The Ironclad Prophecy

by Kelleher, Pat

  There was a murmur of agreement, even among the tank crew.

  Chandar began pointing out the most important jars to salvage. Atkins’ section took off their packs and began filling them.

  Reggie and Norman slipped off their coveralls from over their service dress, tied knots in the arms and legs to create makeshift bags and began to load them up under Chandar’s direction.

  In their haste, one of the tank crew, Reggie, let an amphora slip from his fingers.

  “Dash it!”

  It shattered against the earthen floor, its thick oily contents permeating the chamber as its contents splashed into the dirt. A pungent odour rose from the spreading pool.

  “Be careful!”

  There was a loud clicking from Chandar as it picked over the shards of stoneware jar. It hissed and clicked rapidly as it turned one over, marked with chatt glyphs.

  “What is it?” Atkins asked, recognising the sounds of agitation.

  “A heretical unguent, prepared from the living bodies of Ones. Used to aid prophecy. The prophecies that arise from it are said to be dire and inescapable. No One has dared use it for spira, beyond counting. Perhaps it is just as well it is gone.” Chandar sank down on its legs.

  Gutsy tapped Atkins on the shoulder. “Then again, maybe it hasn’t.” He nodded towards Mathers, who had begun to clutch his stomach in pain and pushed off his splash mask and helmet.

  MATHERS JERKED, HIS back arching as though he were having a fit. He took a deep gasping breath, inhaling the vapours that coiled and entwined as they rose from the smashed jar.

  In the air around him, expanding with the vapours, an alien world of shape, sound and colour, translated from the scent, began to take shape, drowning out all else.

  The soldiers and crew around him faded like ghosts, as he railed against the synesthetic visions that overwhelmed his mind. The pain in his stomach dulled to a vague throb.

  A spot burned on his retina. It grew larger, and Mathers realised he was witnessing events long ago.

  The world was as it should be. GarSuleth watched over its children from its great sky web, beads of dew glistening on it in the night sky. The Nazarrii, already failing, pleaded for GarSuleth’s intercession to save them.

  The spot burned in the sky, bringing with it fear. The horror mounted, as its cursed name spread on the Breath of GarSuleth, from colony to colony. Mathers could taste the acrid tang of the sky usurper’s name on his tongue. It tasted of blood and iron and bile. Croatoan.

  The light grew brighter and brighter, outshining all the other dew-bedecked spots that shimmered and shone in the great Sky Web. It grew brighter still, seeking to outshine GarSuleth itself and tear the web asunder.

  A mighty struggle ensued and burned across the vault of sky for days and nights, as GarSuleth fought the interloper before making the fatal bite, defeating the usurper and casting it from the sky web.

  It took days for the defeated deity to fall. The false god tumbled from the sky web that spanned the heavens. It fell in fire, and as the usurper fell, the Nazarrii took this as a sign from GarSuleth and forsook the edifice, but too late. The sky giant fell not far from ill-fated Nazarr.

  The world shook with its impact. The edifice felt the full wrath of the usurper’s death throes as its final breath tore across the land, blasting all that stood in its path, and fire followed fast on its heels.

  It was bound and imprisoned by GarSuleth’s brother, Skarra, god of the dead, god of the underworld, to dwell in eternal punishment.

  The middle notes told how some were selected to entomb themselves, to protect their most sacred scents against the death throes of the usurper.

  As those middle notes died away the full horror of the top note became apparent. Buried alive, the priest chatts, abandoned by their god, harvested and prepared the unguents necessary to make one final horrific prophecy from the very bodies of the worker chatts that remained sealed in with them. And now that cannibalised chrism flooded Mathers’ mind.

  He gasped for breath. His voice became a hoarse whisper as he began to prophesy. “As the breath of GarSuleth leaves us, so do these Ones leave this scent of prophecy. Our trail has led to this place at this time. Heed, then, the final inescapable prophecy of the Nazarrii that yours may not. In the spira when the Breath of GarSuleth grows foul, the false dhuyumirrii shall follow its own scent along a trail not travelled, to a place that does not exist. Other Ones will travel with the Breath of GarSuleth, the Kreothe, made, not tamed. Then shall Skarra, with open mandibles, welcome the dark scentirrii. There shall emerge a colony without precedent. The children of GarSuleth will fall. They shall not forsake the sky web. The anchor line breaks.”

  The final notes of the scent, hastily distilled from the dead chatt workers, died away, leaving Mathers’ mind entombed with them in the dark. A dark he knew. And feared.

  He screamed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “The Lonesome Dark...”

  MATHERS COLLAPSED AS his mind returned to this world. As he did so, the men about him solidified and the pain in his stomach returned.

  Atkins stared at him. “What the hell was all that about?”

  “It is a prophecy,” said Napoo, in awe.

  Mercy dismissed the idea. “Mumbo jumbo more like. It don’t mean anything. The man funked it a long time back.”

  “Oi!” snarled Norman.

  Mercy flashed a sheepish smile, and held up his hands apologetically, before turning back to his mates and tapping his temple.

  Chandar chattered as the prophecy-inducing liquid soaked into the dry earthen-packed floor where it could do no more harm. “This does not augur well. It would have been better if this liquid had been destroyed than used to make a heretical prophecy. But it is too late, the words have been spoken. The deed is done.”

  “You can’t believe that stuff?” said Atkins.

  “Things will be as GarSuleth wills them.”

  Nellie sank down beside Mathers. “Let me see him?” With reluctance, the tank crew let Nellie minister to their commander, who sat slumped against the chamber wall, saliva dribbling from his mouth, his face an ugly patchwork of livid red lesions. She unbuttoned his collar to find the swellings at his neck had now spread down over his torso. She felt for the pulse at his wrist. It was racing.

  She looked up at Reggie. “His condition is worse. I don’t know what to do about it. I certainly can’t do anything here.”

  Reggie nodded in agreement. “We got to get him back to the Ivanhoe. It always goes better for him when he’s in it, Miss.”

  Nellie frowned. “The fumes, yes. Well, first things first, we must get him out of here.”

  Atkins could hear the sound of something below repeatedly ramming roof falls. One of the creatures was attempting to clear its way through the rubble of the collapsed tunnels. “Then, Miss Abbott, you go with them. Hurry.”

  “Are you sure, Corporal?”

  “Yes. Keep an eye on Lieutenant Mathers. Napoo, go with her.” The urman was reluctant to accompany one he considered possessed, but Atkins had gambled that his loyalty to them would extend to Nellie. The urman nodded.

  Atkins resented the fact that they had come all the way for the tankers, and now had to put their lives on the line for them again. However, when he spoke, the tone was matter-of-fact. “We’ll buy you time. Keep going up. If we’re not out in an hour, use the tank to bring this place down and kill these things, then get back to the encampment, toot suite. Go.”

  The big boxer, Jack, nodded his thanks and, supporting the semi-conscious Mathers between them, Jack and Frank led off up the passage. Alfie followed, cocked revolver in one hand, torch in the other. Nellie and Napoo fell in behind them. Reggie and Norman carried their makeshift coverall bags, with Cecil and Wally, which tapped and clinked as they walked.

  Atkins watched them go as the light from their torches receded up the slope and the tunnel faded into blackness again.

  Below them, the sounds became more urgent, as t
he repeated clinker and clatter of tumbling debris told them that the creature was breaking through.

  “Stand to!” Atkins ordered. He knelt with Chalky and Pot Shot in the tunnel. In a rank behind him stood Gutsy, Gazette, Porgy and Mercy, their packs and webbing bulging with stone jars. Despite the number that the men were carrying, Chandar looked despondently at the containers they had to leave behind. “So many, so much... knowledge...”

  The intermittent smash of rubble became constant as the creature found enough momentum to push through the barricade, ploughing a wave of rubble as it raced up the tunnel incline towards them.

  “Fire!” ordered Atkins.

  A fusillade blasted into the darkness. The onrushing wave of rubble didn’t slow.

  “Fall back!” yelled Atkins. “Fall back!”

  THE SOUND OF gunfire behind them spurred Nellie, Napoo and the tank crew on, passing through several galleries, taking any upward tunnel, the jars clanking together as they tried to pick up their pace without breaking any.

  “We’d get out of here faster if we didn’t have to carry these bloody things,” Wally groused. “Why can’t we just dump ’em?”

  “Because, like the infantryman said, these things can hit the chatts where it hurts, wherever the hell that is. And I’m all for that,” said Norman.

  “Just imagine you’re on ration party and quit griping,” said Reggie.

  Mathers stirred. “Sir. Are you all right?” asked Jack.

  He shook off his crewmen’s help. “Never better, Tanner, never better,” he said, breathing deeply. The pain in his stomach was fading fast. Mathers felt calmer than he had done in days. It was as if whatever fever he had been suffering from had broken.

  He felt an insistent need to feel the wind on his face. He stopped, confused. There, a faint cooling air current from a branching tunnel to the left. He turned towards it, not a doubt in his mind. The draft in his face drew him on and he gave in to the impulse.

  Behind him, his crew called after him, perplexed, “Sir! Sir!”

  “Stay there!” he commanded. He did not need them now. He walked on down the tunnel, and the breeze grew stronger. He luxuriated in the feel of it upon his skin. He heard the sound of something rushing up the tunnel towards him, but he wasn’t afraid. He smiled to himself, content. He saw a slick, black bulk that filled the tunnel bearing down on him, and he stopped and welcomed it with open arms.

  ATKINS AND THE others, meanwhile, raced up the tunnel and took a fork, which led to another gallery. Passages and chambers led off in several directions, up and down. The discordant whistling from the choked ventilation system seemed amplified here, making the men, tense and edgy already, feel even more windy. Chalky had started to fret and whimper.

  In the centre of the gallery, they found recently dead chatt bodies. Atkins recognised the scentirrii and the priests. “Zohtakarrii,” he said, as he passed them. Something had deposited them here. The Section spread out and scouted the gallery.

  Gutsy pointed at another pile. “Urmen. Must be that shaman’s bunch.”

  “The chatts were killed outside. Why have they been left here?” wondered Atkins.

  A hard translucent substance plugged several adjoining chamber entrances, sealing them. Atkins cupped his hands to one and tried to peer through. For a moment, he couldn’t make anything out. Something moved, slapping against the translucent barrier, something with the texture of tripe. The pressure from within grew. The whole of the barrier began to click and snap under the pressure. Cracks raced across the surface. The plug began to splinter.

  “I think that’s why!”said Atkins as he stumbled back with the others, retreating to the centre of the gallery, as the seals on the other chambers began to creak under the strain from within.

  Chandar sank down on its legs and hissed.

  Chalky whimpered, a wet stain spreading down his khaki trousers. Poor sod. Atkins reckoned it was as much from the unsettling sound of the whistling, that reverberated unpleasantly in the bowels, as from fear.

  “Stick with me,” he said, patting the lad on the shoulder. Chalky looked at him through the tears he was trying to fight back. “I’ll see you, right, lad.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good time to be here,” said Mercy.

  The seal shattered and something began uncoiling from within. Two shapeless black creatures, the size of motor cars, slopped out of their foetal chambers on a tide of thick fluid that sluiced across the gallery floor, washing up against the piles of bodies and depositing the creatures on the chamber floor. The glistening creatures lay like great excised viscera. They seemed totally without skeletal support, with no discernable head, limbs or features of any sort. Then after a moment their shapeless bodies began to contract and flow, drawing themselves in; whether as a defensive reflex or like the first awkward attempts at movement by a newborn calf struggling to stand, it was hard to say. At the same time, orifices formed, gaping black lipless holes that began to suckle blindly at the air.

  Gazette nudged Pot Shot. “Better hope it goes for the dead ones first.”

  “Would you go for Machonochies when there’s steak?” asked Gutsy.

  “Fair point.”

  The heaving black bulks extruded tendrils, which quested blindly towards the waiting bodies and, finding them, began to drawn them towards their open maws.

  A third creature was expelled from its chamber like afterbirth and, unable to reach the food thanks to its birthmates, it sent tendrils out after the Tommies.

  “And for my next trick,” Gazette announced, “pick a tunnel, any tunnel.”

  Atkins picked one and they ran, the stone pots and jars chinking and clattering as they did.

  THE TANK CREW, abandoned in the passage by Mathers, began to turn on themselves.

  “We’d better go after him,” said Frank.

  Norman shook his head. “He told us to stay here.”

  Reggie stepped forwards. “He’s ill, even if he won’t admit it himself.”

  Norman glared at him. “Well, there’s no point us all going. Send him.” He jerked his thumb at Alfie. “If he’s got the balls. I want to see him put himself on the line for the Sub.”

  “No!” Nellie protested.

  “It’s all right, Nellie,” said Alfie. “I’ll fetch him. I’m not afraid.”

  “Alfie, don’t!”

  Alfie smiled shyly and gave her a wink that exuded more confidence than he felt. “I won’t be long. Back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. The Lieutenant can’t have gone far.”

  “And why the hell should we trust you?” snarled Cecil, stepping into his path. “You’ve never understood the Lieutenant’s plans. He’s a genius, he’s got it all sorted out, up here,” he said, tapping his forehead. “He’s a man of vision. He has plans for this world and he’s taking us with him. But oh, no, you don’t want to go. You know better. You’d rather be with your bint, here.”

  “’Ere, you watch your lip!” snapped Nellie.

  “Or what,” Cecil jeered, “your beau will swing for me?”

  Nellie’s eyes narrowed, full of focused fury. “He won’t bloody have to, I’ll do it myself.”

  Alfie sighed. He didn’t want to do this. Not here, not now. “You can’t see it, can you? Any of you! It’s the fumes talking, all of this. This isn’t the crew I knew back in Norfolk. You lot have been riding my back about my loyalty. I’ve done as much to keep the Ivanhoe going as any of you, and we’re standing here arguing about it while the Lieutenant could be in danger. He’s not himself.” Cecil didn’t back down. “Fine. In return, I’m trusting you. With her!” he pointed at Nellie, knowing that he didn’t have to trust them. The urman, Napoo, would keep her safe, and she had her revolver.

  “Seems like a fair deal,” conceded Reggie, arching an eyebrow. “Cecil?”

  The sullen loader muttered under his breath, but let Alfie pass.

  “Look after her,” called Alfie, holding up his torch, “and if we’re not back in five, get the hell out of he
re.”

  “Alfie!”

  It was hard leaving her, but he had to do this. He had to regain their trust. Mad or not, Mathers was still the tank commander and, despite what the others may think, he wasn’t himself. He was the only other one who knew about the things inside Mathers, the things Mathers had been fighting. Holding the torch high, he turned and gave Nellie a bright smile and an airy wave and, with a deep breath, plunged into the waiting dark.

  DRIVEN ON BY hunger, the black mass of the freshly hatched creature propelled itself after the Tommies. Atkins and the others raced along the tunnel, desperate to stay ahead of it. Chandar bounded alongside them, its legs showing a power and spring it had kept well hidden. Around a slight curve in the tunnel came a faint glow of light.

  “Lads, daylight! We’ve made it!” yelled Porgy.

  Atkins grabbed the flagging Chalky by his webbing and dragged him on. They pelted up the curving inclined passage as it led upwards for several hundred yards. The light grew brighter until, used to the gloom of the labyrinth, their eyes ached. They could see a round opening now, draped with foliage.

  The low susurrating sound of pursuit still harried them, closer now.

  “Run!” shouted Atkins. He gave Chalky another shove and felt one of the chatt pots in the lad’s pack break. A green sticky stain spread over the canvas. He hoped it wasn’t anything important.

  Mercy and Gazette came to an abrupt halt at the mouth of the opening. Gutsy barrelled into them, almost sending Porgy sprawling, but Mercy caught his webbing. Chalky came staggering up.

  Atkins glanced over his shoulder. The creature was gaining. “Get out, get out!” he bellowed, closing the last few yards between him and the rest of the section.

  “Not this way, we can’t,” said Mercy, sounding grim.