by Pat Kelleher
As Atkins watched, an Urman stepped forth from the bloody cavity, stripped to the waist, covered in encrusted blood and gore. To the accompaniment of hundreds of scissoring mandibles, the warrior hefted the creature’s heart above his head and threw it to the ground. Covered as he was with blood and viscera, it was hard to make out details, but Atkins could see that the warrior was bare-chested apart from some sort of harness. Around his neck, he wore a collar hung with small round adornments. The only clothing he wore were trousers tucked into knee-length boots, and he carried two long knives, their straight blades dripping with a dark ichor. He glared up at the watching Chatts with contempt as he wiped the knives clean on his trousered thighs before thrusting them into loops hanging at his waist.
“Bloody hell,” said Gutsy, aghast. “And I thought I was a butcher.”
“We could do with a few men like that,” said Pot Shot. “Let’s hope he’s friendly.”
The warrior ignored them and began searching the bodies of the dead Fusiliers nearby.
“Oi, mate, fuck off!” warned Gazette, lifting his rifle and sighting him as they edged towards the outcrop.
Crouching over the body, the bloodied warrior turned his bloodgrimed face towards the Fusiliers, white teeth clenched in a snarl as he glared at them with undisguised contempt. He continued to search the dead man, going through his pockets and webbing, extracting a paybook, bullets and a grenade, before ripping the identity disc from his neck, like a trophy.
Atkins’ brow furrowed. Despite the warrior’s savage appearance, there was a familiarity to the man’s actions, and Atkins saw with growing horror that he had been wrong. They weren’t knee boots.
They were puttees. They weren’t knives, they were bayonets. It wasn’t a harness, it was webbing. This was no savage Urman warrior. Dear God in heaven, this man was a Fusilier.
ABOVE, IN THE apothecary chambers, Hepton supervised the conversion of a small chamber into a makeshift darkroom. He filtered the diffuse blue-white bioluminescent lichen light by using the large translucent petals of a red flower. A dull amber glow now filled the room.
Chatt acolytes had laid out shallow bark bowls to use as makeshift developing trays on a plain earthen work counter.
Tulliver watched as Werner entered the dark chamber, accompanying a handful of Chatt alchemists holding up an amphora, like a Eucharistic sacrament. They were followed by acolyte nymphs bearing a shrine the size of an ammo box. To them this was as much a religious ritual as a chemical reaction.
“Have they done it?” asked Hepton, the dull red glow lending an aptly Faustian cast to his features.
Werner merely shrugged his shoulders. This was out of his hands now.
THE CHATTS CARRIED the portable shrine to one end of the chamber. There, they removed three exposed glass negative plates from within, each held reverently by a nymph. They were about eight inches by five and wrapped in several layers of black silk cloth, like relics. These plates, the Chatts believed, would provide physical evidence of the existence of GarSuleth.
“What are they?” asked Hepton.
“Aerial photographs,” said Werner. “Taken from fifteen thousand feet.”
“And what is it that they think they’re supposed to show, exactly?” asked Hepton, a faint but supercilious sneer playing round his mouth.
“That their god created this world.”
“Tall order,” quipped Tulliver.
“And what happens if it proves nothing of the sort?” pressed Hepton.
“Then we’re probably dead men.”
The Chatts no longer stood before a counter, but an altar. It had become not a darkroom, but a chapel. The senior Chatt stood holding the amphora before the counter with its shallow trays. The nymphs approached in procession behind it, each holding its silk-wrapped glass plate like an offering.
“Right, let’s do it,” said Hepton. “Then I can get out of here.” He went to take the amphora, but the Chatt reared up on its legs, hissing venomously. Realising he had misjudged the situation, Hepton backed off.
“You must guide them only,” said Werner.
Hepton was horrified at the thought. “Guide them? But look at ’em. How can I get proper results—and proper results is what we’re after, if we want to live—with those things?”
“You will die if you try to do it yourself, Herr Hepton. It is a heresy. They are quite insistent on that,” said Werner.
Hepton curbed his belligerence, but it still simmered beneath the surface as he directed the Chatts to pour the sacred ‘balm’ in the shallow troughs, and then have an acolyte nymph uncover the first plate and place it in the solution.
There was a slight delay when Hepton suggested that they agitate the troughs and swill the liquid over the plate. Well, not so much a delay, Tulliver observed ruefully, as a complete theological debate. Was this merely a task that could be performed by an acolyte, or did the very transformative nature of the ritual require a greater degree of initiation and honour? After all, if this ‘ritual’ worked, it would make manifest the hidden hand of GarSuleth itself.
By now, Werner had to restrain Hepton to stop him interfering.
“But don’t you see? If you leave it too long—”
Tulliver felt just as frustrated.
By the time the Chatts had discussed the matter and decided that this was no work for a mere acolyte but an Anointed One, and with Hepton unable to intervene, the plate had been in the fluid too long.
It had turned black.
THE BLOOD-ENCRUSTED WARRIOR strode over to the Tommies. “God damn it, Everson. This is all your fault!” he screamed as he threw out an arm at the bloody aftermath around them. With his other he ripped off the necklace about his neck and thrust it out at the officer accusingly. Hung from it were the collected identity discs of too many dead men.
Shocked, Everson took them and stared at the man, whose face was so streaked with blood and dirt that he couldn’t place him immediately. It didn’t take him long, though; he hadn’t exiled many men. “Rutherford? Dear God, man. What’s happened to you?” Rutherford looked at the officer with disbelief, his rage and invective spent. “You happened, sir. You exiled us, sent us out to die, that’s what happened. We’d only been out a few days when a Zohtakarrii patrol captured us. Bains, me and the rest of them bought the Urmen time to escape. Our uniforms saved us.” He shook his head in bewilderment.
“They said they were looking for us.”
“Werner,” Atkins realised.
Everson pressed the point. “The Chatts saved you?”
“For this,” spat Rutherford as he gestured towards the bloody carnage.
“Where are Bains and the others now?”
“Dead, for all I know, but that’s what you wanted, isn’t it, sir?
You were too cowardly to sentence us to a firing squad, wanted to spare your conscience, did you? Well, just because you didn’t order anybody to pull the trigger, doesn’t mean you’re not responsible for their deaths,” he said with rancour.
Everson looked at the filth-encrusted Tommy, sure now of his actions. “This is the mutineer that hit you, Padre,” he said sourly. The padre studied Rutherford’s face. “No, no it isn’t, John. He was there. He tried to stop the other fellow.”
Everson reeled as if he had been dealt a physical blow. He looked at Rutherford aghast.
“Yes. Wilson. He framed me,” said Rutherford simply, as realisation dawned on the officer’s face. “I won’t lie, I took part, but I wasn’t guilty of the crime you punished me for. But that’s Army justice for you.”
Padre Rand stepped forward. “Son, this is not the time for recrimination—”
“Sir!” yelled Mercy, directing Everson’s attention to the far side of the arena, where another gate opened.
“There’s no time,” said Rutherford. “Prepare yourselves, sir. God knows what the Chatt bastards’ll send out this time.”
All enmity was swept aside in that moment. Survival was all that mattered.
“Make for the rock,” ordered Everson. “It’s our only defensible position.”
The section advanced towards the outcrop, rifles pointed at the opening gate and void beyond.
Atkins deployed his men, using the outcrop as cover. He sent Gazette up the incline to its peak, where they could use his sniper skills. “What the hell is this place?” he asked Rutherford. “Is this their sport, pitting men against monsters?”
“After a fashion,” Rutherford said. “They think it their holy calling to protect their world from the spawn that rises from the crater. They bring ’em here, and force Urmen to fight against them so they can study the creatures, the better to defend against them in the future.” A high-pitched screech echoed round the arena and Atkins watched, tensed, as a huge squat creature lumbered out of the tunnel behind the open gate. A sulphurous stench accompanied it as it plodded into the ring. Moving on four pairs of short, thick legs, each wreathed in folds of tough leathery skin, it walked with a graceless movement, as if it were completely out of its element. Atkins could see no eyes, but the head bristled with long twitching hairs arrayed around a large maw.
Scabrous growths covered its leathery back, and a heavy fanlike tail dragged behind it.
At the sight of the demonic thing, Padre Rand made the sign of the cross and offered up a hasty prayer.
The Chatts wrangling the beast took their electric lances to it and it bellowed with pain and rage as they herded it into the centre of the arena. It looked slow and clumsy, but Atkins didn’t let his guard down.
Some of the deadliest things on this world barely moved at all. He had no idea what defences this creature might have. None of them did.
Neither, it seemed, did the damn Chatts, which he supposed was the whole point of the exercise.
“Fire!” barked Everson.
A volley of rifle fire slammed into the creature. It screeched and retreated. The electric lances of the Chatts behind it crackled pitilessly, driving it forward again. It bellowed in pain and confusion, its maw opening to reveal a gullet easily big enough to swallow a man and filled with inward-pointing spines.
Everson gazed round at the stands of Chatt scentirrii. “They expect us to fight for our lives,” he confided to Atkins. “They want us to fight.
They’ve pitched us against this monster to study our strengths and weaknesses, but we’re not going to give them the satisfaction.”
“Then may I ask what you intend to do?” said Atkins, keeping one eye on the beast as it lumbered round the amphitheatre, snuffling blindly at the dead bodies.
Everson grinned. “Something they won’t expect, Corporal. Escape.” The creature charged towards the outcrop with a territorial roar, building up a surprising momentum until, head down, it butted the rock. The outcrop shuddered under the impact.
“If you’ve got a plan, Lieutenant, I’m all ears.”
“We need a diversion. We have to get the wall down, get that thing among the Chatts.”
“We’ve got Mills bombs.”
“We’ll never throw them that far.”
From a trouser pocket, Rutherford produced a braided length of rope with a bark cradle. “Sling,” he said.
Everson glanced at it. “Good man. Evans, give Rutherford a bomb.” Mercy handed over a Mills bomb from his webbing. “I’ve used a trench catapult to throw bombs, but a sling? Jesus. Isn’t that a little dangerous?”
Rutherford just laughed as he fitted the bomb into the cradle, pulled the pin, whirled it around his head, and then let it fly. It arced up into the darkness and was lost until the wall of the arena exploded in a fireball and the faint whistle of red-hot iron shrapnel. The blast flung Chatt bodies into the air, briefly silhouetted against the fireball. Caught by the blast, a supporting column began to crumble, bringing down a section of the chamber’s dome.
The section fired again, this time concentrating their volley to one side of the creature driving it away, towards the rubble-strewn breach.
It scrabbled over the debris to escape the gunfire, causing panic among the Chatts, their acid spit proving ineffective against the creature’s thick hide.
In the confusion, Everson ordered Atkins and the Tommies across the arena towards the beasts’ entrance. Going back the way they came would only lead them back into the edifice. Everson reckoned they must get these creatures in here through a dedicated entrance somewhere, without endangering the general population. Perhaps that way lay an exit.
Pot Shot hurled a Mills bomb at the gate. The explosion ripped the toughened gate from its root hinges in a plume of dirt and resinous sawdust.
Atkins and his section walked through the cloud, smoke billowing down the tunnel and swirling round their feet. Bayonets caught the pale blue lichen light as they advanced in trench clearance formation, ingrained in them at the training camps in France. They’d swept through Hun trench systems time after time, and it was reassuring that their training and tactics suited battle in a Chatt edifice so well. This was something they knew how to do, and do well.
TULLIVER’S MOUTH WAS dry with anxiety as they watched the third and final glass negative plate reverently slipped into the solution by the acolyte, almost as if it was being anointed or baptised. After a second failure the Chatts seemed to decide that what the process lacked was prayer and began a clicking, smacking chant, almost as if they were counting: one elephant, two elephant.
The air of tension was palpable. Werner rubbed a finger inside the stiff Teutonic collar of his uniform.
Hepton fidgeted impotently as he watched the Chatts wash the chemicals over the plate.
“I just wish they’d bloody well let me do it,” he whispered. “I just wish—”
An image began to form.
Hepton, in an effort to preserve the image on the plate, stepped forward, only to be warned off by the Chatts.
“Wash it!” he said. “Wash it. The other tray!”
The Chatts understood and slipped the plate into the other tray to stop the process.
When the Chatts saw the image, the chanting stopped. They stepped back in awe, touching the heels of their long-fingered hands to the bases of their antennae and then to their thorax.
“What is that?” Hepton asked, squinting at the negative image that had appeared. The man might be a photographer, but he had no experience in aerial photograph interpretation. The composition was odd, the angle oblique.
“Look. Lines radiating out across the landscape from two central points.” Werner was triumphant. “I knew I was right.”
Tulliver, too, saw the images he’d glimpsed all too briefly as his bus spiralled down out of control. “You were right, Werner. But what are they? The scale of those things; they’re miles long. What does it mean?”
“They are the Threads of GarSuleth,” hissed the Chatt, beholding its new relic. “Divine proof that this One never thought it would see. These Ones are truly blessed. Our scentures tell us that GarSuleth came down from his Sky Web to spin this world for his Children, the Ones. You have seen them and by GarSuleth’s Will have brought us this holy glyph. This is a most miraculous spinning. The elders must be told.”
The discussion was interrupted by the arrival of several scentirrii, one of whom addressed Werner.
“The Urman like you and its dark scentirrii have escaped. You know what you must do.”
Werner looked shocked.
The news shook Tulliver as well. Not so much the fact that Everson and his men had escaped—that much he expected of them—but the fact that he was now stuck here, alone. No, not alone; with Hepton, which frankly was less preferable.
However, Hepton took it the worst. The man was torn. He didn’t know what card to play. Where did his best chance of safety lie, with the Fusiliers or with Werner and the Zohtakarrii? Confusion and alarm washed across the man’s face like a rip tide.
Tulliver looked at him in disgust. He had no sympathy for the man.
“You are to come with us,” the scentirrii urged Werner. “You are to b
e the acid on the Breath of GarSuleth and strike down those who defy his Will.”
Tulliver stepped forward and grasped Werner’s forearm. “Werner, you can’t do this.”
“I don’t have a choice,” Werner said, averting his eyes as he pulled his arm free of Tulliver’s grip.
“You always have a choice.”
“And I choose to fly. I am sorry, my friend. I truly am.”
Tulliver looked the German pilot in the eyes and saw that his decision was not without cost, but it was one he was willing to pay. Service to the Chatts for the chance to fly.
“Fly with me,” Werner appealed to him. “You and I, up there. The Zohtakarrii have only kept you alive because you are like me.”
“I’m nothing like you, Werner. Nothing,” said Tulliver vehemently.
After Werner had been escorted away, the two remaining scentirrii moved in to seize him and Hepton.
“Don’t take me,” Hepton wheedled. “I helped you. I can still help you. I helped reveal the Threads of GarSuleth. That must count for something!”
The feeling of impotence welled up in Tulliver again, summing up his whole time here on this world. It left him feeling grounded. Useless. He’d had enough of that with Everson. He’d never liked being helpless. That’s why he joined the RFC. By God, not any longer.
He pulled the revolver from his waistband and shot the scentirrii.
Hepton looked on in horror as he saw his chance for salvation dissipating with the cordite smoke before his eyes. “What the bloody hell are you doing, man?”
“My duty,” snapped Tulliver. “Move.”
Waving the Chatt apothecaries back with his revolver, Tulliver picked up the glass plate negative, wrapped it in its cloth and backed out of the chamber, Hepton accompanying him only with the greatest reluctance.
One Chatt raised itself up on its legs and hissed venomously. Tulliver put a bullet through its head and it dropped to the floor before it could exhale its soporific benediction.
The others hesitated and sank back down again in a submissive posture, unwilling to risk their new relic.
