The Ironclad Prophecy

by Kelleher, Pat

  Atkins dropped to the floor, his hand clasping his throat. Above him a hail of gunfire roared out, muzzle flashes bursting in the darkness, one or two bullets whining off the tunnel walls.

  As the fusillade died away, Nellie burst from the pack, pushed past Mathers and dropped down by Atkins.

  He coughed and spluttered, gasping for breath, and she gently, but firmly, prised his hand away from his neck. It came away slick and hot. She worked to wipe away the blood and sighed with relief. “You’re lucky, Corporal. It’s not as bad as it looks. This will sting,” she said, as she applied an urman poultice to the wound from a pouch at her waist.

  Atkins sucked in air through his teeth against the pain. “Funny, I don’t feel bloody lucky.”

  She took off Atkins’ tunic, removed his braces and undid his shirt. She pulled a field bandage pack from the bag at her hip and tore open the paper wrapping, all with a practised ease. “Hold that,” she said, placing his hand on it. Nellie wrapped and rewrapped a length of bandage round his chest and shoulder to keep the neck dressing in place.“What the hell was that thing?”

  “The dulgur,” said a grim-faced Napoo.

  Mathers wandered past them, staring down the sloping passage into the dark, looking at something nobody else could see.

  “Curious. That creature doesn’t belong here,” he said, to nobody in particular. “I see it. It is not of this place. It should not exist here. It was brought forth from... elsewhere.”

  Chandar clicked its mandibles together rapidly. “It is true. It is an abomination.”

  Chalky crossed himself. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I knew it. It’s a demon from the depths of Hell, isn’t it? Summoned by Jeffries to do his bidding. Oh, Lord and his saints preserve us.”

  “Don’t talk daft. A demon? How is that even possible?” asked Gazette.

  Porgy intervened. “We’re here. How is that possible?”

  “Man has a point,” admitted Pot Shot.

  With the attack of the creature, the place had gone from labyrinth to lair.

  Atkins got to his feet. “We need to get out of here. That thing, whatever it is, knows we’re here now, and I don’t want to get caught in these tunnels again.”

  Mathers cocked his head. “What?” he said.

  “I said we need to get out of here, sir.”

  “Quiet, Corporal. I wasn’t talking to you,” Mathers snapped, listening to whatever phantom voices were enticing him. “Yes, of course,” he answered.

  He turned back to Atkins. “We’re headed this way, Corporal.” He began walking down the tunnel in the direction the thing had taken.

  “Sir?” queried Atkins, but he received no reply. He pressed the point. “Sir, you’re not well. It’s not safe,” but the officer ignored him.

  The tank crew shoved through the Fusiliers, to fall in behind their commander, with an insolence that made the Fusiliers bristle.

  As he passed Nellie, Alfie didn’t dare look at her. He didn’t need to. Her shining aura was all he needed to see. Nevertheless, he contrived to walk by her and his fingers found hers briefly.

  “Mad Mathers is going to get us all killed,” Porgy objected in a low voice.

  “Quite possibly,” said Atkins, his voice laced with resentment. “But he is an officer and, as our orders are to bring the tank back, we can’t very well leave here without him, can we?”

  Chalky broke his step to try to stay alongside Atkins for moment. “It’s all right, Only. I’m not afraid. I know you can kill the demon.”

  Atkins rolled his eyes and swore under his breath.

  “Boy sees you as role model,” said Gutsy, wrily.

  “Oh, believe me, I’m nobody’s bloody role model.” The thought of Flora burned brightly in his mind.

  “Maybe not, but apparently you have a reputation. Poor Chalky’s probably expecting you to magic up Saint George himself right about now.”

  “Well, you’d know about that.”

  “Eh?”

  “Saint George. You’re the one married to the bloody dragon by all accounts.”

  “Now that’s the Only I know and love,” said Gutsy, with a guffaw, slapping him on the shoulder. “Good to have you back.”

  MATHERS PUSHED FORWARD, trusting to his new abilities. He could see the scent trail of the creature, the spirit, now – a thin, tenuous vapour trail, so delicate that any movement tore it and it dissipated on the air current. “This way,” he declared, indicating the right hand fork without a second’s hesitation. The bantam driver, Wally, was at his right hand, as ever. Frank and Norman were flanking the stupefied Alfie, while Cecil, Jack and Reggie trailed in their wake. Atkins and 1 Section followed on behind as rearguard.

  ATKINS HEARD A sound in the tunnel behind him, like a tide sucking on shingle, as something rushed along the tunnel walls towards them.“Run!” he yelled.

  Ahead of him, after a moment’s confusion, the tank crew took him at his word, herding Mathers before them.

  Atkins turned and knelt and, with Gutsy, held the tunnel as the rest of the section raced swiftly past. They felt the wash of foetid air, and in the darkness something moved, bearing down on them like a train. Gutsy pulled off his bayonet, slipped it back into its sheath at his waist, and fitted the wooden baton of a rifle grenade into his Enfield barrel. He pulled the trigger and the pair ran up the tunnel to where Mercy and Porgy were holding the second line.

  The grenade exploded, the shock wave almost blowing Atkins off his feet as he raced past Mercy. Porgy fired three rounds rapid into the dying fireball and the pair joined Atkins and Gutsy in the retreat. They reached a gallery at the junction of five tunnels, where the others had taken shelter from the funnelled blasts.

  No sooner had the noise of the grenade died than they heard a low rumbling howl, not from behind them where the creature had taken the brunt of the attack, but from below, the dread sound funnelled up from the depths via the surrounding tunnels.

  “Bloody Nora, don’t say there’s more of them!” groaned Mercy.

  Atkins jerked his head at the tunnel openings. “Pot Shot, Gazette, find one that goes back up to the surface.” His gaze met Mathers’ inscrutable mask, almost daring the officer to countermand his orders, but he didn’t. He was clutching his stomach and holding onto the small driver.

  “This way, Only!” called Gazette, at the mouth of a tunnel. The section and tank crew retreated into it, alert, their rifles sweeping the tunnel mouths around them.

  Not taking his eyes from the direction they had come, Atkins ordered Gazette and Mercy to scout the tunnel. “And hurry!” he said, hearing the tidal rush of things moving up through the adjoining tunnels towards them from the darkness below.

  “I want two volunteers,” yelled Atkins.

  “I’ll stay,” said Mercy.

  “Me too,” said Chalky, although he seemed less certain than Mercy.

  Atkins shook his head. “Go up with the rest, Chalky.”

  Chalky stuck his chin out, like a stubborn child, and clasped his rifle until the whites of his knuckles showed, as if he expected Atkins to take it off him. “No. I’m staying. I know you’ll protect us, Only, the way you did Lieutenant Everson.”

  Atkins nodded and waved the others off.

  With Mathers’ indomitable will crumbling, as he lost his fight with whatever was ailing him, the tank crew took it upon themselves to protect their precious bloody commander. They took off up the tunnel, Wally and Alfie supporting Mathers between them, the rest of 1 Section herding them along. Napoo grasped Nellie’s hand and raced up the tunnel with her, even as she drew her revolver.

  Atkins, Mercy and Chalky held the tunnel mouth at the gallery. A foul breeze blew around it, and the dust on the floor began to swirl in eddies, as things rushed up from the depths towards them.

  Chalky began muttering the Lord’s Prayer.

  “Cover me,” Atkins said, as he raced around the gallery, tossing a grenade down into each of the four tunnels. He heard them land, rattling off into
the darkness, and he dived back for cover between Mercy and Chalky. They crouched down as the grenades went off one after the other, like a barrage, bringing down the tunnels. Dust and debris billowed into the gallery, filling it with a gritty, choking cloud.

  From deep below came a low awful sound, that reverberated in his chest and made his very bones ache. He could hear rubble and debris clinking as something with weight and speed rammed against the tunnel collapse, attempting to drive its way through.

  “Go!” he cried.

  Mercy needed no telling. Chalky hesitated until Mercy grabbed his arm. “Run, you daft bugger!”

  ALFIE FOUND HIMSELF leaving the gallery behind and herded up the passage, under the insistent barking of the Fusiliers. The initial barrage of hallucinations from his ‘baptism’ were wearing off. If that was the world Mathers wanted him so badly to inhabit, then he could keep it. It was as if Mathers needed him for his own shaman’s party. The others may have bought into it, but Alfie wouldn’t. He struggled against the horrifying new world invading his senses. The comparatively gentle side effect of the fuel fumes he could put up with, but this enforced ingestion was a brutal assault on the senses. It terrified him, but what terrified him more was the fact that Lieutenant Mathers wasn’t scared at all.

  Alfie fought against it, as hard as it was to cling to the mundane when your world was ablaze with wonders and horrors. Nellie’s presence helped. Without her, he feared he would be as lost as the others.

  “The Lieutenant needs to rest,” panted Clegg, under the subaltern’s weight. “He can’t carry on.”

  To their right the tunnel wall had partially crumbled away to reveal a void beyond.

  “This’ll have to do,” said Jack, stamping his boot into it several times. The edges of the hole collapsed, creating an opening big enough to enter. He thrust a torch through to reveal an empty space, which would provide some protection against the concussions. “Get in, hurry!” He directed the tank crew and Fusiliers into the space beyond.

  They found themselves in another round chamber. One of the Fusiliers held a torch high to illuminate the place.

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Alfie.

  The bodies of several chatts lay on the floor of the chamber: Scentirrii, judging by the heavy carapace casings. They were covered with fine dust or ash, which had hardened over them, softening their outlines. With them were the bodies of two more chatts, priests. Alfie knew them by their featureless faces and the mouldering tasselled silk sashes. They lay on the ground under a covering of calcified dust, as though they had died peacefully, resigned to their fate. They had seen others like them, but not this far down.

  Across the chamber, as though unfit to die with them, were the bodies of three worker chatts. These, however, had died violent deaths, their carapaces broken open.

  Chandar stepped reverently around them, chittering to itself softly, its stunted middle limb restless. But it wasn’t the bodies that agitated the chatt. It was what had been entombed with them; a motley collection of jars, amphorae, and pots of varying sizes, hastily gathered and stacked on shelves in niches and on the floor.

  Smirking, Norman picked up a sealed stone jar. “Here, lads. SRD rum rations, and about bloody time!” He made to smash the neck against the wall. Chandar rounded on him, reared up on its legs and advanced towards him, its mandibles open as it hissed.

  ATKINS GAVE MERCY and Chalky five seconds. He slung his rifle over his shoulder, then took two grenades in one hand and pulled the pins. He dropped the grenades into the middle of the gallery, on the floor at the mouth of the tunnel, and sprinted up the incline. Five second fuses. How far could he get in five seconds?

  Four thousand. He heard something ploughing through the rubble below him.

  Three thousand. He felt his stomach churn as another low howl reverberated through his body.

  Two thousand. An arm reached out of an opening to his left, grabbed his webbing, and yanked him into a passing niche.

  One thousand. The bomb went off. A blast of dirt roared past the opening.

  Coughing, Atkins looked up to see Mercy and Chalky grinning at him.

  They waited for almost a minute, but heard no further sounds of pursuit from below. They allowed themselves to breathe again. The three dust-covered men grinned at each other with the elation of survival.

  “I could murder a bloody fag,” said Mercy, patting his pockets. “But I’m right out.”

  “Blood and sand,” said Atkins. “If you’re all out, things are a lot worse than I thought.”

  THE LIGHT OF a torch, filtered by the still settling dust, bobbed back down the passage towards Atkins, Mercy and Chalky. “Only!” It was Pot Shot, speaking in a low, urgent hiss. “Only? The chatt’s turning nasty. You’d better come and sort it out or Gutsy says he might have to kill it.”

  “Bloody hell!” Atkins’ jubilation melted away and his face set again as he, Chalky and Mercy followed the lanky private up the gently rising passage until they could hear Chandar hissing and spitting.

  By the time Atkins arrived, the unsealed chamber was the scene of a tense stand-off. Mathers had slumped to the ground, a couple of his crew clustered around him. The big one, Jack, was holding back Norman, who looked as if he wanted to bash the chatt’s brains out. The others were squaring off against Chandar. 1 Section had leapt to the chatt’s defence. Napoo had stepped in front of Nellie, his sword drawn, watching the proceedings warily.

  Atkins was stunned. He turned his back for five minutes and they were at each others’ throats! “What the hell’s going on? There’s a thing – things – out there that are trying to kill us and you lot want to do this? Now?”

  “That’s your problem!” Frank said with a snarl, jabbing his revolver towards Chandar. “Bleedin’ chatt freak. Norman picked up one o’ them old jars and it got all cut up about it.”

  Porgy butted in. “Lieutenant Mathers was looking a bit ropey so we ducked in here to rest. We saw these chatt bodies and jars and stuff, and Chandar gets all excited until that tanker starts clowning around with ’em.”

  Chandar raised itself up on its legs, in Norman’s direction, and hissed, slicing its mandibles. Cowed, Norman slunk back.

  Atkins stepped between the Hush Hush crowd and the chatt, his bayoneted rifle pointed at it. “What’s going on, Chandar?”

  The chatt turned to him, but did not relax its defensive stance. “These receptacles, they contain many sacred texts. To treat them like that is disrespectful.”

  Atkins glanced at the shattered vessels. “All right. He won’t do it again. Now calm down. What’s so important about them anyway?”

  “There are copies of scentopedia, holy books, here, that were destroyed in Khungarr by Jeffries. There are aromatomes, even older. This one” – it indicated a jar – “this one was declared heretical in Khungarr many spira ago. Some of these are older than Khungarr itself. Do you not realise? This is a find of incalculable importance. The Ones here sealed themselves in with them in order to protect them from whatever befell the edifice. They gave their lives to guard them. There are scent texts here of great significance and antiquity, and that urman almost destroyed one – on a whim.”

  “I don’t understand, why didn’t they dig themselves out?”

  “Because these Ones were commanded not to, or commanded to await rescue when it was safe. This one cannot say. But with these, Khungarr can begin to replace the scent scriptures we lost, that you cost us. Some may even provide the scriptural proof we need to finally move against Sirigar and his olfaction. But if these ignorant urmen proceed to destroy them, then this One will never know and the Tomhii Clan may yet be doomed. They must be salvaged and taken back to Khungarr. You must aid this One. It is Kurda. If this One had not accompanied you to this place, then these would have been lost or destroyed forever. Their discovery is the will of GarSuleth, and so is their retrieval.”

  “What, so we’re working for chatts now?” said Mercy, with disdain.

  Atkins knew from Chan
dar’s interrogation by Everson, and his own conversations with the thing, that there were bigger matters at stake here. He didn’t quite understand, but he knew this scent library was important. They had the tank. They could transport all these things back. It wasn’t going to be a popular decision, but it was the right thing to do.

  “It’s not good enough they’ve got urmen slaves to do their dirty work for them, now you want us to help them?”

  “It’s not that simple.” Atkins lowered his voice briefly so the tank crew couldn’t hear. “You saw those American pioneers. They’re dead. They couldn’t survive on this world by themselves. Besides, we have urmen flocking to us for help, and protection, too. Tell them, Napoo.”

  The wily old guide nodded. “The Tohmii are powerful, like the Ones.”

  “But the chatts use chemicals to keep the urmen docile!” said Nellie. “I’ve experienced it.”

  “I said it’s not that simple,” said Atkins, remembering his recent experience with the Zohtakarrii. “Those urmen work for them in return for food, shelter and protection. How is that different from you, Gazette, at the mill, or you, Mercy, at the Brewery, or your uncle down the pits, Pot Shot?”

  Pot Shot shrugged, as if pained to admit it. “The man’s right, we may not use chemical decrees to keep our workers in place but we use money to the same ends. It’s not that much different. Still, doesn’t make it right, though.”

  “But the chatts are attacking our trenches right now and you want us to help them?”

  “Chandar’s part of a movement that can stop that, and these jars can help. We have orders to return to the encampment with the tank anyway, so we might as well take these back with us.”

  Gazette spoke up. “Only has a point. Whatever way you look at it these jars are valuable. It gives us an advantage. We have something they want. We can hold them to ransom.” He looked round the chamber, meeting everyone’s eyes with a challenging glare.