The Ironclad Prophecy (23 page)

Alfie almost collided with two Fusiliers. The tall one and his mate, Pot Shot and Gazette? They heard the others pounding in from all directions, snapping through the undergrowth, also drawn by the sound of the gunshot. As they arrived, it became clear who was missing.

Nellie came running up with Chalky and Napoo. She and Alfie exchanged looks of relief, but they didn’t last long.

“We heard gunfire,” she said. “What happened? Where’s Only?”

“And where’s the bloody chatt? You don’t suppose it turned on him, do you?” suggested Mercy.

Gutsy spat. “Wouldn’t put it past the sneaky bastard. Never did trust it.”

Mercy found Atkins’ rifle lying on the ground, He bellowed into the trees. “Only! Only! Where the hell are you? Only?” He spat on the ground in frustration. “You don’t think it was that evil spirit, do you?” he asked Prof.

“I don’t know. Three months ago and I’d have said it was superstitious nonsense, but here?” He shook his head. “I’m not so sure.”

Alfie shuffled uncomfortably as some of the Fusiliers shot him black looks.

“What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with your mates?” sniped Porgy.

He shrugged. “I heard the rifle shot.”

Mercy held them back and waited expectantly while their urman, Napoo, studied the ground. “No sign of struggle.” He pointed to several sets of scattered impressions. “Ones.” His fingers gently traced the shallow pad marks. “Scentirrii – heavy, others not so. These sets are deeper,” he said, describing an arc with his arm. He looked up into the boughs and the broken branches overhead. “They ambushed them from above.”

Nellie sniffed the air, her nose wrinkled. “I know that smell from when we were captured and taken to the Khungarrii edifice –” She sniffed again. “They breathed out something that drugged us.”

Napoo tipped his head back and inhaled slowly, his nostrils dilating. He looked at Nellie and nodded in agreement. “Dhuyumirrii,” he said.

“Do what?” asked Gutsy.

“Priests,” explained Napoo as he softly followed the tracks for a short distance.

Gazette’s eyes narrowed. “A Khungarrii rescue party?”

Napoo returned to the group. “No. This is Zohtakarrii burri. It is Zohtakarrii patrol. No Khungarrii here.”

Gazette seemed relieved that they hadn’t been followed. Alfie suspected he would have taken it as a personal slight if they had been pursued without his knowledge.

“What will happen to them?” asked Nellie.

Napoo’s features darkened. “They will be interrogated and then killed. But the presence of the Dhuyumirrii puzzles me. They do not usually accompany normal patrols. There is something else going on here.”

“Oh, great,” said Pot Shot, throwing his hands in the air, “as if we didn’t have enough on our hands.” He glared at Alfie. “It’s this bloody Hush Hush bunch that has led us to this.”

Gazette patted the lanky private on the shoulder. “Yeah, but they’ll bloody well help us out of it.” He walked over to Alfie and poked him in the chest with a finger. “Won’t you?”

Alfie clenched his fists, but restrained himself, as he caught Nellie out of the corner of his eye giving him a slight but emphatic shake of her head.

“Later, chum,” said Gazette with a sneer. “We’ve got to find Only first.”

A
LFIE LED THE
way back to the bellied tank. As they approached the
Ivanhoe
, the Fusiliers crowded together, like a pack.

The tank crew abandoned their task to face them. Norman slapped the spanner head against the palm of his hand.

Alfie rubbed his sweaty palms on the thighs of his coveralls and stepped forwards to defuse the situation. “One of the Fusiliers and the chatt. They’ve been taken.”

“What, by the spirit?” blurted out Cecil, his eyes almost popping out of his head.

“No, another colony of chatts, by all accounts,” Alfie informed them.

“And you lot are going to help find them,” said Gutsy, daring them to contradict him.

Alfie turned to appease the soldier. “Of course we will. That goes without saying.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Mathers appeared from round the back of the tank. “I’m in command here, Perkins. Not you.”

At the sound of Mathers’ voice, the Tommies squared off bullishly. Gutsy stepped forward, Mercy and Gazette either side of him, backing him up. The tank crew fell in behind their commander as he strode towards the belligerent infantrymen.

Mathers studied them. “We’ll find your man,” he said eventually. “Just as soon as we get the tank unditched. Now let us do our job.”

“If you’d been doing your job in the first place this wouldn’t have happened,” said Mercy under his breath.

Mathers wheeled round. “I beg your pardon, Private?”

Mercy stood to attention. “I said, these things happen, sir.”

Mathers continued to stare at Mercy before turning on his heel with a dismissive grunt. The two groups broke away from each other, the immediate tension dissipated. Whatever grudges they had with each other, they could wait.

Nellie reached for Alfie’s hand. “You did good, I know that wasn’t easy for you, siding against your pals,” said Nellie.

Alfie raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “I’m not sure they are my pals. Sometimes lately, I don’t even know who they are.”

I
NSIDE THE TANK,
Alfie, Cecil, Frank and Reggie turned the large starting handle that ran between the motor and the gearbox at the back of the compartment until the engine caught. The tank jolted as the ditching log rolled underneath it with the tracks, lifting it free of the outcrop. Wally stopped the tank before the log could damage the steering tail. Once they unchained the log, the party was able to proceed. Napoo led the way, following the trail left by Atkins’ captors.

With the engine spewing out its mind-altering fumes into the compartment once more, the crew calmed down, the familiar smells and routines settling the men’s fractious nerves. The news of yet more chatts seemed to galvanise them. Wally especially. In the absence of Huns, he hoped to face more chatts. He was regretting not being back at the encampment now.

The tank rumbled on through the jungle, Wally running up the engine as he ran over small trees, sending the rest of the crew grasping for hand holds to save themselves from falling against the hot engine.

“For Christ’s sake, Wally, watch it, you’ve already ditched her once!” chided Norman.

But Wally, it seemed, was on a mission, and Mathers was inclined to give him his head.

Cecil and Reggie manned the machine guns, aware that they were heading into trouble. The aft storage slots that held the tins of ammunition were nearly two thirds empty now, a conscious reminder to be careful with the remainder.

With a callous chuckle, Cecil mimed shooting the infantrymen that walked alongside. Alfie contemplated saying something, but his position within the crew was precarious enough. Fortunately, Jack clipped the lad round the back of the head and Cecil stopped.

The jungle landscape outside passed as every landscape did, whether picturesque French countryside or shell-pocked hell, in a series of bumps, jolts, lurches and shocks, sending kaleidoscopic patterns of colour through the compartment. In the gloom of the tank, the only beautiful landscapes were the ones that passed by smoothly, without hindrance.

Alfie longed for a road. He began to feel faint from the mounting heat. The engine was running hot, hot enough to fry bacon. The sweat began to trickle off his forehead, making his eyebrows itch, before trickling into his eyes, which began to sting. He pulled a knuckle across each of his eyelids to wipe them clean.

The compartment of the tank was beginning to waver, and seemed to expand and contract as though he were looking at it in a funfair mirror. Feeling a familiar cold flush, he flung open the sponson hatch beside him and vomited. One of the Fusiliers walking behind the tank stepped neatly to one side as he came to the splatter of puke. He looked up and grinned at Alfie, who was too intent on his own body to care. He took advantage of the open hatch to take in some untainted air before wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his coveralls and pulling the door shut, entombing himself in the iron hull again.

S
TILL UNDER THE
influence of the euphoric mist with which they had sprayed him, Atkins felt quite content walking along beside his captors, as if he were on a Sunday afternoon walk, even though the pace was more akin to a forced march. His new companions were silent as they marched along beside him. He wasn’t chained or tied, but felt no desire to dive headlong into the undergrowth either side of him and escape. He was in more danger out there than he was here. He was more than happy to let the chatts lead him wherever it was they were going. He was beginning to feel hungry, however. He hoped there would be food soon.

“Where are you taking us?” he asked, politely.

He received no answer. He heard nothing but the deep bass groan and clicks of the jungle about them and the soft rhythmic rubbing click of chitinous armour as his captors walked on. But that was all right; they probably didn’t speak English. The scentirrii he’d encountered barely knew enough to communicate to urmen in anything but the most brutal of ways. The two chatts leading the procession, though, were taller, less bulky and more regal, similar to the chatt Atkins once saw carried in a litter in Khungarr. Like Chandar, each wore a length of silk, worn thrown over the shoulder and tied around their abdomens, allowing their vestigial mid limbs to poke through, though hung with many more tassles. These were their priest class, he assumed. They looked similar to Chandar, but it was a poor broken specimen, a reject, a factory second compared to them. They carried themselves with a sense of entitlement. Their carapaces were smoother and a weathered ivory in colour, like something that crawled under rocks and stones in the dark and damp and hadn’t seen the light in a long time. Atkins experienced a mild shudder of revulsion, but it passed as quickly as it came.

Atkins lost track of time as the chatts drove them on, down small tracks, switching this way and that, whether along their own or fortuitous animal tracks, he didn’t know, but there was a sense of purpose to the journey. He watched their antennae moving. They were following a scent trail.

There was a crack and an agitated chittering from behind, as one of the scentirrii guards hit Chandar on the back in order to speed it up. The crippled Khungarrii was having difficulty keeping up with the speed of the group. It was cowed and walked in a submissive stoop, trying not to antagonise them.

The effects of the euphoric mist began wearing off and Atkins’ thoughts slowly started to gain speed. “Where are they taking us?” he asked Chandar.

“Back to Zohtakarr? This One does not know. But this One fears,” the chatt replied, through gulps and belches of air. It looked at the two red-clad chatts leading them, the priest chatts with their headbands of metal. “If those Ones are what this One thinks they are, then this One fears we have strayed too far. We should not be here. We should not be here at all.”

“Why, where are we?”

Chandar looked at their guards and clicked its mandibles. “This One cannot say. This One must not say. It is Dhuyumirrii knowledge. Not for urmen.”

Atkins knew that there was only one thing Chandar was afraid of talking about, an idea that petrified it. But it was also a lodestone that would swing and point to Jeffries. Croatoan.

“I’ve told you, we’re not urmen.”

Chandar hissed, its mouth palps caught in the brief spurt of air like tiny windsocks. “So you say. It does not help your case. This One would advise you not to repeat it. Scentirrii might not speak urmanii, but Dhuyumirrii may. Say no more.”

Atkins couldn’t let it go. “Why shouldn’t we be here? What is it that we aren’t allowed to know?”

“If this One’s suspicions are correct, they are guarding something that does not exist. We should not have come here. No One is permitted. No urman is permitted.”

“Why?”

Chandar didn’t answer.

“Chandar?”

But the chatt had sunk back into silence and wouldn’t be drawn.

The trail they were following broke into a glade. There, among the scab trees, the chatts broke their march. Two of the scentirrii circled the glade, their antennae waving in a frenzied manner, as if they were looking for something. Another trail? Atkins didn’t know, but they seemed lost.

The Zohtakarrii chatts hissed and chattered in their own tongue and they sank down on their legs, not in submission, but tensed, ready, as if expecting an attack, gathering the three Dhuyumirrii behind them.

Atkins noticed again the loud bass sound that resounded through his chest cavity. It felt as if someone was thumping his chest – from the inside. It was very unsettling. Had this just started or had he not known or cared before now, thanks to the mist of the chatts?

Fine, white diaphanous shrouds hung from the surrounding scab trees like mouldering bridal veils. They moved and billowed in the slightest air movement. At first, Atkins thought them ghosts or spirits. Maybe even the evil spirit for which they had been searching. Passing close by one, they seemed to be only a collection of fine white filaments, like a fungus.