you seem to have worked miracles here, do you think you could do the same with the bed pans? They need emptying.”

Edith’s face flushed. She had expected him to listen to her, at least. “Yes, doctor.”

She hurried away, humiliated, taking a last glance at the calm, listless men behind her.

Something didn’t feel right.

T
HE NEXT DAY,
1 Section arrived at the canyon.

“Perfect for an ambush,” said Gazette after a brief recce. “But the tank definitely came this way.” He looked down at the trail left by the vehicle. The wind had begun to obscure it, but there was no mistaking the parallel tracks.