The Ironclad Prophecy

by Kelleher, Pat

  So rapt was he by this communication that he scarcely noticed the slavering creature with matted fur and great long limbs, all angles and joints, as it swung screeching down towards him, teeth bared. He felt nothing. No fear, no anger, just a complete disinterest. Then his god, Skarra, the god of the underworld, spoke, its words a brief staccato chant of death. The gangly beast, its momentum stilled in mid-air by the abrupt invocation, dropped to the jungle floor, dead.

  His primitive escorts froze as the machine gun burst ripped through the air, but seeing the beast die they bowed and bobbed towards the Ivanhoe before moving off, emboldened by the protection now offered by the crawling god.

  Mathers looked down at the body, its long limbs twisted and snapped beneath it. He cricked his neck, cleared his throat, gathered himself and walked on for what seemed like hours, but he had no way of telling. Time seemed to expand and contract. The only constants he had were the jungle and the iron murmurs of Skarra.

  An excited muttering rippled between their urmen escorts. Mathers saw the reason for it. A totem. The mouldering body of an urman lashed to a carved post by liana vines, his chest split open, its soft tissues eaten long ago, leaving only a mummified husk. Echoing the hollow-eyed stare of the PH helmet on the top of his staff, its eye sockets were empty but for shadows and its jaw hung slackly as if in an eternal scream. Was it a sacrifice, a warning, a boundary marker or all three? It didn’t funk the urmen. If anything, they seemed relieved to pass it. It no doubt marked the edge of their territory.

  Transfixed by it, Mathers watched as darkness seemed to seep from the skull’s sockets with a malicious intent, threatening to drown him in the rising shadows. Yet he could not take his eyes from it.

  A voice reached out to him and he used it to pull his attention away from the deepening shadows about him.

  “A sacrifice.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “A sacrifice,” said his urman guide. “He was jundurru. Now he’s a warning to other bad spirits that come to tempt or trick the Gilderra Clan. They will face the same fate. Jarak’s magic is strong. You will see.”

  Mathers swallowed dryly, his tongue rasping against the roof of his mouth. He caught the tortured thing out of the corner of his eyes as he walked past it. If there was a chance to turn back, this was it. But now he felt no fear, no guilt. After all, he thought, why should he? Was he not under the aegis of the god of the underworld? Urged on by its whisperings in his mind, he took the first defiant step beyond the grisly totem. That broke the spell, and from thereon his fate was sealed.

  The Ivanhoe rumbled past it, oblivious to its petty magics. The ground shuddered under its passing and the totem trembled in the wake of its iron tread.

  AS THE TREES thinned, Mathers saw the urmen escort waiting expectantly on their edge. Beyond, a great wall of living bark rose up before them. Great thick sheets of it spanned the spaces between rising tree trunks, forming a stockade. They were not cut and hewn by crude tools, but grafted by some esoteric form of arboriculture from the very trees themselves, shaping and training the living wood so that planes of thick rough bark, some twenty or thirty feet high, grew from one tree to the next to form a natural living barricade, supported and strengthened by pleached boughs. Roots thrust out from the base of the living bark wall like natural buttresses. In spite of himself, and anything he expected to find on this world, Mathers was impressed. This was obviously a much older enclave than they had visited before. Established, less nomadic than those of their previous encounters. The gnarled and cracked bark fortification told of decades of growth, if not a century or more. This looked promising.

  The jungle had been cleared from around the stockade and overhanging boughs cut back, right up to the canopy, which spanned out high above to become a natural vault.

  Their urman escort called out with a yodelling cry towards the bark-walled enclave. A single great crack echoed around the clearing, followed by a succession of dry creaks. Two large gates of bark opened, revealing the compound within. Stood in the open gateway was a small party of urmen, who moved aside out of deference and fear as Mathers entered the clearing, the tank waiting in the jungle shadows behind him.

  Cerulean trees, their trunks ten or twenty feet in diameter, rose high above into the vaulted canopy overhead, many stripped of their bark to a height of some fifty or sixty feet. Mathers soon saw why. The dwellings clustered below within the stockade were themselves made of great curved sheets of bark. Crepuscular fingers of light sliced down through the canopy, illuminating the clearing with an almost ethereal glow. There, he found nearly a hundred urmen women and children, watching him in silence.

  He threw out his arms and, almost as one, the urmen dropped to their knees.

  “I offer you a blessing in the name of Skarra!”

  Behind him, the tank came to a halt, cresting a mammoth tree root where it squatted like some monstrous toad. There was a muttered response from the gathered enclave, who looked afraid and uncertain.

  Mathers strode forwards towards the small central group, where a man wore a headdress made from an Yrredetti facial plate. He was dressed in a mottled fur cloak over a chest plate assembled from the carapace of some dead creature, scraped clean and now inscribed with symbols.

  Next to him stood a smaller, wiry man, patterns of ritual scarification obvious on his face even under the ceremonial daubings of white clay smeared across his skin. Mostly naked, he wore only a loin cloth and bands of chitinous exoskeleton, harvested from some arthropod’s limbs, decorating his wrists, upper arms and ankles. The man regarded him with a sullen stare. This must be Jarak.

  A group of tense and jumpy warriors stood behind them.

  “I am Dranethwe of the Gilderra,” said the headdress wearer. When he spoke it was with the same inflections but a more heavily accented English than any other urman Mathers had heard before. It was recognisable, however, if a little hard to follow at first. “My clan is honoured by your presence,” the urmen went on. “We are grateful that the gods have heard us and that our offerings did not go unheeded.”

  “Skarra hears all,” replied Mathers. Really, it was no more difficult communicating with them than with any other foreign subject of the British Empire. Learning a few words of their lingo always helped, but above all, keep it short and keep it simple. That way there would be no misunderstandings. Failing that, they always had the Ivanhoe. He turned back towards the tank. With great pomp, he anointed each track horn with the tip of his staff, while hissing out a command to Clegg.

  “It’s showtime.”

  ALFIE WATCHED AS the others grinned and struggled to put on their rain capes, helmets and splash masks in the confines of the tank, with all the eagerness of actors in the wings. Alfie wanted to speak out, to take one last chance to persuade them, but now wasn’t the time. That time had long since passed, he realised. They were committed to a course of action, and he felt very uneasy about it.

  Handing out the ‘turtle shell’ bruise helmets, Norman thrust Alfie’s into the mechanic’s chest and held it there. He leaned in close, his mouth close to Alfie’s ear.

  “Don’t funk it. If you mess this up for us, I’ll have you.”

  Alfie felt his face smart as if he’d been struck. As if he would. As if he’d put his crewmates in jeopardy. How could he even question that? He said nothing, but met his gaze with a sullen silence. Then, with Norman still watching, he put on his splash mask and helmet. Norman nodded, apparently satisfied, before popping something into his mouth and putting on his own splash mask.

  Wally cut the engine and the tank’s growling died in its throat as if pleased by the enclave’s submission to its will. He lit the hurricane lamps and hung them before the driver’s visors then opened the front visor hatches. The light from the lanterns flooded out as Skarra’s piercing gaze lit the clearing. As quietly as possible, the crew bundled out of the hatches in the rear of the sponsons, hidden by the bulk of the Ivanhoe. At the rear of the tank Cecil and Reggie lit torch
es with a Lucifer. They fell into Indian file.

  Glumly Alfie fell in with the others behind Mathers as they began intoning their version of a mock liturgical chant, but he couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for it. Like Mathers’, their rain capes were daubed with symbols, only less ornate. Wally and Frank were in front carrying rifles, bayonets fixed, in the present position, like crucifixes. Behind them came Cecil and Reggie, bearing the flaming torches. Alfie and Norman brought up the rear of the procession. Alfie knew it was so that Norman could keep an eye on him, and he resented the fact. Jack stayed in the tank, ready with a loaded gun, should the urmen require the ultimate demonstration. Alfie felt nauseous. The Padre would be spitting feathers if he could see them now.

  The first thing they did was to put the local shaman in his place with a display of superior ‘magic.’ After that, the others usually fell over themselves to worship them.

  Behind him, under his rain cape, Norman was preparing his trick.

  “I love this bit,” said Cecil, the glee evident in his voice under his mask and cape. “Especially when Norman does his Great Stromboli bit. I wish he’d show me how it’s done.”

  Reggie nudged him. “Ces, be quiet.”

  “I feel sorry for the poor old fool that’s got to go up against us this time,” hissed Norman from underneath his mask. “This is going to be my best performance yet.”

  “Well, I still feel dashed ridiculous.”

  “Should be right at home then, Reggie.”

  “Keep your bloody voices down and do it just as we’ve done before,” warned Frank.

  Within the whispers and flutters of the torch flames Mathers heard the voice of Skarra. He cocked his head and listened. He halted the procession before the urman chief and his medicine man. Dranethwe glanced sidelong at his white-faced shaman, who sized up the masked commander, smacking his lips, unimpressed.

  “Behold the Warrior Priests of Boojum,” said Mathers, indicating his crew. “We serve Skarra when he is in this world and we speak for him.”

  The white clay smeared shaman stepped forward, proud and defiant.

  We’re on his turf, thought Alfie, and he don’t like it one little bit. And I can’t say as I blame him, either.

  “He looks like a slippery little bugger,” hissed Frank.

  “Oh, aye, he looks proper carny, he does. We ought to keep an eye on this one,” said Wally.

  Mathers thumped his staff end down on the ground, affronted. “You think you have the power to summon Skarra? Your magics are not strong enough for that. Skarra came because he wished it. As for us, you may question our power. But you may not like the answer.”

  “Bloody hell, the sub’s piling it on a bit thick isn’t he, what’s he up to?” muttered Cecil. Alfie kicked him, warning him to be quiet.

  The shaman approached Mathers and performed a series of practised moves of some magical significance, flicking his tongue in and out. Was this some sort of ceremonial greeting, or was the wily old codger sizing up the opposition? Perhaps it was more of a challenge. I’ll show you my juju, you show me yours. Mathers had seen the same thing in the Officer’s mess, when the new blood, cocksure of themselves, goaded the old guard, feeling threatened and having something to prove. This man’s ability had been called into question and they had appeared to challenge it. Best sort this now. Let this shower know who was in charge.

  The shaman prised open a small leather bag hung from his waist, reached in and dug out a handful of white ashes. He began to dance around them, chanting, before throwing the ashes into the air above them. He sank down on his haunches and, with great intent, watched the ashes caught like swirling motes above them, drifting down over the crew in the shafts of sunlight, as if their motions divined some truth or intent.

  “What on earth’s the geezer doing now?”

  “Not Dulgur,” Jarak said finally.

  “Is that the best he’s got? We’re well in here.”

  Mathers thumped his staff on the ground twice and the file of tank crew behind him opened out into a well-drilled rank, sticking the torches into the ground either side of the Ivanhoe’s track horns.

  The tank squatted like a great iron idol for him, its track horns open and welcoming like beneficent arms, lit by the torches planted either side. Alfie did have to admit it looked damned impressive.

  Norman slipped something into his mouth under the chainmail that draped down over the lower half of his face. He stepped forwards and smoke and sparks began to billow through the chainmail curtain in front of his mouth.

  The few simple conjuring tricks from his time on the boards had served him well at concert parties or for charming French peasant girls in the estaminets. Now, he made objects disappear and reappear and the urmen shuffled back uneasily with groans of fear. He tore up a large leaf, burnt it by breathing fire on it and brought it back, whole, to life again. To end the performance on a spectacular note, Jack fired the flare pistol from a pistol port and a bright white light arced into the vaulted forest space above.

  “TRULY, YOUR MAGIC is great,” declared Dranethwe for all the assembled clan to hear. He glanced at Jarak, who glared back. Defeated, the shaman slunk away to lick his wounds, which were deep. He had lost face in front of his chief and his clan. The rest of the enclave fell to their knees, lowering their foreheads to the ground before Skarra.

  “Up, up,” boomed Mathers. “Skarra accepts your genuflection and while Skarra may not feel the trials of life, his acolytes do. Bring food and water. Bring tribute for Skarra and his benevolence. Hurry. Do not anger him.”

  The clan scrambled to their feet. Dranethwe clapped his hands and the throng burst into activity, mothers snatched children into large bark dwellings, afraid the god of the underworld would take their children before their time.

  Dranethwe clapped his hands again and villagers brought forth platters of fruit and meats and laid them before the masked crew. Sat between the track horns of the Ivanhoe, the crew fell on the food, tearing at sticky wet pulps, spitting pips and stones and ripping greasy meat from carcasses.

  “Oi, manners!” said Reggie.

  Frank belched loudly, provoking raucous laughter from the crew.

  “At least have the decency to say Grace. We are British. We are not savages. Have you forgotten everything I’ve taught you?”

  “Sorry, Mother,” Frank said, with mock contrition.

  One by one they put their food down and clasped their hands half-heartedly as Reggie said Grace, the sound of ‘Amen’ starting a race for the food again.

  Reggie sighed. “Savages.”

  Mathers, still wearing his splash mask, sat with them but ate little, watching his men with a sense of beneficence.

  “Sir?” said Clegg, offering a platter of meats to Mathers. “Aren’t you eating?”

  “Hmm? Shh. I’m listening to Skarra.”

  “Skarra, sir? You mean Ivanhoe?”

  “Hmm. Yes, I suppose I do. Don’t you hear it?”

  “Hear what, sir? The engine is off.”

  “You don’t hear it? No. No, of course you don’t. I’m blessed, aren’t I?” Mathers said, fingering his jacket collar through the neck hole of his rain cape.

  Clegg looked at the two lieutenant pips winking in the firelight. “Yes, sir. I guess you are.”

  Sated, they sat back, picked their teeth, and wiped their mouths on their sleeves. Round the fire before Ivanhoe, the crew spoke in low voices.

  “This isn’t right,” muttered Alfie.

  “It’s an offering. It’s their way. If we didn’t take it, they would be offended and what’s more, they’d know we wasn’t big juju men. Besides,” Frank added with a grin, “the women will come along later. They always do.”

  “We used to be a tight-knit crew. What happened?” asked Alfie.

  Frank glared at him. “We are. What happened to you, Alfie?”

  “Got himself a long-haired chum is what happened.”

  “Leave Nellie out of this. She’s got nothing to do w
ith it. Can’t you see? What we’re doing, it’s wrong.”

  Norman rolled his eyes. “Oh, listen to Uncle Joe, here.”

  Wally leaned forward. “Look, we could live like these fellows, grubbing an existence, of course we could. But that’s no better than living in the trenches, is it? There’s nothing for us back there. Here we’ve got a chance, a real chance to be something better.”

  Jack sat, whittling, not saying a word. Cecil kept glancing at him, watching him for cues, eager to jump whatever way Jack did, but Jack for the moment kept his own counsel.

  NORMAN SPOKE THROUGH a mouthful of meat. “Look, we’ve extended our travel range a little by bringing extra petrol fruit fuel with us, but if we got each of these enclaves to distil the petrol fruit as, say, an offering to the great Skarra, then what have we got?”

  Cecil looked at him blankly, stuck out his lower lip and shook his head.

  Alfie could see which way this was going.

  Norman waved the meat bone about. “We’ve got ourselves a supply line, Reggie, haven’t we? Fuel dumps. We’d no longer be dependent on the camp. We’d have our own followers, our own army. We could push on and conquer more. We don’t need the poor bloody infantry. They need us more than we need them.”

  Cecil nodded eagerly. “That’s right.”

  Mathers, who had been silent until now, and content to listen, spoke up. “Why be soldiers, when we can be kings? Why be kings, when we can be gods?”

  “Exactly, sir.”

  Frank warmed to the theme. “And with an army of urmen we could enslave the chatts. They love digging, can’t get enough of it. But we can channel them, enslave them, and get them to dig for what we want them to dig for. This world is virgin territory, from what I’ve seen. Untapped wealth. We can get them to mine for gold, for silver, for rubies. Anything we want. We’d be rich.”