by Andy Remic
Bainbridge shrugged, and lit his fag, his coffin nail, with a lucifer. And he grinned. “You ——ing tell me, mate, because it’s all ——ing arsapeek!” he said, and whacked Jones on the back, making the injured Tommy groan and splutter.
“So what happens next?” he managed, hand on his heart.
Bainbridge shrugged. “Haven’t we got some wars to win?” he boomed, and looked out across the gathered soldiers, and the soldiers still emerging from the mountain tunnels, each one, every nationality, good and brave and strong, no matter which damn side they’d fought on.
“But . . . we’d have to fight each other? Wouldn’t we?”
Bainbridge shook his head. “I think,” he said, “that was the way it was. But maybe one day, this’ll be the way it should have been.”
“And what about the walrider?”
Bainbridge shrugged, his eyes glowing. “If we slaughter him, we’re just as ——ing bad as they are. Leave him.” He grinned. “Leave it for the winter wolves.”
The Naravelle Offensive: Ra’eth Ke Larn. 20th. November 1917.
THE BULLET SKIMMED JORIAN’S FACE, opening a line across his cheek and whizzing away behind the trench. Distantly, a great roar split the air as British and German soldiers, side by side, like brothers, charged the Naravelle lines, guns thundering, and the Naravelle split ranks and ran for it, many dropping their rifles, many pulling free their helmets and tossing them aside. More guns thundered and the Naravelle were punched from their feet as they fled. . . . Jorian climbed out of the trench and approached Ragor Kan, facing the evil eye of that rifle with his head held high, a grim look on his face.
Kan growled something, words incomprehensible they were so filled with hate, and as Jorian came within a foot of that rifle barrel, Kan pulled the trigger. There came a click. A misfire.
Jorian slammed the shovel across Kan’s head, and the man hit the mud, dazed.
Jorian looked around. Not a single Naravelle soldier had stayed to help their officer, their general.
“I know you,” said Jorian, pointing with the shovel. “General Ragor Kan, brother of General Randaska Rex.” His eyes narrowed. “It’s because of scum like you so many innocent soldiers die,” he said, his words soft. “It’s because of horse shit like you that wars like this happen in the first ——ing place.”
Kan started to laugh, blood on his teeth, bloody phlegm drooling from his lips. “You’re lucky,” he growled. “I was looking forward to raping your wife and your children.”
Jorian considered this. Then he smiled. “Well, you didn’t. My brave lads stood up to you, you rapist, you child-murdering bastard. And now”—he looked out, over the field, where ten thousand British and German soldiers were lining up in ranks, heads held high, rifles against their shoulders—“well, it really looks like the Naravelle are ——ed. We seem to have found some new allies.”
“——you,” hissed General Ragor Kan.
“Not in this lifetime,” smiled Jorian, then lifted his shovel and, with a hard, swift, downward stroke, decapitated the Naravelle general.
The head rolled away, scowling, and the body jerked and twitched for a while as blood leaked out and bowels released their contents.
Robert Jones moved across No Man’s Land and stood, staring down at the dead general. Then he looked up at Jorian. There were tears on his cheeks, and Jorian’s eyes went suddenly wide.
“No!” he hissed, understanding flooding him.
“I’m sorry,” said Jones, and reaching out, put his hand on Jorian’s shoulder. “She bought it. Out on the mountaintop.”
“How did my daughter die?” whispered Jorian, shoulders sagging forward. He went from being a powerful giant to a weak old man in the blink of an eye. Desolation writhed across his face. Despair ate through his eyes.
“It was quick, Jorian. At the hands of the . . . walriders.”
“Those bastards.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes.” Jorian hung his head low, dropped his bloodied shovel, turned, and walked back towards his village, weeping.
Bainbridge appeared behind Jones.
“You all right, lad?”
Jones turned, cheeks wet with tears. “Not really, Charlie. But it’s time for a stiff upper lip. British spunk, and all that!”
“You’re ready to go back to war?”
“I’m ready to end the wars . . . if we can.”
“Let’s see if we can make a difference,” said Charlie Bainbridge, patting Jones on the shoulder for the first time ever. “Let’s see if we can’t sort this bloody mess out.”
The Naravelle Fararne/Marne Offensive: Second Battle of Fararne (and) Second Battle of Marne. 3rd. August 1918.
THINGS ALWAYS LEAD TO A POINT. A climax. A conclusion. Like the tip of a spear, the head of a phalanx, the leader of any cavalry charge. And the world drifted, two worlds drifted, and yet occupied the same space, in a parallel timeline. For the first time, two worlds merged, entwined, and became one. British and German soldiers fought side by side against the Naravelle. The villages of France merged and spliced with the villages of Femoria. Two wars became one. And foes became friends. And friends became foes.
And one common theme emerged . . . that the war was evil, and the war was pointless, and it was high time the war was over.
But it still took time.
These things always take time.
Jones, Bainbridge, and Webb charged through the mud, firing their rifles towards the Naravelle communications trench.
“Oy, Fritz!” screamed Bainbridge, and the German soldier turned. He gestured, throwing a grenade. “Achtung, mate, yeah? NOW!” The Hun pulled free his grenade and lobbed it into the trench. There came a low bass boom and smoke rolled out. They powered ahead, ten thousand of them, rolling over the hills like an . . . like an Iron Beast.
They jumped down into the trench, pumped on adrenaline, ready to fight and kill. But the Naravelle, and more important, the walriders, had gone.
“Another victory,” said Jones, slumping down to the duckboards, exhaustion taking him.
“Hey, laddie, each and every victory takes us closer to the end of the ——ing war.”
Jones turned. Eyed Webb, who had also slumped down, exhaustion eating into his features. But he still found the time to smile.
“What do you think?”
Webb shrugged. “One day, this will all be over. And we can go home to our lovely wives, they’ll cook a beef dinner, we’ll eat scrumptious roast potatoes, crunchy sprouts, all drowned in beef gravy made from the juices of the roast. One day, lads, we’ll go home to Blighty.”
Suddenly, a Naravelle soldier came from nowhere, through the smoke, and leapt down into the trench. His bayonet slammed into Jones’s belly, skewering him, before Bainbridge’s rifle touched the man’s temple and sent his brains in a mushroom of piss-slop over the trench wall.
The Naravelle corpse hit the duckboards with a thump.
“Ahhhhh,” groaned Jones, clutching the pain in his belly.
Webb crouched and applied a compress. “You’ll be alright, Jones. Be strong. Be hard!”
Bainbridge also knelt. He grabbed Jones’s neck. “Be tough, brother. It’s not far back to our trench and the medics.”
Robert Jones, Third Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, nodded, crying tears of blood, and smiled, and thought back to Dolwyddelan.
“Soon, Mother Wales, I’m coming home, one way or another.” And his tears were hot on his cheeks.
1918 Armistice. “No Man’s Land.” 11th. November 1918.
DARKNESS.
Gunfire. The crash and smash of crumps. The boom of tanks. The hiss and whizz of mortars, followed by deafening explosions, like the screeching end of the world, and the pattering of debris, of soil, and rocks, and splintered tree chunks. Then, shortly afterwards, lingering screams. Bullets whizzed and zipped, pinging, slapping, cracking. Men hollered. Screamed. Cried. Died.
“Medic?”
“Those bastards.”
“T
ake the line, take the ——ing line!”
And then a break in time, as if the universe paused, and everybody was listening. The whole world was listening. God was listening.
A Tommy called Peters stopped in the mud, battered rifle in his hands, and listened.
Everything was quiet.
He glanced left at Smith. Smith gave a crooked smile, and shrugged.
They waited for a few minutes.
“The guns have stopped,” said Peters, unnecessarily.
They waited.
Smith looked at his watch, then reached down, and scrubbed at the glass, clearing away the mud.
“What time is it?”
“Two minutes past eleven.”
“Do you think it’s over?”
Smith smiled a sickly smile. “Could we be that ——ing lucky?” he said.
Valenciennes, France. 12th. November 1918.
MAJOR BRIAN GRANT rode his Royal Enfield, popping and spluttering, down the rough dirt road. He was in a foul mood. His head was banging worse than any Hun mortar attack, and the motorcycle was pulling viciously to the left, which meant he had to lean hard right, and that hurt his neck.
Potholes pinged the front wheel, snapping a spoke, and Major Grant was nearly thrown free. Instead, he juddered to a halt by the side of the stony road, forgot the clutch, and stalled the blasted thing.
He stepped from the machine and kicked it, hurting his big toe.
“Oh, you bugger,” he scowled, clenching his fist at the Enfield. But then his gaze transferred, and he spied a battered book lying by the side of the road. Grant looked up and down, but the road was deserted. Storm clouds gathered overhead, darkening the sky with a heavy copper threat.
Grant strode towards the book and picked it up. It was a diary or journal of sorts. It appeared very old, battered, worn. Maybe even decades old.
Grant opened the diary to the first page, and stared hard at faded lettering.
The Private and Personal Diary of Robert Jones
3rd. Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers
Under His Majesty George V
“Hmm. Interesting.”
He tucked the journal under one arm, and stroking his long handlebar moustache, moved back to the dratted motorcycle. He stowed the journal in a leather saddlebag, and sitting astride the Royal Enfield, tried for some minutes to kick the bastard into life, until his muscles seized and cramp overtook his right thigh.
“I’ll read it tomorrow,” he muttered to himself out loud. “Yes. Definitely. With a brandy and some cigars.” He looked around, then up at the bruised copper sky. It looked like it was going to snow.
“It’ll be a bloody privilege to get away from this godforsaken land.”
Did God forsake you? whispered a devil in his mind.
A devil, sick of Man’s incompetent sin.
Grant tilted his head, and gave a sardonic smile. “Yes. I think he bloody did there for a little while, old chap.”
Woodland Dreams. “Deathwood.” Time Unknown.
WINTER MOONLIGHT CASCADED in grey beams through the high woodland canopy. Beneath the dense pack of trees, it was completely silent. It was as if the wide trunks, the spread branches, the fallen needles and leaves which carpeted the woodland floor, all conspired to turn this into a silent private world, a secret world.
The Skogsgrå moved cautiously through the woodland. She was big—bigger than any man to charge across No Man’s Land bearing a rifle. Her eyes were large grey discs, like pearls, which never seemed to blink. Her limbs were sinewy, like cords of torn, twisted timber. Her flesh was a glowing silver bark. Her long hair was a flowing carpet of moss. Her eyes were knots, her nose simply holes in the grained wood of her face. Her fingers were like branches, her toes razor claws, her hands adorned with hundreds of thorns, glittering like sharpened steel needles.
The Skogsgrå was carrying something. Somebody.
Pale, and naked, in her arms.
She reached a circle of clearing within the dense trees, a ring of heavy trunks which could not have been put there by men. Within this circle, green pine needles formed an undulating carpet, and the Skogsgrå knelt, laying the woman gently down, relaxing her head to the carpet, and stroking her naked, protruding belly with a sigh like snow settling in a descent through decadent winter leaves.
The woman was pregnant.
The woman stirred.
The Skogsgrå did not move, but simply settled back, her branches creaking, her moss rustling, her breath exhaling like a breeze through dancing summer leaves.
The woman gave a start, eyes flaring open in panic.
“Shhhh,” soothed the Skogsgrå.
The woman looked up, looked around, panic in her eyes. Then slowly, she reclined, hand protective over her rotund belly, eyes narrowing in suspicion as they fell upon the Skogsgrå.
“Who are you?”
“I am your protector.”
“But . . . why should I trust you?” she asked.
“You must, or you will die.”
“Maybe I want to die.”
“Hush, child. That is foolish talk.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“I do.”
“Do you know what I am?”
“Yes.”
“And it does not bother you?”
“Every creature under heaven has its place, little one.”
There was a long pause. A cold winter breeze oozed through the trees, which danced softly, as if performing on a world stage.
“How did I get here?”
“You were . . . absorbed into an evil machine. Eventually, it realised you were not the one, you lacked control, and so it spat you out. You were useless to it.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Eight months.”
“And I have been asleep?”
“You have, little one. A deep sleep of the soul.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed again. “If you know who I am, then who am I, creature?” she snapped.
“You are Orana,” said the Skogsgrå.
“And my baby? The child?”
“The child of Robert Jones.”
Suddenly, Orana’s face changed, and she started to weep, a limp, white, naked worm of pity on the woodland carpet. “I have this nightmare,” she cried, tears dripping to the needles. “Over and over and over. I dream I give birth, and the child . . . the child is a walrider. Robert Jones’s twisted walrider son.”
The Skogsgrå moved closer, and for a moment Orana had a fleeting sense the great tree creature would pound down on her, crush her into a pulp, thorn claws tearing through her throat and ending her life. But she did not. She simply smiled, wood grain curling, and patted Orana’s shoulder with an infinite gentility.
“We will cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said.
Acknowledgments
I’ve been through some very hard times recently. So, a big shout-out to my boys, as ever, who are simply amazing and loving and nonjudgmental. Another big thanks to Roy Young, solid as a rock, a very loyal friend. And kisses and hugs to Kareem Mahfouz, for letting me vent frustration and hate through a pair of boxing gloves. It’s a pleasure to thump you, sir.
About the Author
Photograph by Joseph Remic
ANDY REMIC started his author career writing high-octane science fiction novels but soon graduated to epic fantasy. His writing is relentless, passionate, visceral. It’s the literary equivalent of an extreme sport and should come with a government health warning. Described by many as the natural successor to David Gemmell, Remic enjoys pummeling his readers with scene after scene of action and mayhem. He also enjoys pummeling his characters.
You’ll never be bored with a Remic novel!
www.andyremic.com
You can sign up for email updates here.
Also by Andy Remic
A Song for No Man’s Land
Return of Souls
Kell’s Legend
Soul Stealers
Vampi
re Warlords
The Iron Wolves
The White Towers
The Dragon Engine
Spiral
Quake
Warhead
Serial Killers Incorporated
War Machine
Biohell
Hardcore
Cloneworld
Theme Planet
Toxicity
SIM
Thank you for buying this Tor.com ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters.
For email updates on the author, click here.
TOR•COM
Science fiction. Fantasy. The universe. And related subjects.
*
More than just a publisher's website, Tor.com is a venue for original fiction, comics, and discussion of the entire field of SF and fantasy, in all media and from all sources. Visit our site today—and join the conversation yourself.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Author’s Note
Part One
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Part Two
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Part Three
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Andy Remic
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
