The Ironclad Prophecy (21 page)

T
HIS TIME, THE
scentirrii general, Rhengar, held back its battlepillars. As the ranks of scentirrii came into range, sappers cut the lines holding the saplings and the trunks whipped up, flinging their rope slings into the air. Shrapnel fruit arced out across the wire weed entanglements. The seed segments exploded with a velocity that tore through carapaces, decapitating and shredding the chatts around the impact sites.

The first wave of chatts used the corpses of the already slain battlepillars as bridgeheads and springboards to leap across the wire weed. Slings, arrows and bullets picked them off and they fell into the waiting thickets, where the barbed tendrils pulled them down into a deadly embrace.

Once over the wire weed, they would again be in the poppy field.

“Watch your heads, lads. Fix staves!” ordered Sergeant Hobson.

Gas gongs were beaten. “Gas! Gas! Gas!”

Men fumbled at the gas bags on their chests and pulled on their gas hoods that would protect them not from gas, but the acid spit of the chatt scentirrii.

One man in every bay dropped from the fire step to fix sharpened, vertical twelve-foot staves into the sump of the trenches behind them. They had seen the scentirrii leap over their defences and into their trenches before. This time they would be ready.

Above, the aeroplane roared across the trenches and out over the chatts, its machine gun fire herding stray chatts in towards the centre and the field of poppies.

Driven into the blood-red flowers, their meticulous advance began to waver and break. Chatts stumbled blindly, trance-like, jostling each other chaotically. The rear ranks ploughed into the muddled vanguard until they, too, became bewildered and the entire advance disintegrated.

Everson’s fist hammered a parapet sandbag triumphantly. “Yes!” Now it was Lieutenant Baxter’s job.

The machine guns began their deadly harvest.

A
FEW ADVANCING
chatts escaped the machine gun fire and leapt into the air, like grasshoppers, dropping down into the trenches from above, spitting atomised mists of acid into the defenders’ faces. Some scentirrii were impaled on the waiting staves. Others shot arcs of electric fire that jumped and earthed around the trench, or through unlucky men. Others plummeted into the fire bays, their barbed spears lancing soldiers.

The Tommies’ bayonets thrust up even as the chatts plummeted down. Now the fighting became dirty and vicious. Sergeant Hobson swung his trench club again and again, stoving in Khungarrii heads like clay jars.

The sounds of electrical fire whipped down the trenches, mingling with screams of Tommy and chatt as the mopping up began.

Everson watched Tulliver and his Sopwith harry the retreating chatts as it swooped down, strafing them, dropping grenades and flechettes. Several chatts had the presence of mind to turn their electric lances on the flying machine. Most of the blue arcs shot harmlessly into the sky, forking and fizzling into insignificance. One, though, hit its target, scorching a hole in the fuselage. Everson watched as the aeroplane veered off, his observer attempting to pat the flames out with a gloved hand. He vaguely wondered who was up there with Tulliver; he
had
been told. Maddocks? Maddocks, that was it.

Now Everson had repelled the first attack, he had to figure out his next move. He hadn’t many more left.

S
ISTER
F
ENTON
DEALT with the influx of wounded to the Aid Post quickly and efficiently, deciding who needed immediate treatment and who could wait.

After the confrontation with Captain Lippett, Sister Fenton had shared strong words with Edith. Afterwards she put her to work sorting field dressings and bandages. She wasn’t too worried about the nurse’s absence in the aid post. The girl had to be taught her place. Besides, the urmen had long ago proved their worth with their native salves that calmed burns, and pastes made from crushed leaves that protected wounds from infection. On the Somme, you could survive the wound but die from infection and gangrene from the smallest cut. Here, their native poultices made all the difference.

E
DITH WAS FOLDING
fresh bandages when Orderly Stanton popped his head into the tent.

“Edith. You ought to come and see your lot.”

“They aren’t ‘my lot,’ and I’m already in Sister’s bad books.”

“No, but summat strange is going on,” he insisted.

Curiosity got the better of her and she scurried over to the Bird Cage. The shell-shocked patients stood about calmly. Edith went from one to the other. On each man, she saw the same blank trance-like face, each possessing a serenity that had managed to elude him in previous months.

“Townsend, Townsend, can you hear me?” She waved a hand in front of his face. There was no response. His eyes remained fixed ahead. She brought her hands up and clapped them together. Not even an involuntary blink. She took him by the shoulders and shook him, then wheeled around and strode over to another. “Hello?” she snapped her fingers in front of his nose. Nothing. It was as if they were all in a trance.

She went back to Townsend and this time took his hand in hers. He offered no resistance. She tightened her grip, squeezed and relaxed. Townsend’s hand lay limply in her own. She lifted it to take his pulse. It was then that she noticed the swelling on his forearm; the skin stretched taut and hard over it, hard and round like a cyst or a ganglion, firm and resistant to her touch. She pushed his sleeve up and found another in the crook of his elbow. There was another on the back of his neck at the base of the skull. She unbuttoned his shirt and found a further eleven on Townsend’s torso alone. All the others had them too, to a greater or lesser extent.

Captain Lippett would have to listen to her now. This could be contagious, some sort of disease. At least they were quarantined, she thought. She glanced back at them as she stepped through the compound gate.

She hadn’t realised before, but they all stood facing the same direction. They were facing into the wind...

That alone sent a shiver down her spine.

A
LL NIGHT,
S
KARRA
had whispered to Mathers and he knew now what he must do. As the sun rose to penetrate the canopy above, he summoned Atkins to the hut.

“We will go with you on one condition,” he said.

“There are no conditions, sir. It’s an order,” said Atkins.

Mathers regarded the belligerent corporal. “One condition.”

Atkins considered for a moment, then, seeing he had no option, sighed. “Which is what, sir?”

“We have promised the Gilderra to rid them of this ‘spirit’ that is snatching their villagers. Doubtless, it is some wild animal, but we have given our word.”

“What? Sir, we haven’t got time for this. We need to get back to the encampment.”

“Then the quicker we get this done, the sooner we can return. The help of you and your men will speed up the hunt.”

Atkins turned and paced and turned again, caged by duty and military obedience. “I have your word, sir? Once this beast is killed we return to the encampment?”

“As an officer and a gentleman, Corporal.”

M
ATHERS STAGGERED UNSTEADILY
from the hut, his splash-mask and helmet in place, his gas-mask-topped staff in his hand. Atkins stood awkwardly by his side.

The chief, dressed in his ceremonial finery, the warriors and their families had assembled before the hut.

Mathers raised his staff; silence fell, and he addressed them. “Skarra has heard your pleas and will rid you of the evil spirit that has been plaguing your clan. The Warrior Priests of Boojum and their brethren, the Tohmii, will accompany him on his quest. But we shall return. As a sign of our bond, we leave you the Totem hut of Skarra.”

Across the compound by the great bark gates, Atkins’ section was waiting, webbing and backpacks on, eyeing the tank crew in their painted rain capes and splash masks with suspicion. The tension was palpable and Atkins was keen to get them separated as soon as possible. Nellie stepped forward and kissed Alfie on the cheek, which earned her a glare from Frank and Wally.

The chief accompanied them to the bark gates.

An old urman woman appeared and stood beside him. She looked at Atkins and Mathers with pitiless eyes. “Skarra will take the dulgur to his realm. I have seen it. But you, Mathas, shall not accompany it.” She fixed Atkins with her gimlet-eyed gaze. “Your companion here will know such grief that might only be assuaged in the underworld. But he will have a hard choice to make.”

Atkins frowned. He’d had enough grief so far. Being ripped halfway across the universe from Flora, the woman he loved, was grief enough for anyone’s lifetime, but a grief so deep, so all consuming that he would kill himself over it? He didn’t see it. It was the ramblings of a native woman. Superstition. He shrugged it off.

However, it seemed that Mathers took her words to heart and walked a little taller, a little more soberly.

“You see, Atkins? Mother Dreamer has told me I won’t die. I won’t die.”

Atkins shook his head in exasperation.

The chief spoke. “The spirit haunts the thalpa groves evewards,” he told them, pointing towards the direction in which the sun set.

Atkins stood close behind Mathers. Now that he had found the tank crew well and the tank operational, his anger at being dragged out on a wild goose chase needlessly festered and bordered on insolence. “All right, that’s enough, sir,” he hissed. “Let’s go and get this thing done.”

A breeze blew across the compound, rustling the huge leaves above. Mathers stood still and turned to face into the wind with a heartfelt sigh.

Frank turned to Reggie. “Give us a hand with the Sub. He’ll be as right as rain once we get him into the tank.”

The clan watched as the tank crew escorted Mathers to the waiting
Ivanhoe
. A great ululation rose up from a small group of young women as the tank’s engine roared into life. The tank lurched off in the direction indicated by the chief and 1 Section fell in behind it.

“Why the hell are we going along with this devil hunt of theirs, Only? It’s not our fight,” asked Pot Shot.

“Well, it is now. For better or worse, the tankers have won these urmen over. If they don’t deliver, it’s our reputation on the line as well. If the story gets out that we don’t protect our own, or keep our word, then the urmen will desert us; and we need allies here, so Lieutenant Everson tells me. But I’m still not sure if I bloody trust them.”

A
FTER SEVERAL HOURS
of slow progress through the jungle they had seen nothing but trees, and the trees, to Atkins’ mind, were the colour of old blood on army issue shirts, their barks blackened and rough like scabbing, but the men of 1 Section were getting tense and jumpy and eyed the armoured leviathan in front of them enviously.

Atkins, aware of Everson’s order to press the chatt for information, dropped back to where Gutsy was walking along with Chandar and Napoo. Chandar’s feeler stumps were waggling furiously as if trying to detect something despite its disability.

“Is something wrong?”Atkins asked it. “You seem nervous.”

The Chatt gulped in a mouthful of air and indicated the jungle around them. “Zohtakarii burri. You should not be here. Khungarrii should not be here. Our scents will carry. Ones do not enter the burri of other Ones.”

Napoo grunted in agreement. “It is true. If Chandar is found in Zohtakarrii burri, it will be killed. As will we.”

“This just gets better,” said Atkins with a sigh. “We’re being attacked by the Khungarrii. These Zohtakarrii will kill us if they find us and we’re off hunting something that’s probably stalking us, with a tank crew that would sooner we just dropped dead.” He shook his head. “The Pennines up to their necks again. So, this thing. Any ideas what we’re up against. Napoo?”

“The Gilderra clan says dulgur, a bad spirit.”

“Load of codswallop,” Pot Shot said. “If it’s taking people then it ain’t no ghost, which, as I’m sure Gazette will tell you, means it can be killed.”

Gazette clicked his tongue, winked, and patted the stock of his Enfield.

“Maybe Bantar,” admitted the urman.

“A bantar?”

“A four armed, fur covered urman-like creature that dwells in the trees, but perhaps twice our size.”

Chandar chattered, as if it disagreed.

“This One does not know, but this One fears what this dulgur might be.” Chandar struggled to gulp a mouthful of air again but, as it tried to speak, nothing came out from its mouthparts but an empty belch. It tried again in its own tongue, a long sibilant sound combined with glottal stops and mandible clicks that meant nothing to Atkins but clearly meant a great deal to Chandar. The chatt seemed to shrink down on its legs into a submissive posture before swallowing more air. It regurgitated it and hastened to form words with its mouth palps. “This One means that perhaps this One was mistaken. Maybe Sirigar’s prophecy of the Great Corruption was not so wrong after all,” it said, looking round at the Tommies.