by Andy Remic
And he was back with the men, who were creeping forward, and bullets exploded all around and the boy felt a blow in his chest and he was punched backwards—lifted from the ground and physically flung backwards—and he landed with a splash and mud went in his eyes and in his mouth, and he rubbed his eyes, not realising he had been hit by a bullet . . . but the pain came, and it hurt, hurt even more than the time he had fallen down the stairs and broke his leg. He began to cry, and his tears were hot on his face and washed away the mud from his eyes and for this he was thankful. The pain lessened, and the boy felt incredibly sleepy, and he could feel hot blood pumping out of the chest wound which he could see now, oh God, how he could see it! Blood flowing over his chest and down his ribs now turned into blood channels and across his back, soaking the earth around him. And he realised he wasn’t breathing, and he tried to move, but panicked when he realised he couldn’t move at all, and he thought, Am I dead? Have I been killed? What will happen to me now? And then he felt the other, and the other whispered soft words, words of encouragement, words of peace that made the boy’s mind find serenity, and he heard more words from the other and the words said, so soft they could have been the wind, “Don’t worry, boy. My name is George.”
“Like the king?”
“Yes, just like the king, relax, trust me, we will fly together . . .”
And he felt a great loss of weight, as if somebody had tipped the whole world upside down and he felt the other entwining his spirit and carrying him high like a bird because he did not know how to fly, and they soared through the wind, could feel the wind, wild and mad, so high up, and the other was seeking his comrades in the darkness below . . . they floated in the breeze for a while, floated, and the boy could feel it ruffling his hair, felt it coiling about his face like a snake and filling his senses with a perfume of purity.
“Look,” said the other, and he looked and he could see . . . the dawn was near, and a red light flickered faint across the heavens, slow, lethargic, but beautiful. Like the death of a star.
And below, solid black stalks reared to the sky, dead trees in an embrace of oblivion, ugly, charred, hopeless. And the dead trees sighed. They had become death.
Debris littered the ground between the dead tree stalks and the corpses. The corpses were twisted and horrible and unholy, with red mouths open, gaping silent curses at God and Oblivion and Man. They were mud-streaked and bloodied and broken and bent like melted marionettes. Their veins were the strings and they danced a jig in honour of a race cursed by their own hand, and the boy laughed, because it was all like a game, all a game, and he felt the tension in the other, the disapproval, and so he was quiet.
Smoke flowed grey and billowing across the field, and the smoke drifted over the many, many bodies that littered the recent place of battle, over Germans and French and British and Naravelle. . . . The smoke curled lazily about the corpses, giving them bracelets and necklaces, and as the boy watched, and as the other watched, they could both see it grow and spiral and solidify with each consecutive passing, as if each man lying twisted in horror was adding an essence to the whole, becoming a serpent of the soul, bleeding meat on the ground for its life and spark of life. . . .
“Watch,” said the other, and the boy felt him depart and a momentary panic overtook him—he would fall, he would fall!—but he did not fall, and he saw the other, twisting downwards in a spiral and whirling between corpses and with smoke flowing solid from veins and hearts and souls, and the boy saw the other dragged free and lifted above the smoke which was no longer smoke, no longer there, the land was desolate below except for the husks of shattered wood in the distance, corpses carved from the earth and returning to the earth . . .
The boy could hear sweet music, sweet music, and it was a beautiful song, an enchanting, magical song made by the eternal serpent . . . and it was a Song for No Man’s Land. And it always would be.
The wind sighed in the heavens and the souls sped with laughter away from their earthly confines, and through the smoke and the song, and away into the darkness of nothing.
The boy was left alone. Spirits, the ghosts, all had vanished along with the other who helped him. He was totally alone. A dark rain fell, a black rain, and he watched with tears as the distant serpent coiled and cavorted through the gloom of infinity, and then entered the earth, entered the soil, entered the mud and the rock, and joined with the crust and became One.
What about me? thought the boy, more scared than he had ever been. Am I not coming too?
“No,” snapped a voice, a harsh, alien voice, and yet a voice he recognised. And he opened his eyes, eyes stuck shut as if filled with treacle and honey. “No, you are not dead, yet. But we will take you back, through the Realms, and they will find you. They are looking for you.” The boy tried to speak but couldn’t; he could only cough and cough and the creature with the long muzzle was breathing over him, its breath sour like pickled corpses.
The boy started to cry.
“You do not understand, yet, my child,” said the creature, its voice heavy with sadness. “He has deserted you, deserted you all, and in your innocence, in your stupidity, you do not understand. . . .” A claw touched his face, and the boy understood the violence held poised within that limb. A sudden knowledge came into his mind as he realised the creature was contemplating his death, considering killing him in order to save him an eternity of hardship. . . .
Then he heard shouting, shouting, shouting, and falling out of himself he was being carried in strong arms and he cried and it rained on his face and on his grave and the darkness took him in its wings, and all that came afterwards was pain and desolation.
Part Three
A Darkness of the Soul
The Stoneway. 19th. November 1917 (night).
ALL WAS QUIET.
Jones breathed slowly, realised that he was in a crouched position, but did not move, did not want to move. He felt safe, secure for the first time in weeks. The silence was whole, and total, and a breeze caressed his face and the world seemed to rush back into focus, into reality. The ground was hard beneath his boots and he wiggled toes wet from trench water and mud. He shivered. The breeze touched his hair and cooled his face. The panic that had been consuming him subsided, and he was perfectly calm.
Jones opened his eyes and everything was dark. He waited, waited for his eyes to adjust, and said, “Bainbridge? Webb? Are you still there?”
Their voices came, whispering through the darkness, incredibly distant, fading even as they spoke.
“We can come no further,” said Bainbridge.
“Why not?”
“You will understand,” came the static crackle of Webb’s voice.
And they were gone, and Jones was alone, and in the cold and the dark. He stretched from his crouch, one hand reaching out and steadying himself against the rough stone wall. His fingers explored damp, cold, jagged rock. Slimy and slippery in places. Unwholesome.
His other hand grasped the Naravelle rifle more tightly, and he operated the bolt action. In the darkness, with echoes, the click and thrust sounded like a thousand rifles being readied for slaughter.
With no other option, Jones started to walk down the tunnel, slowly at first because of the darkness, but as his eyes adjusted and ambient light reflected from the walls, this gave him enough light by which to see. He walked on and the tunnel sloped downwards and Jones could sense great height above him. Occasionally, a drop of water landed on his face, or hand, and yet he was absolutely calm, perfectly at peace: this place radiated serenity and warmth despite the chill breeze. It was a warmth of heart, a warmth of—life? Jones shook his head. He did not know. He felt, almost, as if he were in a womb. A place of deep, dark birth.
He walked for some minutes, and suddenly dropped to a crouch and brought up his rifle. There was a man standing rigid up ahead, shrouded in darkness, and Jones could not distinguish whether he was friend or foe.
Fear invaded Jones, and he chewed his lip. Had the man heard
him? Was he an enemy? A guardian? And if a guardian, a guardian of what? Maybe he was guarding the beast Orana had spoken about. Maybe he was the beast? The Iron Beast.
Jones watched him for some time, but the man did not move, did not shout a challenge; and so Jones had to work on the assumption that he had not been seen, not been caught. And so a dilemma forced itself into his consciousness: Should he kill the man in cold blood? Or wait for him to identify himself, thus risking his own life—and possibly the lives of every man, woman, and child back in the trenches?
Had he become such a monster?
Had he really lost his ——ing humanity?
Jones shuffled forward, the dark figure in the gloom never leaving his sight. The man still refused to move from his rigid stance, and Jones could feel sweat rolling down his back, soaking his shirt, coating his face. He wiped his brow on his cuff, and gripped the rifle with his finger trembling on the trigger. Still the man did not move and Jones was thinking wild thoughts. Move, you bastard, why won’t you move? Are you playing ——ing games with me? And he edged closer, and rose slowly to his feet, and then, he—
Damn.
He saw the other men, silent and stretching a long line down the tunnel as far as the ambient light allowed Jones to focus. He witnessed at least ten, maybe fifteen men—all armed, motionless, and ready, and waiting . . .
Jones swallowed hard. Further down the tunnel, men stood to attention against both walls of rock, their rifles of different shapes borne proudly, and their backs straight. Not a single man moved.
Jones crept towards the first man. “Are you a guard?” he finally forced himself to whisper. But there came no reply, and so Jones moved closer. The man’s eyes were open, glassy in the darkness, and he stared straight ahead.
Jones reached out tentative fingers, shaking slightly, and he expected the man to speak, to shout and scream, when his finger met the chilled skin but . . . nothing.
No sound.
No movement.
No life.
Jones drew back his hand. The man was ice. Dead? Jones’s gaze swept down the column of men, and a cold but obvious fact suddenly registered in his confused mind. They were British soldiers, British infantry! They bore different ranks on their olive coats—Private, Sergeant, Lance Corporal—and some carried Lee-Enfields, some Berthier rifles, and Jones identified French uniforms as well as he progressed, as he started to walk on shaking legs down the tunnel lined with silent, cold men, their faces dead and pale white under ambient light, and their uniforms coated in mud and stained in places, Jones noticed, and all bearing weapons, several with heavy machine guns and mortars, and the more Jones walked, so the men, the tens of men, the hundreds of men, began to blend, began to fade behind him in a giant, coiling snake of silent flesh and he walked onwards and onwards and downwards and past a hundred men—a thousand men—and occasionally he would stop and touch them, to see if they were warm, to see if they were real, alive, but there was never a response, never any warmth, never any life, and Jones was cold with a strange fear but he went on, a stubbornness in his step and in the grim set of his jaw. These were soldiers, men, his men from back home in Blighty, and despite their silence and their cold he was curiously settled by their proximity, their very presence. These were comrades, comrades in war and death.
Jones passed on, and he knew not how long he walked, but his Naravelle rifle hung limp in one hand as he passed face after face, passed entire battalions, entire brigades, and there were British soldiers and French soldiers and American soldiers and Italian soldiers and—the real shock came. Jones stopped dead and gazed at the grim-eyed man, dark-haired with bombs tucked into his jackboots—German ——ing soldiers, stretching off into the distance, and Jones, wary now, continued to stride down the stone corridor lined with German soldiers and men from Austria-Hungary, and Turkish soldiers and Japanese soldiers and on it went until Jones’s eyes were weary and his legs were weary and the men were all together, all gathered in this place of death and he passed thousands upon thousands and the minutes and hours blended away and suddenly he stopped.
Jones was standing before a British Tommy. He was a large man, with dark, brooding eyes in thick eye sockets. His nose was out of joint from too many pub fights. He had a bearded face, a stocky neck, and rather brutal features.
Jones stared hard.
With a shock of almost electrical awakening he realised the man was Bainbridge. Charlie Bainbridge. His shirt soaked in blood, his face stoic, frosted, worm-white beneath his beard.
Jones reached out and took hold of Bainbridge’s shoulders, shook him, shouted, “Charlie, it’s me, Jones—listen to me, man, can you hear me? Answer me, damn you!” But Bainbridge was silent and chilled and it was with a sad regret that Jones released his grip. For a while, he could not bring himself to move on, so he leant against the tunnel and gazed at Bainbridge’s face, tears in his eyes, a fist in his skull.
“Am I dreaming?” he sighed, and his words echoed off up the tunnel, and into a dark place, an infinity.
Pulling himself together, and taking a hefty swig from his canteen, Jones moved away from the—he forced himself to admit it—from the dead figure of Bainbridge and continued down the tunnel and further into the heart of the mountain.
Faces began to register in his mind, flickering from the depths of distant memory, surfacing from pain and blood and there was Jappo and Toffee, there was Webb and Chauson and faces streamed past him as he walked on in cold and in wonder, and his feet were aching and the miles passed on, the miles flowed by, and time had no meaning and the days passed into weeks and he came to halls, giant, vaulted halls packed with silent armies of many different races, differing nationalities, all joined in death and silence and cold.
Jones picked his way carefully past them all, past a thousand such caverns and the days ran on into one another and still he descended and still it was cold but he did not need sleep, did not feel the need to sleep, and he passed a million men, ten million men, and they all bore arms and stood perfectly still and silent and waiting . . .
Waiting for what?
He stopped in the hall, gazed around at thousands of silent faces; the men were Hun, Fritzy, Germans, men he had spent weeks battling with out in the mud of No Man’s Land.
“I don’t understand!” he screamed suddenly, words reverberating from stone coffin walls, and he looked wildly around as his words bounced from wall to wall to wall, but nothing was said, no guide stepped forward and offered to show him the way. There came no help for Robert Jones of the Welsh Fusiliers.
He had passed beyond the realms of hope or help, and despite being surrounded by millions of men, millions of soldiers, he was truly, and totally, alone.
Jones continued walking in silence, the irony of the situation bitter on his tongue. His thoughts were sombre. He dropped his rifle somewhere—he did not remember where—and left it where it fell.
Why did he need a rifle, in this place?
He giggled.
They were all dead, weren’t they?
And then it ended.
He was walking down the tunnel, and it ended in swirling mist, darkness, thick and oily and blending with the walls.
He stumbled to a halt, eyes red-rimmed, and he was shivering, and leant himself against the tunnel wall.
Behind him, millions of men stretched off into infinity, their faces blank, and before him lay thick, curling smoke, and confusion.
What had Orana said?
It is beyond the Stoneway. It is a Beast that can end the war, can stop the war.
You can make it all come real, Robert.
You make it happen.
You can save millions of people.
You can be a saviour—not a destroyer!
What had she meant? What was this Iron Beast she’d spoken about, all those days ago within the cold sanctuary of the castle? Under crumbling towers when the world had seemed a much simpler place?
Where was the Beast?
The Iron Beast t
hat would end the war?
Suddenly, with a primal instinct, Jones wanted to be away from that place under the mountains.
He wanted to be away from the world; he wanted to put his past behind him and again indulge in the life of simplicity he had once known. He wanted to transgress the borders of reality, to step away from the game board of war and destruction and desolation. He could taste whiskey. Could taste it sweet on his tongue.
“——er.”
Jones glanced back at the ranks of silent, frozen men, all cold and dead and rigid and alone and waiting . . . waiting?
Waiting for what?
Jones gazed at the thick smoke ahead, and it swirled, and he could see images within the smoke, faces, bodies, naked twisting figures, dark-haired women, lithe and writhing in orgiastic pleasure.
“Come,” whispered a voice in his mind, and without thinking he stepped forward, and she had him, Orana had him, ensnared him, trapped him, and he was lost to her and lost to her cause and no longer a creature of freedom or choice but a pawn, a ——ing pawn . . . and he stepped into the smoke and coughed, choked as it forced down his throat and entered him, violated him, raped him.
He was opened up to the smoke; he was supple, bending before it, writhing himself, and he tried to scream, but his lungs were full, the choking smoke in him and part of him. He could feel it, dark, cold, solid, it was a drug for No Man’s Land, it was a song for No Man’s Land, and it judged him.
He laughed without humour.
It ——ing judged him, and thus defined itself as God. And yet it was not God; it was not holy, nor omniscient. Was it an angel, then? But no answer came, just mockery, and the drug and the song entered down through him, into his soul.
Robert Jones opened his eyes on the flat summit plateau of a black granite mountain. The jagged surface stretched away before him in all directions, littered with boulders.
The mountaintop was silent, except for the slow mournful wail of the mountain breeze.