by Ste Sharp
‘Why is there only one army?’ he asked.
Crossley shrugged. ‘Maybe the losers were really small?’
‘Or they turned to dust when they died?’ Olan added.
John gave the dirt a scuffled kick, sending a cloud up to his shins.
Up ahead, past the densest concentration of bodies, John could see symmetrical lines in the ground. ‘Are they…?’
‘Ah, yeah I get it.’ Crossley nodded.
Olan looked confused until the lines became rows of mounds. ‘They buried their dead?’
‘Probably after their enemy headed to the silver gates,’ Crossley said. ‘The obelisk called them the Frarex. They lost.’
John shivered at the thought of coming up against some of the creatures they’d seen on the battlefields. ‘But we’ll have to meet one of these armies at some point, won’t we?’
‘Sure.’ A grin spread across Crossley’s face. ‘Poor devils, ha!’
‘That’s if the losers stay here,’ Olan said.
‘What if they die when they are defeated?’ Euryleia said.
‘Maybe the defeated soldiers just go back home?’ Crossley said.
‘I doubt it,’ Samas replied. ‘This land has little love for the weak.’
‘Most of these sites have been looted,’ John said. ‘Which means someone must still be here.’
‘Unless new armies like ours are picking the bones?’ Crossley said.
‘Or victorious armies plundering before leaving?’ Olan added.
‘Anyone here would be battle-hardened.’ Euryleia stared out to the horizon.
Samas said, ‘Listen, we’re getting stronger every day and with a little more training we’ll fight as one unit.’ He held up his clay cast. ‘John and I are both healing well.’
John raised his gun-arm and smiled. ‘I think mine might be more permanent.’
Samas shrugged. ‘Who knows? If I ever get this thing off.’ He wrapped his knuckles against the rock-hard cast.
‘The rate everyone heals here, it should be fixed the day after tomorrow,’ Euryleia said and turned to John. ‘How is your arm?’
‘Well, it doesn’t weigh as much as it did,’ John replied. ‘But I can’t get the magazine in so I won’t be much use when it comes to fighting.’
‘No excuses, John, we’ll all have a use, believe me,’ Samas said. ‘My shield arm’s out of action but I’ll still fight. How about fixing a spear to your gun?’
‘I don’t know how to fight with a spear and…’
‘It’s fine,’ Euryleia cut in. ‘We’ll know what we need to do when the enemy attacks.’
‘Could be at any moment.’ Crossley pointed at a new patch of bizarre, dead creatures.
‘Okay, I’ll think about it,’ John said, reminding himself to stay strong. ‘What are you going to do, Crossley?’
The American grinned. ‘I’m still waiting to get my hands on some decent explosives.’
‘What we really need is water,’ Euryleia said.
‘And some food before our rations run out,’ Samas added.
‘Good luck,’ Crossley said in his usual manner.
John looked around at the burnt and desolate plain. ‘Somewhere to sleep tonight would be good as well.’
Samas craned his neck to see the men at the front of the line, who had stopped.
Bowman was waving. ‘Althorn’s back!’
***
‘In that direction,’ Althorn pointed to the right of their path, ‘near a tributary of the lake, I came across a camp of tents, big as a forest, all torn and full of corpses.’
Althorn was covered in dust and stretched his legs while the group rested around him.
‘They were killed in their sleep.’
Crossley raised his eyebrows at John.
‘Who were the dead?’ Lavalle asked.
Althorn shrugged. ‘Another tribe of alien soldiers. Who knows how long they lay there.’
John tried not to show his fear. A memory came back to him from a raid into enemy territory after his battalion had taken a German trench. He’d stepped into an officers’ mess and, to his horror, found it fully manned. Full of gassed enemy troops. They looked like they were sleeping, John had thought. Some held gas masks in their laps and others were slumped in their chairs.
‘So you suggest we head ten degrees left and aim for this forest?’ Mihran asked.
‘It’s our best chance of finding water,’ Althorn replied.
John looked at Crossley. ‘This plain must be huge if Althorn didn’t leave it.’
‘Sure, but it can’t all be like this though, hey?’
‘Come on then.’ Samas called the battalion to its feet. ‘Let’s move!’
‘During our first day in the forest, we used a wide formation to find water.’ Lavalle talked to Mihran and Li as they walked.
Mihran shook his head. ‘Too dangerous – the arrowhead will suffice.’
John saw Lavalle grimace as he pulled back to walk with the infantry. The public humiliation he’d received hadn’t only cost him Euryleia, but his standing in the battalion.
John heard low growling noises and looked at Crossley. ‘You’ll give yourself a nosebleed if you keep doing that.’ He sounded more like his grandfather than he would have liked.
‘How else are we going to find water?’ Crossley whispered back.
John spotted Mata on the right flank. ‘I might know a way.’
***
The battalion reached what looked like a tree sculpted from stone. John picked a tiny black feather from the twisted rock and guessed it was a leaf.
‘Water.’ Mata pointed at a dry crack opened by a broad granite root.
‘Can you sense anything?’ Mihran asked Li, who was busy scanning the tree and ground.
‘Possibly… this tree is alive. Very slow-growing. No free water.’
Crossley stood next to Li and cleared his throat. ‘How about here.’ He pointed to a gap between the dirt and root.
‘Yes, the tree must have penetrated the rock to access an aquifer. Quick, get–’ Li started.
But Mata was there first: his left arm stretched into a twisted mass of brown vines, curled through the crack and into the earth to open up a depression two paces wide.
Li turned to Crossley. ‘How did you know?’
‘I…’ he stuttered. ‘I know my geology obviously and…’
Randeep rushed forward. ‘Do you have an ability we don’t know about?’
‘What? No! What gave you that idea? Anyways, you can’t talk with your apparently invisible sword.’
‘I haven’t hidden anything and my oath is sacred.’ Randeep stared at Crossley. ‘All abilities must be known.’
‘Okay, but…’
‘Look!’ John said and they turned to Mata, who breathed hard as he coiled his arm back out of the crevice.
The small crater had filled with trickles of fresh water, which transformed into a small pond.
Althorn rushed forward. ‘Let me test it.’ He dipped an elbow and rubbed some on his wrist and lips. ‘It’s good. And cold!’
‘Stand in line!’ Mihran bellowed when the nearest soldiers moved in to drink. ‘Slake your thirst, refill your canteens, then move on – we must find shelter before dark.’
John stood next to Crossley, who was nervously staring at patches of the ground. ‘What is it?’ he asked as the American coughed, turned and coughed again.
‘I’m not sure, but I think I’ve found something, maybe a–’
Crossley’s last word was cut off as explosions erupted around the soldiers, filling the air with dust.
John’s first instinct had been to hit the ground, assuming it was mortar fire. ‘Get down!’ he shouted and pulled Crossley with him.
Through the stinging dust, John saw large shapes rise from the ground and attack the nearest soldiers. Through their legs he saw dark-blue shells and snapping pincers. He lay paralysed with fear as the huge creatures snapped at archers and spearmen, who fought va
liantly to keep the enemy back. A disembowelled rifleman was writhing and screaming in his own blood and excrement, and a huge claw came crashing down, splitting him in two. John looked away. Lightning flashed, burning John’s eyes, and a beast fell to the ground with steam pouring from a hole in its head. He saw Li, picking them off with accurate shots.
On the other flank, Samas was defending against another blue creature and Mihran was beside him, slashing with his formidable sword: removing limb after limb before finally taking the head of the attacker.
Two minutes after it had begun, it was all over. Five blue bodies lay next to seven dead men.
The war between humans and Brakari had begun.
Chapter 10
‘Victorio Brakarius,’ Millok replied to a guard.
She maintained her strong striding walk through the gates of the barracks.
Any sign of weakness and the soldiers would attack her in an instant, she knew. They despised female fighters. It had been the same back home, where the soldiers would show her up on exercises or intimidate her in the barracks. She had kept her carapace tight and head down but they still taunted her with threats of forced mating and torture.
Millok kept her antennae low as she passed a group of older Brakari sharing war stories and scars.
‘…and the Skrifts just tore him apart. What was he thinking?’
‘Must have had air in his shell.’
Is this how my life will always be? Millok thought. The threat of violence keeping me silent? The main reason she had agreed to Doctor Cynigar’s experiments was for protection. Hosting a collection of unknown and lethal adaptations gave the aggressive soldiers second thoughts about trying to mate with her. It had been worse back home. After one of the largest soldiers tried to do his worst, Millok had reacted as any soldier would. When his decapitated body had been found in the mud saunas, the bullying stopped.
Millok climbed the steep wooden steps to the guard tower situated in the corner of the barracks. Her foreleg still ached but her other limbs were strong enough to pull her sleek body up to the platform, where two young soldiers kept watch.
The youngest soldier advanced. ‘You are not permitted–’ he started, but the other soldier leapt forward and nudged his shell.
Millok tensed and let two shocks of blue light up the new streaks that ran across her grey shell.
‘Captain Millok.’ The soldier bowed and turned back.
She was getting used to her new name. Bitet had been her name since hatching, but her adaptations had given her new powers, so why not a new name as well?
‘Leave me be,’ she ordered and the guards scuttled back to their posts.
Millok cleared her spiracles with a sharp exhalation and drew in fresh air as she walked around the tower, peering through various openings. The barracks had been built into the tall grey walls at a corner of the city by the river, which brought a cool breeze from the central lake.
‘Abzicrutia stinks,’ she muttered to herself, sure she could see a brown haze rising from the streets and mud domes.
How fast it had been built, and how quickly it had become a festering pit of filth. Streams of sewage ran down the main streets where packs of the black, wolf-like Skrifts were straining at their chains, feeding on the Brakari waste. The smell of other enslaved creatures wafted up on the air and Millok shut her spiracles. Lining the walls were the holding cells where General Panzicosta held captive soldiers for interrogation. The rumours of what he did to them made her shudder. Limp-limbed Ilanos, low slithering Gartoniads, even the few furred Sorean who had survived Panzicosta’s torture would be forced to fight with the Brakari, along with the restrained Lutamek robots. Millok tensed and felt a wave of guilt wash through her for the bracing she had used to keep the electronic behemoths at bay.
A snippet of conversation wafted up from the barracks below: ‘–told me a few of the scout groups haven’t checked in and Glexar thinks they were killed by the human army.’
So the enemy draw near, Millok thought, and they’re proving to be more dangerous than Panzicosta’s Draytor gave them credit for.
Turning to the city’s solitary entrance, a stone’s throw from her watchtower, Millok watched a stream of light-blue hatchling soldiers leaving the city. They were full of energy, bounding down the dirt streets and chattering away to each other with clicks and warbles. Her antennae twitched and her stomach acids swirled as she fought her emotions. She tried to detach herself from it, like a good soldier, but no matter how you looked at it, the truth always came back to her: these were her children.
Millok’s trade with Doctor Cynigar had been simple. She’d given her eggs to replace the troops the Brakari had lost through their wars, and she would receive advanced adaptations as compensation. She’d had little choice – they would have strapped her down and cut her eggs out if she’d said no – but her instincts remained intact. She felt she should be protecting her brood, at least until their shells had hardened.
Outside the walls, the bulky armour-headed troops of the soil massed together, burrowing into the dusty soil, creating mounds to rest in. A host of Lutamek were being chained together to form a land train and, beyond them, the tip of a tall white tent could be seen next to the bulky black shape of Belsang’s Vaalori. Inside, the Brakari leader was drawing up plans.
Sounds of commotion below attracted the guards next to Millok but she ignored them. Battle was not far away. She moved around the watchtower’s edge and found herself staring at the distant mist. On a clear day, you could see the slum that had grown around the great gates, and Millok had lost count of the number of armies she had seen make the victorious march through to the other side. She no longer let herself daydream about what lay beyond. It didn’t matter any more. What did she really have left to live for? She flexed her sore leg and felt the pain jolt through her nerves. Would she be fit enough to fight?
A sound made her turn – it was one of the guards.
‘Captain Millok?’ he repeated.
He was young too, she thought, but not one of hers.
‘Yes,’ she replied.
‘It’s General Panzicosta – he requests your presence.’
***
Gal-qadan smiled as he watched his soldiers file through the last clumps of orange cacti and into the dark pine forest. In close combat, his enemies would be powerless against this small but deadly force.
‘We need more men,’ he growled at Tode.
‘I shall ask the scouts to look for lone warriors,’ Tode replied.
‘And horses. Can these men ride horses?’ Gal-qadan asked.
‘Yes, Khan. Dakaniha assures me he was one of his clan’s greatest riders.’
‘I would like to see if it’s true.’ Gal-qadan kept his face stone hard as he stared at Dakaniha and his compatriots, who talked out of earshot at the front of the line.
Gal-qadan had watched the men bicker and taken note. It wouldn’t be good to let wounds fester. For now though, their objective was clear: find food and water and maintain the direction the Japanese swordsmen had been taking.
‘Send the archers to hunt.’ Gal-qadan ordered Tode away.
Gal-qadan felt content on his own, here at the back of the line, from where he could peer up through the dark forest canopy in private. He didn’t want his men to know his secret: he had to keep up the pretence that he knew the way to the silver gates his men talked of.
***
‘So is your great leader everything you thought he would be?’ Kastor asked Dakaniha as they stood at a cliff top.
‘His military prowess speaks for itself,’ Dakaniha replied. ‘And he led us out of the cactus lands.’
‘True.’ Kastor nodded. ‘But is he really a leader? And what does he know about this land?’
‘He survived on his own while others perished,’ Dakaniha replied and pointed at the canopy of deciduous trees at the bottom of the cliff. ‘This forest is different.’
‘And it goes on forever!’ said an Ottoman soldier,
as the rest of the group arrived at the cliff top.
‘How much further, Great Leader?’ Dakaniha asked.
‘Distance should not concern you, only how we get there,’ Tode said.
‘But we only have fourteen days,’ the Mayan warrior said.
Gal-qadan glared at the man.
‘We must find a way down the cliff. You three,’ Gal-qadan pointed at Kastor, Dakaniha and Osayimwese, ‘descend here.’ He pointed to a goat path that zigzagged down the cliff face. ‘Everyone else, this way.’ He pointed to a landslip which had created a rocky slope down to the cliff base.
‘Really?’ Kastor stood with hands on hips. ‘You go that way and we go–’
‘Come on!’ Dakaniha was already a few steps down the path.
Kastor shook his head and followed, using his long spear for balance.
Dakaniha didn’t care if Kastor thought him too eager to impress Gal-qadan. The Mongol was a great soldier and any warrior wishing to improve their skills could learn from such a man.
His feet pattered rhythmically against the sandy soil of the cliff, but slid to a stop when he heard yelling from the forest below. Movement could be seen through the branches and leaves: somebody running.
‘What’s happening?’ Kastor caught up.
‘There.’ Osayimwese pointed down to a dark figure speeding through the woodland.
‘Is that the soldier who killed the Roc?’ Kastor asked.
‘Looks like it. He’s being chased.’
Seven dark-grey shapes rose out of the soil of the woodland floor, closing in on the running man.
‘Wolves,’ Dakaniha said.
‘We must save him!’ Osayimwese raised his spear and looked at Kastor, as if to challenge him.
‘You’re on!’ the Spartan grinned and scampered down the cliff path.
Dakaniha ignored the two spearmen and strung his bow. He stepped and slid down the steep hillside to a better vantage point. Below, the dark shadow of the rifleman burst out into the opening lining the cliff base. The man’s clothes reminded Dakaniha of his enemy – the British – and his conscience told him he should not be saving this man.