by Pat Kelleher
Tulliver glanced at Hepton. “Come on. We’re leaving.”
“But my equipment!” begged Hepton.
“You want it, you carry it,” said Tulliver still covering the Chatts, who looked as if they were just waiting for a moment to strike. “But I’m not waiting.”
Hepton hastily loaded himself up with the canvas bags of film canisters, and picked up his tripod and heavy wooden camera box and shuffled as close to Tulliver as he could.
Tulliver raised the wrapped plate to the Chatts as a final warning. “Try to stop us and I’ll smash your precious ‘holy glyph’ to smithereens.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“To Face the Stark, Blank Sky...”
EVERSON KNEW THAT the creature attacking the Chatts would have set off their alarm scent and the rampaging monster would command their attention for only a short while. They had to take advantage of that.
He moved his men swiftly but cautiously up the tunnel, into a larger chamber with numerous broad tunnels leading off. The stench of urine, dung and musk hung heavily in the air. The space was filled with roaring, snarling and unearthly sounds that churned his insides and made him want to vomit. He felt glad that they didn’t have to face what was down those passages, but they might slow the Chatts down. He signalled to Evans and a couple of Mills bombs rolled down the passages. The tunnels shook and bloomed with a brief hellish light and a chorus of inhuman shrieks.
The section pushed on quickly, picking off any Chatts that challenged them.
“Atkins, they must get the creatures in here somehow. That’s our way out. Find it. We’ll hold here. But we can’t do it for long.”
“Sir. Mercy, Pot Shot, Porgy: with me. We’re looking for a big fucking entrance. Something you can drive a tank through. Put some jildi into it.”
The phrase brought a smile to Everson’s lips. It was one of Sergeant Hobson’s little sayings from his time in India. Atkins could do worse than pick up a thing or two from his platoon sergeant.
Any major attack would come from the direction of the arena. Gazette, Gutsy, Riley and Tonkins covered the exit to the chamber. The padre and Jenkins huddled against a wall.
“What about Tulliver and Hepton, sir?” asked Jenkins.
“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about Hepton, Jenkins,” Everson said, his lip curling. “As my father would say, he’s one of life’s floaters, that one. And as for Tulliver...” He let out a sigh. “Hopefully he can take advantage of our diversion.”
Everson shot another Chatt. “Come on, Atkins,” he muttered impatiently.
Rutherford sloped up the tunnel, panting, his bayonets dripping.
Without warning, a Chatt appeared from a side tunnel. Jenkins, in a move so uncharacteristic it must have been from terror, roared to mask his fear and charged with a rifle at the thing, plunging his bayonet into it, cracking and splintering its chest carapace.
“Face, Jenkins!” yelled Everson in warning.
“Sir?” Jenkins turned as, with its dying breath, the Chatt spat its acid. It seared the side of Jenkins’ face with a sickening sizzle, blistering his cheek and ear, as skin and muscle burnt and dissolved. Turning, however, had saved his sight. He staggered back, screaming, as the Chatt slumped to the floor.
Corporal Riley was first to reach him, emptying the contents of his water canteen across Jenkins’ face, flushing away the remaining acid. “Stay still, lad.” He cradled the man as he whimpered. “Tonkins,” he called. “Morphine.”
Tonkins fished in his haversack and came up with a tablet of morphine. Jenkins quietened down.
The others took the opportunity to pull their gas hoods on.
There was an explosion.
Mercy came haring down the tunnel, skidding to a halt.
“Sir, we’ve found it! Corp’s holding it now.”
“Move!” yelled Everson, waving his men past him up the tunnel.
The padre led the way, and Riley and Tonkins took Jenkins between them, whimpering in pain.
It wouldn’t be long before the place was swarming. Scentirrii were already running down the tunnel towards them as the dust settled.
Rutherford charged, screaming, bayonets in hand, and thrust them into the throats of two scentirrii before they had a chance to spit acid.
Gutsy swung his meat cleaver, Little Bertha, and split the head of another.
Everson ran the next Chatt through with his sword.
Rutherford fought off two more scentirrii, swinging Jenkins’ rifle, smashing in one facial plate with the shoulder stock, leaving the large black eye bleeding from its orbit, like a yolk from a broken shell. The other he caught against a wall and drove his hobnailed boot into its chest once, twice, three times to crush the carapace, driving shards into the vital organs.
Gazette knelt in the shelter of the tunnel giving covering fire for their retreat and picked off several more Chatts with characteristic accuracy.
Atkins, Pot Shot, Mercy and Porgy were covering the exit into a large partially built courtyard. It may have been used for wrangling demonic creatures from the craters, but today it held something else. Something even bigger, tethered by ropes to the courtyard walls.
Atkins was elated and despondent at its discovery: the German kite balloon, patched, mended and inflated, with a new larger basket fitted below, a cradle adapted from a battlepillar. It floated above the courtyard in a serene silence, its mooring ropes reminding him of tentacles and its great grey bulk of the aerial Kreothe.
It called to mind Mathers’ prophecy. ‘The Kreothe, made, not tamed.’ If that wasn’t a description of a balloon, he didn’t know what was. What the hell did it all mean? What was the next line? He couldn’t recall and grimaced.
Tethered by anchor lines it floated, giving them some cover from the battlements above. There was a large drum of rope for winching it up and down. That would have to go. A swift blow with Little Bertha saw to that. The huge sausage balloon rose slightly, tugging at its moorings.
Already Chatts were rushing along the walls above. Bolts of white fire crackled down from electric lances, pinning them in the entrance. Behind them, Everson could hear the crack of rifle fire as Gazette held the rear.
Pot Shot picked off one or two Chatts on the battlements. They tumbled to the ground, hitting heavily with wet cracking noises, their broken clay batteries shattering with blue flashes.
Porgy dashed out to secure the long basket. “All aboard!” he yelled.
They clambered into it. It was a tight squeeze and even Pot Shot complained as Gutsy eased his stocky form into the wicker-work cradle. Riley and Tonkins helped Jenkins in, the right side of his head livid and blistering, and sat him on the floor in a morphine stupor, where the padre comforted him.
“Christ, we’re never going to take off with you in it,” said Porgy.
“You have to think good thoughts!” Gutsy declared.
“Bloody hell, then we really are in trouble!” Porgy said with a grin.
From the basket, Atkins called to Everson, who was sheltering in the doorway with Rutherford.
“We have to go, sir. Now!”
“Come with us, Rutherford,” said Everson.
“In that thing?” Rutherford shook his head with a regretful smile. “Not a chance. Besides, I can’t. My clan is out there somewhere.”
“We’re your clan,” Everson replied earnestly.
Rutherford shook his head. “Maybe, once, but I’d made my mind up long before the so-called mutiny. We’re marooned here for good. You’re on a fool’s errand, sir. The sooner you realise that and start to live in the here and now, the better it’ll be for you and the men. And even if there was a way, I can’t go back home, sir. Not to Broughtonthwaite. Not after all I’ve seen; all I’ve done. I can’t go back to some quiet little redbrick terrace after all this. No. I’ll wish you the best of luck, sir. I hope you find what you’re looking for. I intend to find my Urmen.”
The man had gumption, Everson had to admit that. And maybe there wasn’t a way
home—the Bleeker party certainly suggested that—but he wasn’t willing to accept it until he had exhausted all the possibilities. He owed that to the men. Nevertheless, he held out his hand. Rutherford took it and shook it firmly.
“Good luck, Rutherford. I was wrong about you.”
Rutherford held his gaze. “Yes, you were.”
Everson ran for the cradle. Several pairs of hands helped him over the lip.
“Whoops-a-daisy, sir.”
Once Everson was in, Rutherford untied the last of the mooring ropes. The large sausage-shaped kite balloon began to rise; Rutherford caught hold of the rope as the kite balloon drifted up over the courtyard wall. He planted his feet against the side and ran up the courtyard as the balloon rose.
Chatts swarmed along the wall to stop it. One raised an electric lance. Rutherford kicked away from the wall as he reached the top, swung back and knocked the Chatt off the wall as the balloon drifted over.
It continued to rise, edging towards the trees. Rutherford slipped down the rope and hit the ground. He turned and gave a brief salute before racing for the tree line.
Mercy shook his head in exasperation. “Bloody hell, who does he think he is, Peter bleedin’ Pan?”
TULLIVER, REVOLVER DRAWN, the glass negative under his arm, followed the first passage he could find heading down. He knew he had to get off the main thoroughfares as soon as possible. He had their sacred relic under his arm, but he doubted that would keep them alive for long.
“Wait for me,” demanded Hepton, staggering under the bulk of his kinematic equipment.
“If you can’t keep up, get rid of it!” barked Tulliver sharply.
Hepton glared at him as if he’d asked him to leave behind his own grandmother.
“Suit yourself,” said Tulliver, perversely satisfied to have earned one of Hepton’s black looks.
He kept his eyes peeled and saw an Urman slip into a small side passage. He followed. It seemed to be a series of ‘belowstairs’ passages, exclusively for Urmen. That made things a little easier. Their scent would be lost among the throng, or so he hoped. The fact that Hepton was loaded down actually helped them. With Urmen hurrying this way and that on various errands and with assorted loads of their own, none of them gave Tulliver or Hepton a second look.
They reached the ground level and the Urman passage opened out into a larger tunnel filtering into the cavernous entrance chamber. Tulliver pressed his back against the wall and watched for a moment. It was obvious an alarm scent had spread. They were sealing the edifice. Scentirrii herded the Urmen out of the vast space, leaving baskets and bundles of harvested foods abandoned. Tethered to their loading quays, battlepillars rippled nervously.
Scentirrii urged Urmen to close the great bark doors.
“Just our rotten bloody luck.”
Hepton had just caught up with him and was panting hard and trying to shift his load into a more comfortable position. Too bad.
Tulliver scowled at him. He’d have a better chance alone, and he was almost prepared to leave Hepton to his fate, but for the fact he needed someone to start the propeller. “They know something’s up, they’re battening down the hatches. It’s now or never. As a favour to you, we’re going to walk up there. That should allow you to catch your breath, but once I start running you’d better keep up.”
Hepton swore under his breath.
Tulliver crept out, using stacks of abandoned foods and battlepillar jetties for cover until they neared the great bark doors. Hepton scurried along behind him, struggling to hold the tripod under his arms while lugging the camera box and knapsacks of film canisters. They had barely got two thirds of the way across the space when the two Chatts at the door stepped forward with spears raised to challenge them.
Tulliver carried on walking, pointed his revolver and shot the pair of them.
“That’s your cue,” he said to Hepton, sprinting towards the closing doors.
AS THE KITE balloon drifted up over the surrounding forest, Atkins spotted the Sopwith, with its unmistakable British roundels, and two figures running towards it, chased by Chatts. “Tulliver!”
“I’ve got it,” said Gazette. Resting his rifle on the basket and taking aim, he picked off the Chatt scentirrii around the aeroplane. The figure of Tulliver looked up and waved his thanks.
TULLIVER FIRED HIS last bullet into the body of a wounded Chatt that rose to stop them, then stepped past and climbed up into his cockpit, yelling at Hepton.
Hepton staggered up to the Sopwith, as quickly as his forty-aday body would let him. It hadn’t been forty-a-day for a while, but the damage had been done and he was gasping and coughing like a mustard gas victim. But he still had all his equipment. Just. He stepped up and stowed the tripod and camera box into the observer’s cockpit and was about to climb in himself.
“No,” said Tulliver.
“What the bloody hell do you mean, no?”
“I mean I need you at the front to turn the prop over.”
“I’m not a bloody air mechanic.”
“No, and you’re not bloody dead yet either, and you will be if I don’t get my bus off the ground.” He pointed towards the edifice, from where a number of Chatts were running and leaping towards them. “Prop. Now.”
Swearing, Hepton stepped down off the fuselage and hurried round to the front of the machine.
“Contact!” yelled Tulliver over the roar of the engine.
Hepton swung the propeller with both hands. It caught, and Tulliver ran the engine up. The bus began to move, pulled by the propeller’s traction.
Hepton raced round the wing and heaved himself into the observer’s cockpit as the plane picked up speed, bouncing along the uneven ground. He had barely strapped himself in when the Sopwith took to the air.
“OH, NOW THAT’S not bloody fair,” said Porgy, peering over the edge of the basket in dismay.
Three smaller balloons of the Zohtakarrii’s own manufacture rose out of chimney-like buttresses around the walls of the edifice. They were spherical and of some translucent skin stretched taut with gas. The balloons were tethered by long lines that played out as they rose into the air to meet the kite balloon’s escape. Each carried a basket holding eight Chatts, armed with electric lances.
Atkins remembered the line of Mathers’ prophecy now, ‘ Other Ones will travel on the Breath of GarSuleth, the Kreothe, made, not tamed.’ The Breath of GarSuleth was a Chatt phrase that could mean the wind. How did Mathers know? How could the Nazarrii, who made the prophecy and who died hundreds of years ago, possibly know?
Atkins looked back over his shoulder, to the open meadow, but could no longer see Tulliver, although he could hear the determined putter of the aeroplane’s engine.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, they were drifting back towards the edifice on the prevailing wind. The kite balloon was about as manoeuvrable as a bloody Kreothe, thought Atkins, his blood running cold.
The great earthen walls drifted past, too closely for comfort, and they passed by the great hollow buttresses from which the balloons had been raised; one of the balloons was above them even now. Pot Shot dropped a grenade down the chimney. The cap of the open buttress blasted apart, flinging rocky shrapnel and Chatt body parts high into the sky and raining down against the sausage balloon.
The men in the cradle ducked and covered their heads as it pattered down past them. Then the concussion wave hit, buffeting the cradle and sweeping them clear of the edifice.
Even as the gap widened, one scentirrii leapt from a watch balcony across the void towards them, striving to catch a trailing rope. It missed and fell, its body racing its shadow down the edifice side until the two collided against the incline, where it slid for a second before tumbling off towards the ground.
Driven by an impulse greater than self-preservation, two more Chatts made last-ditch leaps from the edifice as the kite balloon drifted beyond it One leapt for the basket. Its long fingers closed about the lip, and it began to haul itself up. The moment its
face appeared, Gutsy smashed it with his rifle butt, and it fell, flailing, to smack into the ground.
As the kite balloon drifted out over the forest canopy, the second Chatt, hanging from a trailing mooring rope, attempted to pitch its spear into the balloon. It struck the skin a glancing blow before falling harmlessly away.
Tonkins cut through the rope with his bayonet. “Thank God the bastards haven’t got wings,” he said as he leaned over and watched the Chatt drop. “They haven’t, have they?”
The falling Chatt didn’t even have a chance to hit the ground. Its shadow, falling across the forest canopy below, triggered a whipperwill, which lashed up into the air, caught the body and snatched it out of sight.
After that, Atkins watched the shadow of the balloon nervously as it sailed over the forest, a trail of hungry whips snapping far below.
A crackle alerted Atkins to more danger. He looked up. A Chatt balloon, its mooring now a smoking ruin, was now adrift. It was higher and floating in the same direction as the kite balloon, out towards the crater. The Chatts fired their electric lances.
Atkins couldn’t get a sight on the Chatt balloon’s occupants. The balloon itself made a better target.
He heard the roar of an engine and raked his eyes across the sky, looking for the source, but couldn’t see anything. Then he heard the sickening stutter of twin machine guns and saw the Albatros diving towards them.
It was virtually impossible to move in the cramped basket now, as everyone crouched for what blessed little cover they could get. From the other end of the cradle came a shout. Atkins craned his neck.
Another aeroplane, this one theirs.
KNIGHTS OF THE air, jousting in single combat. It sounded romantic; Tulliver had thought the same when he volunteered. His flight commander had quickly debunked that notion. It wasn’t a game. It was kill or be killed. There was no fair play. No chivalry. Shoot them in the back, from behind. Whatever it took. Up here, he owed Werner nothing.
Push forward on the stick, dive.
Werner’s Albatros was in his gunsight. He fired.
