Darwin's Soldiers

by Ste Sharp

  Samas stopped eating and stared into the fire.

  Alexander, Li explained, was possibly the greatest general of all time and had gone on to take the city of Tyre, Gaza and the Egyptian region. ‘Do you want to know more?’ Li asked.

  Samas nodded. ‘Everything.’

  A sense of guilt was rising in his stomach. Surely, if he had been there, this wouldn’t have happened. He needed to know it all.

  Li continued with Alexander’s short but epic life and the end of the Persian Empire as Samas had known it. The scale of events overwhelmed him and his guilt slowly ebbed away. What could he, one man, have done against such a war machine? He had been just one spear in a sea of blades.

  ‘So, all this happened before you were born?’ he asked.

  Li nodded.

  ‘But you lived in a different world – a different time.’ He paused as a thought came to him. ‘When the beasts attacked, you said they were extinct. Which ones were you talking about?’

  Li’s head dropped. ‘All of them.’

  ‘Even the elephants?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And yet you killed it,’ Samas said.

  Li took a second to respond. ‘The soldiers are more important.’

  Samas sighed and looked at the people around them, new weapons and strange faces, and struggled to accept they were from different times. He sighed, remembering his father’s old stories of great battles. From what Li had said, Samas’ battles were just old stories now too.

  Samas thought of mushrooms, obelisks and elephants, unsure of what they would encounter next, and looked up through the canopy to see early dawn was giving the branches shape.

  ‘There’s something else I want to ask you,’ Samas said. ‘About your face, I…’

  Li pretended not to hear and yawned. ‘Oh, I’m tired. Best get some sleep.’

  Samas nodded back. ‘Yes, of course.’

  A secret it is then, he thought.

  ***

  When John woke he knew something was wrong.

  He saw leaves above him and remembered he was lost in a forest with a group of strangers – but something had changed overnight. Staring through the yellow leaves at the faint sky above, he stretched to ease his aching joints but his arm felt numb and heavy. He pulled back the coat he’d been using as a blanket and gasped: his palm was stuck flat to the side of the black metal body of his machine gun, near the trigger. He tried to prise his fingers off the metal but they were stuck fast, and if he pulled harder he would tear off his skin. How did it get stuck? He hauled the gun onto his lap and stared at his fingers and palm – which were embedded a quarter of an inch into the metal. He had to hide it. John looked around: everyone was asleep. He pulled his numb arm and gun up to his chest, stood up and walked away, only to stumble over a foot, slip and crash on his back.

  In a flash, the tattooed face of the Maori loomed over him.

  ‘Sorry.’ John’s voice came out higher than he’d intended.

  The Maori’s wide eyes narrowed and he spoke in a hoarse whisper. ‘Why wake me?’

  ‘It was an accident, I…’ John looked at his arm.

  The Maori tilted his head and stared.

  ‘I just woke up and it was stuck,’ John said.

  Movement behind the Maori caught John’s eye, so he sat up and covered the gun with his coat.

  ‘What is happening?’ John recognised the Amazon’s whispered voice and curved silhouette.

  ‘His hand is stuck to his weapon,’ the Maori whispered.

  John let her study his hand. ‘They’ve become one.’ She moved close to feel John’s brow. ‘What is your name?’

  John swallowed. He hadn’t been this close to a woman for months. ‘John,’ he replied.

  ‘I am Euryleia. Do you have a fever, John?’

  ‘No I’m fine, really. I burnt my hand yesterday when Delta-Six shocked me.’

  ‘The flying man?’

  John nodded. ‘I cooled it on my gun.’

  ‘But how could such a thing happen?’ the Maori said.

  ‘This land is strange.’ Euryleia removed a leather canteen from her belt and poured a trickle of water on John’s hand. ‘Does this help?’

  John frowned. The water made his hand tingle, and it felt like his hand was being drawn into the metal. He pulled but his hand wouldn’t budge.

  ‘No, sorry.’

  At this rate his hand would be inside the gun in a few hours.

  ‘How am I supposed to walk with my arm like this?’ John looked at the rest of the group who were waking. ‘I don’t want to slow us down.’

  ‘Is it heavy?’ Euryleia asked.

  ‘Yes,’ John said. ‘If you give me a hand we can strip some parts off it – make it lighter,’ he said, thinking how he could unclip the magazine, bipod and butt and maybe remove the cooling shroud from the barrel. But he’d have to carry the stripped-off parts in his bags.

  Euryleia smiled but her eyes were full of concern. ‘Maybe I can fashion a sling from your belts and bag?’

  John pictured the soldiers he’d seen at the Belgian field hospital with lost limbs or blinded by gas: they’d been told they could adapt, but few had lived a life they could call normal. What if his hand didn’t come off? Would his arm have to be cut off? Or would it be stuck forever?

  ‘That would be great.’ John looked up. ‘But don’t tell anyone. I’m sure it’ll get better.’

  ***

  Several hours later, and well into a full day of hard walking, the monotony of the woodland and the rhythm of the pounding feet took hold of the Day Watch and questions drifted along the line.

  ‘Why are we here?’ a Roman soldier asked.

  ‘It’s a challenge,’ Sir William answered, striding ahead at point.

  ‘But why us?’ John asked.

  Althorn answered. ‘Maybe we are being punished?’

  ‘What?’ Crossley stared at the Celt. ‘Why are we being punished, exactly?’

  ‘For the lives we have taken,’ Althorn replied, his expression hidden by his hood.

  ‘Now listen to me.’ Crossley slowed Althorn and the leaders down. ‘Every life I took was an enemy soldier – Nazi, SS, Italian, you name it – all enemy soldiers.’

  ‘But every death is still a life taken,’ Althorn replied.

  ‘And countless lives saved. Jeez!’ Crossley threw his arms out.

  ‘Why do you think we are here?’ Euryleia asked Crossley, but he stayed silent.

  ‘All we know,’ Sir William said, ‘is we must get to the silver gates.’

  ‘And what happens when we get there?’ the Maori asked.

  ‘Who gives a crap?’ Crossley shook his head and stormed off in a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘We’ll find out when we get there.’

  ‘What race did he say he was from?’ Sir William asked, with a look of irritation and confusion.

  ‘American,’ John answered with a smile.

  ***

  During a rest break, John eyed up Crossley’s brown lace-ups with a pang of jealousy. What he would give to replace his cracked, hobnailed boots? They creaked like iron gates and carried the stench of the last latrine he’d waded through.

  John took in the rest of the soldiers too: nearly a hundred of them, and so different from one another. They were nothing like the men in his battalion. When they’d first met, they’d been boys and knew nothing about war. They’d seen pictures and read enough stories to make war seem glamorous – they would be heroes! How little they knew. These soldiers around John now were older, and something in their eyes told John they’d seen death, had killed to stay alive and lost friends. That was all war was to John.

  ‘Are you tired?’ the Maori asked.

  ‘I’m fine – just getting used to the weight,’ John replied and stretched his back, which had been twisted by the awkward position of the gun.

  ‘Let me carry a bag,’ he offered.

  John thought about declining but didn’t want to be rude. ‘Thanks.’ He passed his b
ag of gun parts over. ‘I’m John, by the way, John Greene.’ He stretched out his left hand.

  ‘I am Mata.’ He accepted John’s extended hand with a look of confusion.

  When they resumed their walk, John and Mata’s conversation flowed and naturally came back to their wars.

  ‘And you fight in lines cut into the ground?’ Mata asked.

  ‘Yes,’ John answered. ‘Sometimes we take over Fritz’s trench, but sooner or later we end up back in the first one we dug.’

  ‘And you have shelter?’ Mata asked.

  ‘Some, for officers and stores,’ John replied.

  ‘Sounds like a pā, but we build ours on hilltops.’

  ‘Good idea.’ John pictured water flowing downhill, carrying turds and dead rats with it.

  As he and Mata walked on in silence, the talk of muddy trenches reminded John of his night in the crater. It felt like a story John would tell about someone else, not himself. They’d called him a hero when they found him tucked up in the bomb crater with a puddle full of empty shells and the shards of the tree stump that had saved his head a dozen times.

  ‘You’re a living miracle,’ Edmonds had said.

  ‘No, no,’ John had protested: he’d just been cut off from the unit.

  His platoon had advanced across the narrow strip of land towards the enemy line, hidden by smoke from the earlier bombardment, and John’s job was to carry the Lewis gun to the right flank where he and Jones would cover the infantry from flanking fire. Wire-cutters had been at work throughout the night, clearing a path for the main body of soldiers, and they had a couple more Lewis gunners with them to pick off the German machine guns fixed in the trench.

  The artillery sounded far away but then all hell broke loose. Shells exploded around them, sending the soldiers running for cover, and their shouts were heard by the enemy, who opened fire with their machine guns. A shell exploded near John, throwing him clear of Jones. He’d panicked, he admitted that now, but his panic had saved him. He’d grabbed cartridges off the ground and scrambled into the nearest hole with his gun. He flipped the bipod out, pointed the gun at the enemy and waited. He could hear men dying and put his gas mask on when the acrid stench of burnt flesh and cordite wafted his way.

  When the shouting stopped, he knew he was alone, but was given no time to think about what to do. Out of the smoke came the enemy, and John defended himself. Over and over again. He would release a burst of fire, then reposition his gun a foot to the left, then fire at the next shadow, and so on. Time became irrelevant as his world turned into an endless grey storm of lightning and death, with wave after wave of Huns attacking and falling before him. Cold night and wet day crept past with John in constant fear, warmed only by the heat of his machine gun, which steamed and fizzed in the rain.

  ‘We only found you ’cos we saw the whites of your eyes, Johnny!’ Taylor said the next day.

  John hated being called Johnny.

  The rest of the boys had been grateful.

  ‘Well done, mate. Saved our bacon, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Yeah, we’d have been gonners if Fritz had got through.’

  The lads acted strangely after that and reckoned he would get a medal. They looked up to him in a way which made him feel uncomfortable, like they expected more from him.

  ‘Looks like you had enough ammo, eh?’ Smithy had grinned. ‘Nolan reckons you must have shot a hundred Huns – a whole bloody pile of ’em!’

  He was just doing his job, John had told the officers: he’d fixed his gun and held the line. He didn’t know which way to run, but he couldn’t tell them that. John pictured his gr andfather shouting and scowling : fighting was a soldier’s duty! Never run!

  John looked at Mata and wondered what his battles had been like. Eventually, he built up the courage to ask what he’d been dying to ask. ‘Mata, why do you have those markings on your face?’

  ‘My moko?’ Mata ran a finger over the intricate black lines across his forehead and down his cheeks.

  John nodded. ‘And the ones on your arms.’

  ‘They’re marks from important times in my life: battles; children; my wife.’ Mata grew in size as he spoke of his people. ‘Special designs from my tribe. They show other warriors how strong I am.’

  ‘I see.’ John smiled and wondered what tattoos he would have if he were a Maori. One when he married Rosie and another the day Joe was born. One for signing up for Kitchener’s Army, one for his first kill and another for the night in the crater. But would he want those reminders on his body? He was already scarred by Rosie’s death, and the tin soldier around his neck reminded him of Joe – he didn’t want any reminders of war. He just wanted to be home.

  Chapter 3

  ‘How far to the golden hills, Althorn?’ Sir William asked as they walked through the forest.

  Althorn sighed, not wanting to be labelled as the group’s guide when he knew as little about this land as everyone else. On the positive side, he’d learnt a lot about his companions thanks to their desire to talk to him.

  ‘We should reach them tomorrow evening,’ he said and pulled up his hood.

  ‘If we had horses, we’d be at the gates in no time,’ the knight replied.

  ‘You’re not used to all this walking then?’ Crossley called over.

  Sir William lifted his head as though considering a response, but remained silent.

  ‘I suppose, being high-born,’ Crossley continued, ‘you’re used to having servants and a squire and–’

  Sir William rushed at Crossley, too fast for him to react, and pinned him against a tree trunk with a knife at his ear.

  ‘You know nothing of the hardships I have endured, A-merry-can,’ Sir William growled.

  Althorn held back, not wanting to get involved. He noticed John was nervously shifting from foot to foot as Crossley fought for breath, wide-eyed and grasping at the knight’s arm.

  ‘Taunt me again and I will tear out your tongue,’ Sir William whispered clearly.

  ‘Enough!’ Euryleia shouted.

  Sir William blinked and let Crossley fall to the ground, choking. Euryleia helped Crossley up and gave him a sip of water.

  ‘We must keep moving!’ Sir William shouted and stomped off with his determined, long stride.

  Althorn gave a wry smile. He didn’t like bullies and felt sorry for Crossley, but for some reason his respect for Sir William had just gone up a notch.

  Crossley remained silent afterwards, clearly nursing a bruised ego, while Althorn’s thoughts returned to finding food. He had found edible roots, leaves and nuts, but a group this size needed more – and they needed meat. Creatures had been seen scuttling through the undergrowth and small animals attracted larger beasts, so Althorn scanned the patches of bare earth for paw prints or marks.

  Further on, the forest opened to reveal a glade with ankle-high yellow grass with a small pond at its centre where a cloud of brightly coloured butterflies – sunset red and lemon yellow – flittered and swarmed around a broad tree covered in tiny black flowers.

  ‘Wait!’ Althorn whispered.

  He had seen movement by a cluster of brown rocks some thirty paces away, so stepped to one side to see a wild boar rooting through the earth.

  A figure moved on Althorn’s left: Mata, who stealthily ran into the pig’s blind spot. Althorn watched the Maori creep forward, holding his club high, closing in without a sound. Fifteen paces. Ten. He stopped and crouched low. The boar tentatively raised his head and Mata froze. A second later, a black-maned lion leapt out of a bush and pounced on the boar with a flurry of fur and incisors, mauling it to the ground.

  Mata stood motionless, staring at the predator. Blood dripped from the lion’s mouth as it looked up from its kill. Its eyes fixed on Mata and it dropped the dead boar, stretched to its full height and, with a muscular judder, released a deep, wild roar.

  ‘Tane-Mahuta!’ Mata’s shout could be heard across the glade.

  Silence fell across the forest like a blank
et, and time seemed to slow down as Althorn watched the lion tense its muscular back and legs. A snarl wrinkled its nose and it released another threatening roar. Althorn wanted to rush in and help, but what could they do against such a beast? Beside him, John fiddled with his gun and let out a whimper. Then Althorn saw the bejewelled Thai spearman and the Sikh swordsman creeping through the grass. An archer to Althorn’s right fitted an arrow to his bow, and spearmen were raising their weapons.

  With another roar and a flash of claws, the lion shot forward at Mata. The Maori twisted away from the beast and cracked it on the shoulder with his patu club, deflecting the lion’s charge, but was hit by a wild paw and crashed to the ground. Full of momentum, the lion turned and leapt at the next threat – the Thai spearman. An arrow thumped into the lion’s flank, but it barely flinched as it swiped away the Thai’s pike and grabbed him in his strong jaws. More arrows thumped into the beast’s side as the near-dead Thai desperately lashed out with his knife. In response, the lion gave him a violent, neck-breaking shake and nonchalantly disembowelled him with a swipe of a clawed paw, sending jewels and guts across the forest floor.

  The turbaned, Sikh swordsman – who Althorn assumed had been holding back for fear of catching the Thai – jumped in and hacked into the lion’s neck, paralysing him instantly. With a second stroke he cleaved the lion’s head from its body.

  The whole incident had lasted less than thirty seconds, leaving Althorn’s heart pounding. He ran to Mata, past the Sikh who stood motionless, as dark blood ran and dripped down his sword.

  ‘My God – what happened?’ Sir William had returned with the soldiers in the vanguard.

  ‘I was tracking a pig when that appeared.’ Mata pointed at the lion’s body.

  Sir William stared at the slashes across Mata’s chest. ‘You were lucky.’

  Mata clenched his teeth. ‘What if there are more demons like that out there?’

  ‘That was no demon, it was a lion,’ Althorn said.

  Mata’s face looked blank.

  ‘Where on Earth are you from? Never seen a lion?’ Sir William asked with a chuckle.