by Pat Kelleher
The rest of the section shuffled uncomfortably. They knew, right enough.
“No,” said Atkins decisively. “We keep this a secret between ourselves for now.” He looked at Nellie. “Not even the tank crew are to know. We tell Lieutenant Everson and no one else, and he can decide what to do with this information. Is that understood?”
There was a muttered agreement.
“Good. Now let’s do right by these folk.”
Salvaging only the family bible and the journal, they used a grenade and blew the entrance to seal the chamber, burying the families within and burying, in their own hearts, a little of the hopes each of them had nurtured of getting home again.
INTERLUDE FIVE
Letter from Private Thomas Atkins
to Flora Mullins
21st March 1917
Dearest Flora,
Today has been a black day. Today I fear I have lost you for good. I will never see you again, never hold you in my arms, and never hear your laughter again. The scent on your last letter has faded now and is lost to me forever. Perhaps it was an omen.
For all the months I have been here, I have held onto the fact that one day, one day soon, I will return to you. If I can't do that, I
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“All the Sunshine Turns to Gloom...”
AS THE MEN of 1 Section continued their search for the tank crew, the mood that seized them was a sombre one, akin to those moments before the whistle blew and they went over the top. Under the burden of the new secret they carried, each man was momentarily adrift, alone on a sea of his own thoughts. If they had lucky charms they sought them out now in the privacy of the semi-dark catacombs.
“Oh, Christ, we’re really stuck here. We’re never going to get home,” moaned Chalky.
“And we’re stuck here with you, but you don’t hear us moan about it,” said Porgy.
Prof, who could usually be counted on to chivvy Chalky along, had sunk into a morose silence.
Nellie tried to cheer the young lad up. For all that these men were soldiers, some were little more than boys. “Shhh. Don’t say that. You don’t know that.”
Atkins chalked another wall to mark their way and turned to the sweating butcher by his side. “Chalky’s right, Gutsy.”
“Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t, but there’s no need to say it. How many times has a man thought that in the trenches? And what good has it ever done him?”
“Aye, but there, home was only a Blighty one away, Gutsy. Now...” he left the sentence hanging.
How did Lieutenant Everson do it, wondered Atkins? How did he marshal his own fears, which must have been the same as any man’s, and yet be able to go down the line and dispense encouragement and fortitude?
Atkins felt he had nothing left to give. He was empty. Empty of zeal, empty of heart. Empty of hope. Yet again, this world had ripped the wind from his sails. He was completely sapped. It was like wading though a quagmire of Somme mud, when concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other was almost too much, and some men allowed themselves to be sucked under and drowned, rather than fight against it to take another step.
Maybe he deserved this. What if this was his punishment? Had his indiscretion with Flora finally reached the ears of God? For a moment, self-loathing rose up within him. This place was now his Purgatory, and on some level he welcomed it, embraced it. Whatever it threw at him he would endure, the penitent Fusilier.
They moved on through a honeycomb of passages, threading their way through tunnels, traversing chambers and inclines where ancient, inhuman passages branched and branched again, leading to dead ends and roof falls. Piles of rubble and debris made some corridors impassable; thick infestations of plants, weeds and roots choked others. There was, however, still no sign of either the tank men, or whatever haunted these earthen halls. Only the odd, discordant piping notes from the few air vents not choked with weeds broke the silence.
“Mathers!” Atkins called at intervals, hoping for a reply. “Mathers!” The place was a labyrinth. Even supposing they heard him, they might never find him.
Chandar wandered alongside, ostensibly as a guide, but scent-blind as it was, it seemed just as lost and disorientated as the men and just as unwilling to be there. Atkins regarded the Chatt with repugnance. Its featureless ivory white face plate and rasping monotone voice revealed nothing of its own feelings. It toyed with the tasselled knots of its shoulder throw, its stunted middle limbs clicking together lightly. Nerves? Impatience? Who knew? Atkins pressed on, deliberately trying to ignore it. He hated the fact that this creature was somehow drawn to him, that this Kurda thing had somehow bound them together in its eyes. Well, not this soldier, no sir. He wasn’t beholden to this creature.
The incline levelled out and they came upon a small rubble-strewn concourse that once might have been a major thoroughfare. Various passages and chambers ran off it. Haphazard shafts of sunlight punctured the gloom from collapsed roof sections above, the holes draped lazily with questing vines and roots.
Atkins spotted a doorway, ornately inscribed with Chatt hieroglyphs round the entrance. He’d seen one like it in Khungarr.
“The chambers of their Anointed Ones,” Chandar said, making its deferential gesture, touching the tips of its long fingers to its forehead and thorax.
It was their temple. He nodded to Gutsy, who ordered the section to cover the other entrances to the concourse. Gazette, Pot Shot and Prof took up positions using what rubble there was as cover. They didn’t want to be caught out by whatever haunted this place.
“Hold this position, Gutsy. I’ll check this out. Porgy, Chalky, Mercy, with me. The rest of you stay here. Napoo, stay out here with Miss Abbott.”
Atkins and Porgy entered first, Chalky just behind, holding the torch high above his head. The great domed chamber was twenty yards across, but in comparison to the great one at Khungarr, this was a country chapel. Several openings led off the main chamber and Porgy and Chalky covered them with their rifles as Atkins and Mercy slowly circled the room, checking each of them in turn.
The first went several yards before a roof fall blocked it. The second curved round the outer wall of the chamber, at a steep incline, before debris blocked it, too.
“Well, Mathers didn’t come this way,” said Mercy.
They retraced their steps back down to the sacred chamber. Chalky held up his torch. Above, on the domed ceiling, Atkins caught sight of a broken pattern of lines and dots, the remains of a painted fresco, the rest of which had crumbled from the ceiling. From the patches left, it looked like a night-time sky marked with constellations.
“The Sky Web of GarSuleth,” hissed Chandar. The Chatt grabbed Atkins’ arm and pulled him back. Chunks of the ceiling had fallen down. They lay on the floor under a sifting of dust that crunched under his feet. “Watch where you walk,” it chattered, after its asthmatic fashion. “The representation of the Sky Web is still sacred, whether on the ceiling or in pieces on the floor. Stepping on it is blasphemy.”
Around the walls of the circular chamber, there were niches that looked as if they might have held statues. Each was empty but for hieroglyphs that covered the surfaces in whorls and spirals, some separate, some interlinked.
The Chatt hobbled eagerly over to the alcoves, avoiding the fallen chunks of fresco. Stepping into one and facing the wall, its long fingers traced the inscriptions with light, rapid touches, before moving to the next.
“Well?” asked Atkins with impatience.
“If it’s anything like our trenches it’ll be rude jibes about the last mob,” observed Porgy.
“The niches contain sacred texts for contemplation and prayer. The glyphs on the wall between seem to be a history of this colony. They called themselves the Nazarrii. This One was aware of such splinter colonies, but never thought to see one. They did not act in Kurda. If a false queen and her retinue escaped, all mention of them would be expunged from the colony’s records. It would be as if they had never existed. They w
ere outcast. Even among Khungarr’s aromatic annals there were but the vaguest references to such dishonourable incidents and then only in far gone spira.”
“He’s actually happy about this,” Gutsy commented.
“Well, he’s about the only bleedin’ one,” said Mercy. “The place fair gives me the willies, it does.”
It was true. The incessant piping tone from the air vents soon began to grate on their nerves, like the whistling of whizz bangs.
Chandar moved to a section of wall between niches. “At first, all went well, but the Queen fell prey to a grave sickness. Large numbers of eggs were laid to become workers but they were born malformed.” It paused and clicked its mandibles. “Such a sickness also affects the Queens of Khungarr.”
“Tell me about it. We saw some of those things in the Khungarr nursery. Ugly buggers. Haunted my dreams for bloody weeks, those things did,” said Mercy, with an affected shudder.
“This One thought Khungarr alone in suffering such a curse,” hissed Chandar, moving to the next section. “The Nazarrii began to fail within the first few generations. There were not enough healthy workers hatched to sustain the colony’s growth and expansion.”
“So the place was doomed?”
“Without workers, it could not succeed.”
“I thought your mob used Urmen slaves.”
“It is true. GarSuleth provided.”
“Well, that’s one way of looking at it,” said Porgy.
“But it seemed that it was GarSuleth’s will that this colony fail.” Chandar bowed his head towards the wall, and its antennae stumps waved in a wistful fashion. “Here, the script ends. The colony was failing, that is beyond doubt. Even the Nazarrii recognised the fact.” It turned to face Atkins. “But something else happened here.”
“What?” asked Atkins uneasily.
“The glyphs do not say. Some catastrophe befell the edifice, causing them to abandon the place.”
“Or be killed.”
“Perhaps the coming of the evil spirit that now dwells here?” Chalky offered.
“Perhaps, yes. There may be so much more here, but so much more information that is lost to this One.” Chandar lifted a finger to touch its antennae stumps. “Why would any Ones abandon their edifice? This One does not know. This One cannot read the scent text.”
“I can,” said a voice from the gloom.
THE MEN OF the section wheeled round, their rifles raised and bolts ratcheted, training their weapons on the opening even as the clipped voice reverberated around the chamber.
Mathers stepped from the shadows, with his crew behind him grinning like jackals.
“Lower your weapons,” said Atkins, with a scowl.
“I can read your scent texts,” repeated Mathers.
“You, sir?” asked Atkins, barely trying to suppress his sarcasm.
“Yes, Corporal. I am open to so many things, now.” He gestured expansively at the darkened vault above them. “I see things. The air here is full of them. My senses are flooded.”
“Well, he’s flooded with something all right,” muttered one of the Fusiliers. “I wouldn’t bloody trust him if I were you.”
Mathers beckoned. “Perkins will agree with me, won’t you, Perkins?”
Alfie Perkins stepped unsteadily out of the gloom, held upright by the big boxer, Tanner, and Atkins saw his eyes; black like oil slicks.
Atkins shook his head. “Not, you, too?” He turned to Mathers. “What have you done?”
The bantam driver sneered. “Oh, he’s with us, now, good an’ proper.”
Reggie smiled apologetically. “Well, he always was. He just didn’t know it. Our own doubting Thomas, if you will, until the Sub granted him his own personal Pentecost.”
Mathers stepped past Atkins to the wall Chandar had been examining.
Atkins gripped the officer’s upper arm. “Why should we trust you, sir?”
Mathers looked down at Atkins’ hand, his contemptuous look lost behind his splash mask. His voice was cold and measured. “Let go, Lance Corporal. Or I’ll have you for striking an officer.”
Atkins held his grip long enough for it to border on insubordination and for the pair of them to know it. “How do we know you can do what you say?”
Beneath his mask, Mathers smiled. “Lily of the Valley,” he whispered.
Atkins frowned. “What?”
“That was your sweetheart’s perfume, wasn’t it? On the letter? Lily of the Valley. How else could I know?” He let that sink in for a moment. “Do you trust me now, Corporal?”
Dumbfounded, Atkins released his arm.
“Hm,” Mathers added with a satisfied grunt, tugging his tunic sleeve straight as he stepped past Atkins.
He looked at Chandar, the Chatt’s visage as blank as his own masked features. “You say there are scents here? That’s the way you things communicate, isn’t it?”
“It is so,” said Chandar, watching him carefully, “but Urmen cannot read them.”
Mathers paused, fished out his hip flask, took a slug, and emptied it. Damn. He upended it and shook the last drops from the rim, through the chainmail into his mouth, then proceeded to do what the Chatt thought impossible.
He turned his attention to the wall. He could see the glyphs and the blank, unfilled space. He stood before it and concentrated. He inhaled, slowly and deeply. As he did, faint colours began to permeate the surface of the vacant space, like an after image. There was something here; a scent message impregnated into the wall. With each purposeful breath, the colours grew stronger, and began to take on form in the space between him and the wall, hovering before his eyes, taking a shape he had come to recognise, a base note, on which the whole composition was built, pungent and overwhelming, one of the first words he had learnt in his synesthetic vocabulary.
“Fear,” croaked Mathers. “Something is coming.” He reeled back as the next aromatic note almost overwhelmed him. “Here!” he gasped. Another stringent note subsumed and washed this one away; a lingering top note that persisted after the others had faded. “Fear. Flee.”
“What the hell is that, some kind of warning?” asked Atkins.
Chandar stepped forwards, its mandibles ticking together as it forced the Urman words out through its mouth palps. “No, you misunderstand. It is merely history, a few scraps of scent from the past.” It turned to Mathers, its clawed middle limbs open, its antennae stumps jerking. “How is this possible? Urmen are scent-blind. How is it that you can decipher the chemical commentaries of the Ones? This is unforeseen, this is beyond wonder.”
Mathers threw his arms wide. “It is a gift from Skarra, the gift of tongues.”
Chandar let out a long low hiss, but its eyes fell on the empty hip flask in Mathers’ hand and it fell silent, lost in thought.
Mathers felt the overwhelming scent of fear from the message rousing him to panic. He felt the urge to flee, and might well have done had not a spasm in his stomach sent him doubling over as ripples of pain washed though him. He rode each agonising wave until they subsided and, with them, the feeling of fear.
“Something, I don’t know what, was coming. It arrived. They fled,” he said, still panting though the pain.
“That’s it?” said Atkins, unimpressed.
Mathers stood, steadying himself against the wall as he pulled himself to his full height. “Can you do better, Corporal?”
“No sir. But we already know about the dulgur.”
“If that is what they were talking about, Corporal.”
A SHOT ECHOED around the chamber. It came from the concourse. “Gutsy, Mercy, stay here. Keep an eye on that lot.”
Atkins ran to the opening and peered round, ready for anything. Anything but what he found.
He was greeted by Pot Shot with an anguished looked on his face. “It’s Prof.”
Prof? Atkins couldn’t see with the others gathered around but, as he approached, they parted. Between them he could see a large pile of rubble, and protruding from behind it
he could make out a bare right foot. That was all he needed to see.
“Oh, Prof,” Atkins groaned. “You stupid sod.”
Prof lay slumped against a pile of debris. He had discarded his puttee, boot and sock to one side, his bayonet to the other. The top half of his skull had been blown away and his brains splattered over the rubble behind him. His rifle lay along his chest. Nellie knelt by him, but there was nothing she could do.
“He was sobbing quietly for a while. I thought it best to leave him, then I heard him say ‘sorry,’” said Pot Shot. “I never thought—”
Suicide. Not always easy for a soldier. Some just stuck their heads above the parapet and waited for a German sniper. Others, well... The barrel of the Enfield was too long. You couldn’t just stick the muzzle in your mouth and use your finger to pull the trigger. You had to take your boot and sock off, then use your big toe instead.
For some of the Tommies, the only thing that kept them going was the fact that they might find a way home. There had been a flurry of suicides when they’d first arrived, and every so often they found another poor bugger who’d found he couldn’t take it anymore, in a trench or a dugout. With the discovery of the Bleeker Party came the realisation that that there was no way home, that they were stranded on this hell world. It was just too much.
“You know the routine, Porgy,” said Atkins quietly. “Paybook and disc. Redistribute his bombs, rations and ammunition.”
Nellie shook her head slowly in disbelief. “Why would he do that?”
Gutsy put a big fatherly arm round her and steered her away from the sight. “He’d just had enough, love. He hasn’t been quite the same since Nobby died. I think perhaps finding them emigrants was the last straw. It takes something like that, when you’re a long way from home.”
Although there was no love lost between them, the tank crew hung back, and gave 1 Section the space to briefly mourn their dead comrade.
