The Ironclad Prophecy

by Kelleher, Pat

  Gutsy’s lip curled in disgust as he watched the chatt enthuse over the poor sod.

  “Can’t we cut him down?” asked Nellie.

  Napoo glanced around, examining the area around the totem without touching it. “No. It’s a warning. A totem to ward off jundurru – bad magic. Its power is strong.”

  “To-tem,” repeated Chandar, its fleshy mouth palps moving thoughtfully, as if committing the word to memory.

  “At least somebody’s happy,” muttered Mercy.

  They walked past it, each man intent on following the tank tracks at their feet, avoiding the hollow-eyed gaze of the totem sacrifice.

  THEY HAD NOT got far beyond it when the section found themselves surrounded by urmen with spears and bark shields. Long blowpipes were aimed at them. The Tommies raised their bayonets to the guard position.

  The agitated urmen were restrained only by a strong voice that barked out of the shadows. The Enfields came up and bolts cycled. It was a stand off.

  Napoo stepped forwards, fingers splayed, patting the air, as he passed the Tommies. “Lower your firesticks.”

  The Tommies looked at Atkins. He nodded and the bayonets were lowered. He hoped their urman guide could persuade his kin of their honest intentions and at least find out if they had any information before things went to hell. Atkins glowered and shook his head. An urman with a white-painted face stepped from the shadows. Napoo bowed. “I am Napoo, chief of the Horuk Clan. This urman is Onli of the Tohmii.”

  “Those aren’t our real names,” muttered Atkins.

  “This man is a shaman,” Napoo told him. “They believe given names have power. I spoke our taken names, which have less power.”

  “You give your name too freely, stranger.” The shaman rolled his eyes upwards, scanning the canopy. “Here in the Thalpa groves, the spirits may take them. If they haven’t already.”

  “The Tohmii are strong,” replied Napoo. “Our names are still our own. We seek kin of theirs, keepers of a great beast. We have followed its spore here.” He pointed at the twin tracks on the ground.

  Several of the urmen muttered amongst themselves before one suddenly let out a tongue-trilling alarm. It had spotted Chandar.

  “You walk with the Ones,” the shaman said, his lip curled in loathing. “You are not true urmen. You are their chattel!” He gave a signal.

  Atkins felt a sting and clapped his hands to his neck to find a feathered dart protruding from his skin above his collar. He plucked it out and looked at it in a quizzical way as it swam out of focus. “Bollocks,” he muttered, through a suddenly drying mouth as his sense of balance went and he fell over. The skull-like visage of the shaman appeared in his tunnelling vision before all faded into blackness.

  TIRED AND ACHING, he found himself walking down a cobbled street of familiar terraced houses, the numbers on the front doors counting down as he walked. The sky above was grey, leaden, and laced with the promise of rain. The smell of hops from the brewery hung heavily in the air and he breathed the familiar aroma deeply. With every step he took, he felt the exhilaration of a soldier on leave, nearing the end of his journey. He sensed lace curtains twitching. He could feel the weight of his pack on his back. An old woman shaking a tablecloth into the breeze tutted as he passed and shut the door on him.

  A man in a flat cap and shabby jacket passed him on the street. “You’re no better than you ought to be,” he said with venom.

  Still the numbers counted down as he walked, and there it was. Number 12. Flora’s parents’ house. Flora Mullins. The girl he had loved all his life. He dropped the pack from his back and began running. As he approached, the door opened and Flora stepped out. She was wearing a white blouse and long skirt, a shawl across her shoulder, no, not a shawl, something cradled on her shoulder in a shawl. A baby. He came to a stop yards from her, his heart wanting to burst with joy and pride. He smiled at her. She smiled back, and he took a step towards her. Someone else stepped from the door behind her, a man in shirtsleeves and braces, a man he knew well, better than any other. His brother William, declared missing on the Somme.

  “William! You’re alive. Thank God.”

  His brother stepped towards him. The smile vanished from William’s face as he did, contorting into a black scowl of anger and resentment, his hand clenching into a fist.

  “Alive? More than I can say for you, you little shit, you bastard, I’ll kill you! I hope you rot in whatever hell you find yourself in!”

  He heard Flora scream as William swung at him. The fist connected with his jaw and he went down, the world spinning into blackness, the scream still ringing in his ears.

  THE SCREAM WENT on and pain flooded his consciousness. He opened his eyes. He was lying on his side. He tried to move and couldn’t; his hands were tied behind his back. He strained his neck to find the source of the screams. It was Nellie. She was lashing out at their captors with her legs, the accuracy of her kicks hampered only by her calf-length khaki skirt, until they kept their distance, regarding her warily, and she had to settle for glaring at them. Atkins’ eyes met those of Mercy. “Bastards ambushed us with blow-pipes,” said the private.

  Rough hands hauled Atkins to his feet. There were groans of protest around him as the others were pulled up, too. He counted all his men, Napoo, Nellie and Chandar. Their guns and equipment were piled up across the clearing, where some urmen were rifling through their haversacks.

  He took in their surroundings. They were in an open space bordered on three sides by forest. On the fourth side, the land came to a stop and dropped away steeply. A gnarled narrow platform, grown out from the tree roots around it, extended out over the precipice.

  Stood before the platform was the urman with the white-painted face. The shaman. His warriors stood solemnly around the clearing behind the bound soldiers.

  “My name is Jarak,” the shaman said. “I had a clan. I had an enclave. I had honour. Now all that has been stolen from me. I have nothing left but my power. Our chief was weak, desperate, and he found my magic wanting. Your kin came to our land with their spirit, Skarra, saying that their magic can banish the devil that has been taking our people. But why need it take my people when it can take you instead? If you are as strong as you say, then you will make worthy sacrifices to the spirits. Maybe then they will deliver us from the dulgur.”

  He nodded and two of the warriors started herding Porgy towards the platform, his feet digging into the tree spoil as he struggled.

  “Porgy!” Atkins started forward, but two warriors restrained him.

  Porgy cast him an empty glance as he passed. He’d seen the same look in men’s eyes before they went over the top; the look of men without hope.

  “Wait,” said Atkins, standing as erect as his bonds and aching body would allow him. His dream was still fresh in his mind, and the self-loathing it provoked still stirred within him. “My given name is Atkins, Thomas, 19644, C Company, 13th Battalion, Pennine Fusiliers.”

  The shaman regarded him with interest. “You are not afraid to reveal your given name?”

  “No.”

  The shaman’s eyes narrowed. He nodded at his warriors who shoved Porgy back with the others, knocking them over like skittles.

  “Only, don’t!”

  “It’s done,” he said. “Make the most of it. Get out of here alive.”

  Atkins walked out onto the platform under his own steam, a little unsteadily, but his resolve seemed to impress the shaman. He was the NCO in charge. It was the right thing to do. It might not pay for all the wrong he’d done, but this was all he had. It would have to do. If this could buy his section time to free themselves, then all to the good. Right now, his brother’s words were still fresh in his mind; never mind that they were a dream, they only served to remind him of his own thoughts. He deserved whatever fate had in store for him.

  The shaman anointed Atkins’ forehead with some greasy, rank smelling unguent. Atkins flinched involuntarily. He looked straight ahead at the horizon, framed on ei
ther side by the entwined and fused branches and roots that formed the living wood platform. Beyond it, the jungle tumbled headlong over the precipice, falling in a tangle of branches, roots and liana as the ground plunged away, where, hundreds of feet below, the jungle continued almost uninterrupted by the drop.

  The shaman called out in his own tongue, his arms thrown wide in invocation. Warriors with spears urged Atkins to the edge of the platform out over the precipice. Around him, the boughs and roots of the platform groaned and squeaked. The wood beneath his feet had been worn smooth. How many other sacrifices had it taken over the years? How many had plunged to their deaths here? He looked straight ahead, the sense of vertigo making him stagger, but the root rails prevented him from falling. Far out across the jungle below he saw another escarpment rising on the far side. A discolouration of the jungle canopy below, marking out a long, wide, straight line, caught his eye. It didn’t seem natural, but he had other things on his mind.

  As the shaman continued his liturgy, Atkins’ world shrank, the pleached boughs either side of him becoming revetments. He was back in the trenches, waiting for the whistle, listening to the artillery barrage and the sound of machine gun bullets zipping through the air over his head, like invisible insects. He smiled bitterly as he remembered his own personal good luck ritual; if he could still smell the perfume on Flora’s last letter he would survive. His hands were tied behind his back. The letter was in the inside pocket of his tunic in his paybook. He guessed that was that, then. Time to go over the bags. He heard the shouts of the men and the loud boom and wail of an artillery shell. A second later, a plume of fire and dirt and shredded wood exploded up from the jungle below.

  The urmen warriors wailed. The shaman turned, a look of puzzlement on his face. A look that transformed into one of fury as the crushing of trees and the clank and whine of heavy armour filled the clearing. The Ivanhoe rumbled out of the jungle and the machine guns spoke, sewing a line of dirt that vanished off over the precipice.

  A band of urmen accompanying the tank spilled into the ceremonial clearing, seizing some of the shaman’s warriors as others fled into the trees.

  The men of 1 Section let out a rousing cheer at the sight of the landship. Chandar let out a hissing cry and sank down in supplication, fingering its silken tassels and hiding its face at the appearance of one of its gods.

  “Keldoth spoke the truth,” the chief bellowed across the clearing. “I had him follow you and your shaman’s party, Jarak, and glad I am that I did.”

  The shaman, petulant and defiant, screamed incoherent obscenities at the disturbance of his sacred ritual. “How dare you defile this sacred place? These strangers would have gone straight to the spirits as an offering to rid us of the dulgur.”

  “They are under the protection of Skarra,” the chief said. “His priests have ordained it. I am chief. You no longer speak for the clan in these matters. Accept that or be banished.” His voice softened. “You know the law, old friend.”

  The shaman shifted warily on the platform. “I know the law, but you have shamed me in front of these outsiders. I have known and nurtured the ways of our clan all my life. My sacrifices to the spirits have kept the dulgur at bay.”

  “Until now. It takes more and more. Your magic cannot stop it. Skarra’s magic can. The spirits do not listen to you anymore. I must do what is best for the enclave. ”

  “And I have lost face. I have lost everything to these strangers but, as shaman, I tell you now, you will have no cause to thank them!”

  He ran up the suspension boughs that supported the platform, vanished into the foliage above, and was gone.

  Atkins slumped against the rail of roots and watched as the new urmen freed the section from their bonds. Porgy came running up, bayonet in hand, and cut his friend loose.

  “It’s all right, mate. You’re safe. And so, thank God, are the tank crew.”

  Atkins cast a sullen glance over at the Ivanhoe. “Until I get my bloody hands on them...”

  NELLIE RAN TO the tank, calling Alfie’s name. Alfie, still wearing his symbol-daubed rain cape and his splash mask, stumbled out of the Ivanhoe’s sponson hatch and caught his breath, a clean fresh breath that sluiced away the intoxicating fumes of the compartment.

  “Alfie?”

  He turned at the sound of his name.

  “Nellie?”

  He looked at her in astonishment, and then he took her by the wrist and pulled her behind the Ivanhoe, out of sight of the others, and took his helmet off. They embraced each other for a moment, completely uninhibited, before decorum got the better of them, and they stepped back and shuffled uncomfortably at the ease of their intimacy. She shoved him away, a business-like scowl appearing on her face.

  “Where the bloomin’ hell have you been?”

  “Alfie! Quit your bloody spooning and get back in here. We can’t leave without you!” barked Frank from inside.

  Alfie smiled weakly and shrugged. “Better go.”

  ATKINS PICKED UP his equipment from the pile where the shaman and his men had dumped it, walked up to the tank and banged on the front with his rifle butt. “Lieutenant Mathers? Lieutenant Mathers, sir?”

  “He ain’t here,” said a cockney voice from within.

  “What do you mean, he isn’t here? He’s the tank commander. I have orders for him.”

  “Oh, he won’t like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Orders. He won’t like ’em. Doesn’t do orders now.” And the visor slammed shut.

  Atkins stood looking at the tank, dumbfounded.

  “Mathas is at the enclave. We will take you there now,” said the chief.

  1 Section walked behind the familiar backside and raised steering tail of the ironclad as it grumbled and slithered its way back along its own path.

  Chandar hadn’t said a word since the tank turned up. At first, it averted its eyes from its god, as if hardly daring to accept its presence, but as the journey progressed Atkins caught it sneaking glances at the tank. He wondered how much longer they could maintain the illusion.

  Atkins didn’t know whether to be mad at the tank crew or thankful for the rescue. There was something going on here and he didn’t like it. He was sure he’d like it even less once he knew what it was. And why were they so cagey about Mathers?

  “What’s their game, then?” Gutsy pondered.

  “I don’t know, but I can guess,” said Atkins, darkly. “I just hope I’m wrong.”

  When Atkins had caught his first glimpse of the enclave, he still felt frustrated at being unable to breach that metal wall they found. That, at least, had offered the hope of some advanced civilisation. This, as strange and magnificent as it was, with its huge living bark walls, seemed like a step back, a complete lowering of expectations. His heart sank, the way it did when he first spotted the Khungarrii edifice, three months ago. There seemed little hope of finding a way back to Flora here.

  They were escorted into the compound by the urmen warriors. Even Napoo seemed impressed by the scale and age of the place.

  “I want to speak with Lieutenant Mathers,” demanded Atkins. “Tell him I have an urgent message from Lieutenant Everson.”

  The chieftain smiled. “If he sees fit to grant you an audience.”

  Porgy leaned over. “An audience? Who the hell does he think he is?”

  “A bloody officer,” muttered Atkins.

  The chieftain walked over to a semi-cylindrical bark hut on the far side of the compound. Smoke gently coiled up from a hole in the hut roof. It was more ornate that the other huts around the perimeter. Outside, it had torch posts decorated with some kind of animal skins. It had two small lean-tos, one on either side, constructed of thick branches and covered with overlapping leaves, in which mounds of fruits had been stored under one and meats under the other. Atkins watched as a young girl, wide-eyed and awe-struck, hurried up nervously with slices of a large red fruit and laid them under the lean-to with the other fruits. It was like
a small shrine or chapel for offerings, then, thought Atkins. Great flat leaves were laid in bands on either side of the hut’s length. There was something familiar –

  “It’s a bloody tank,” said Atkins. “They’re trying to copy the tank. A lean-to either side, like sponsons? The lengths of leaves, like tracks? They’ve turned the hut into a mock tank.”

  “It’s a form of sympathetic magic,” said Prof. “They think they can capture the power of the tank within their enclave, make themselves strong again by doing what the tank does.”

  “Napoo, what do you make of this?”

  The urman nodded in approval. “Strong magic. Not yet, but it will be.”

  “So you approve?”

  “They do what is necessary for the survival of the clan.”

  The Chieftain appeared at the door of the hut and beckoned Atkins.

  “’Ullo, you’ve been summonsed,” said Gutsy.

  Atkins strode over towards the hut. As he passed between the burning posts, he took off his cap and ran a hand over his hair.

  “Mathas, high priest of Boojum, grants you audience,” said the chieftain with a bright, welcoming smile.

  Oh, does he indeed, thought Atkins. He ducked his head and stepped into the dark cloying space beyond. It was like stepping into a dugout. It took his eyes a moment or two to adjust to the gloom, the interior lit only by a small fire beneath a large shallow plate that held a liquid slowly vaporising with the heat. The fumes caught in the back of Atkins’ throat and he coughed. He recognised the taste. Petrol fruit.

  “Lieutenant Mathers, sir?”

  In the dark, he heard the sound of laboured breathing. As his eyes grew used to the light, he could make out the figure of a man slumped back on a pile of furs and skins, as if on a throne. The chain links of the splash mask he wore caught the light from the flame and glittered. The guttering flame also highlighted one or two of the runes painted on the man’s rain cape. Either side of him sat an attentive urman woman, but in the dim light, he could make out no more than that.