The Fallen

by Tarn Richardson

Georgi laughed. “Monsignor Benigni, you’re not nearly important or gifted enough to have that honour bestowed upon you,” he smiled, before taking another step towards him. “You’re merely a nuisance.”

  FORTY SIX

  THE ITALIAN FRONT. THE SOČA RIVER. NORTHWEST SLOVENIA.

  It was cold and it had started to rain, the first rain any of the soldiers had felt in weeks. Pablo thought he would have celebrated feeling the droplets on his hair, on his back, but he was frozen by the biting chill of night. Scorching day was always followed by freezing night on the Carso.

  Ahead of them a battle was raging, while behind them, the taken lands were covered with the churn and action of the Third Army making good their gains.

  A hamlet burnt away to his right. He remembered it when they arrived beside it at dusk, four houses perched precariously on the edge of the mountainside, the occupants old, too old and frail to leave their homes or the hamlet. Now the four houses were aflame. Pablo didn’t know what had happened to the old people, and didn’t dare to ask.

  Everyone and everything looked distorted and wicked in the reflected glow from the burning buildings. The call was made to move out, to move further up the mountainside, mugs clinking as they were stowed away into backpacks and fires sending up swirling burning ashes as they were kicked out.

  As they fell into the line the rain seemed to lessen a little.

  Small mercies, thought Pablo, as they began to march higher up the mountain through the dark into the heart of the battle.

  Four hours later Pablo had slept, a black sleep without dreams. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to sleep in the middle of all that horror and murder, of the shouts and crying of the dying, of the torment of the shells still raining, though now with less frequency, along the trench the Italian army had won from the Austro-Hungarian defenders at such a terrible cost. But Pablo had slept, although in slumber he resembled just another corpse in the morgue the trench had become, a long shallow grave for the thousands massacred on this first of many assaults up the mountainside which would have to be made before they had reached their goal. The summit. The Karst Plateau.

  The first thing he felt as he forced himself awake was someone trying to take his rifle. Instinct kicked in, months of training, and he gripped hard on to it and snatched it back. He knew he’d be shot if he lost his rifle. He knew that he could not be killed that way, shot for dereliction of duty. That would not be the way to go. Not after he had come so far.

  The soldier cursed and drew back.

  “Stop fucking lying down and playing dead like a coward!” the man barked, before moving on.

  Pablo rose to his knees and found himself kneeling in the praying position. He lowered his head and spoke words from his favourite prayer, a moment of tranquillity and peace among all the hot anger and death.

  He was suddenly aware of a Priest next to him, speaking directly in his ear.

  “Do you know why are you here, Private?” the Priest asked, crouching down by his side.

  “I am here to do my duty.”

  “Yes, but for whom?”

  “For my King and Queen and my country.”

  But the Priest laughed.

  “Why are the soldiers looking after me so carefully?” Pablo asked cautiously. “Why have they not let me go forward into battle yet?”

  “We wish only to keep you safe. You and your six-fingered hands.” The Priest reached forward with his own hand to help the young soldier up, but instantly Pablo drew himself away, crying out. For the Priest’s long pallid hand had turned rotten and black, like that of a corpse long dead. “Whatever is the matter?” the Priest asked, as Pablo scrambled for his rifle and his footing. “Come on,” he shouted, his face wild with emotion, “let’s see your hands! Let us check they are still undamaged!”

  Once again Pablo woke to the sound of gunfire and shells buffeting the ridge above where he lay, now realising it had been a nightmare, his eyes opening on the Corporal sitting opposite. Other soldiers were kneeling in a trench a little behind him, waiting to go over the top.

  “Am I dead?” asked Pablo, the first words which came to his tongue. “Am I in hell?”

  “What do you think?” asked the Corporal, taking the pipe from his ruddy lips and setting the short blade of a knife into the bowl.

  “I don’t know,” replied Pablo, looking about himself at the bodies of dead Italians and Austro-Hungarians piled high either side of him.

  Abelli stared hard at him. “We’ve won the forward trench of Mount San Michele.”

  “At what cost?” asked Pablo.

  The Corporal laughed and passed the pipe between his hands. Pablo studied them carefully to ensure they did not change to the decaying horrors that had grabbed at him in his dream, before turning his attention to the elevation beyond, up which soldiers had begun to scurry.

  “What lies at the top, Corporal Abelli?” asked Pablo.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Why is it so important we take it? Surely there are more valuable targets which are worth all this sacrifice?”

  “You’re a shrewd young man,” replied the Corporal, waggling a finger. He set the knuckle of it to his lips. “Most soldiers don’t question. They just do.”

  “That doesn’t make me shrewd. Just cautious. Maybe a coward? I just don’t want to die.”

  “And you won’t,” Abelli assured him. “Not in battle.”

  FORTY SEVEN

  THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.

  Tacit and the others took the stairs at a jog and ducked into the corridor at the very top, once they knew it was clear. There was a ground-floor window halfway along it through which they had come half an hour earlier and they made for it, Tacit checking every passageway and doorway before they slipped past. Down here there were no lights save the moon’s pale glow through the windows. Suddenly Tacit stopped dead in his tracks and dropped to his haunches, Isabella following his lead, Sandrine and Henry pausing three paces behind her.

  “What is it?” she asked, placing a hand on his broad back.

  “Shhh!” he answered, his head turned to the side, as if trying to make out a sound from beyond. He rose and scurried down a bisecting corridor, his body low, his fingers spread wide. He dropped again to his haunches twenty feet on and listened, his head craned to one side, senses honed. Five seconds later he moved on once more, further into the depths of the new passageway.

  “What is the matter with the man?” exclaimed Henry, breathlessly. “That’s not the way we’re supposed to go!”

  Isabella swore and scuttled after him, the chain mail still folded across the crook of her arm.

  “Tacit!” she called under her breath, feeling concern beat in her chest. This was no time for heroics, no time to get side-tracked. For once she agreed with Henry and Sandrine. They had to get out, get to Sister Malpighi’s quarters and see if she was able to shed any light on events, on the Darkest Hand, suggest a way forward. She knew the longer they dawdled, the greater the danger would be. Tacit moved forward again. Isabella cursed once more. She had always felt coming back to the Vatican was a mistake.

  Tacit was looking down at something in the corridor in front of him. She joined him and felt the breath sucked out of her.

  “Monsignor Benigni!” she hissed, looking at the figure lying prostrate on the floor of the passageway.

  Tacit turned the dead man’s head to the side, Benigni’s blind eyes staring away into the black corners of the corridor.

  “Broken neck,” Tacit muttered darkly, his mouth turned up with grim admiration at the manner by which his death had been delivered. A swift blow. A strike from a professional. An Inquisitor. “He never would have felt a thing.” He set the flat of his palm against the forehead of the leader of the Sodalitium Pianum. “Still warm. Only just killed. Missed it by minutes.” Tacit looked up into the darkness beyond. “Which means his killer is still nearby. Never had a chance to hide the body.”

  “Come on,” said Isabella, pulling at his arm
to get him to rise, “let’s get out of here. We need to go. Now.”

  “Do you know if Benigni still lived at his old residence?” Tacit asked, stepping after her, but with his eyes fixed to the dead body behind them. His mind had begun to turn, homing in on this new and, he supposed, important discovery. Isabella confirmed that he did, as they broke into a gentle run to reach Henry and Sandrine, following the pair of them to the open window.

  In the moonlit doorway not far from where the body lay, a figure watched them leave, the hint of a smile touching his lips, as if remembering his old acquaintance.

  Georgi mouthed the name “Poldek” and grinned.

  FORTY EIGHT

  PLEVEN. BULGARIA.

  Poré took his few belongings from the cupboard and threw them into his bag.

  “Whatever are you doing?” asked the man with whom he shared at the room at the boarding house. Poré had taken three rooms for his men in the low terraced building in Pleven for the duration of their stay, the sign in the window promising clean and cheap lodgings, as they had proved to be. It had felt good to sleep in a bed rather than trying to find comfort under the stars with one’s back to the hard earth, but now Poré knew that it was time to return to the road. And with urgency.

  “We are leaving. This evening. Pack your things. And tell the others.”

  “But what about tonight’s meal? And you promised us beer!”

  “Stay if you wish,” replied Poré, walking around the man to reach a drawer, out of which he pulled the last of his clothes, stuffing them roughly into his backpack, “but I am not staying in Pleven any longer.”

  The man scowled. “What is the hurry?”

  “Perhaps it is better that you remain ignorant. However, know this,” said Poré, pointing at him with a long finger, “we leave, in twenty minutes.”

  “Not me,” the man answered back, crossing his arms about him. “Not until I have a full belly and a full night’s sleep. And I’m sure you will find a similar answer from the rest of the men.”

  “He will,” called a voice from the open door to the room.

  Poré’s eyes narrowed on the man standing there.

  “Then I will go alone.” He threw the pack over his back and tightened the straps.

  “What is the matter with you, Poré?” asked the man at the door. “When we first came away with you, you told us we were hunting Catholics, looking to make our fortunes through thieving and ambushing. A life on the road.”

  “And we go back to the road. Going west, for Slovenia.”

  “For what purpose?” the man demanded, stepping into the room. Others were at his back and followed him inside. “You bring us to Pleven, away in the east, to look for signs of old camps and cold fires, and now you are saying we next go to the Carso?”

  “At least tell us why we should go with you?” another of the party asked.

  The memory of noise and heat came to Poré, of a light so bright he had had to shield his eyes from it with his hands. He shook it from his mind and looked at the brigands beginning to surround him.

  “If you are not coming with me, you will return the pelts I gave to you,” he said, his face puckered up in anger.

  “How so?” growled the man with whom he had shared the room, as more of the men appeared at the doorway and pressed their way inside, attracted by the noise.

  “They were the bargain I made when you came with me,” said Poré, aware that they had now surrounded him completely, a menacing gang. “Power, but only while you shared my path. If we part, you part with the pelts. That is what we agreed.” Poré’s face had turned red at the mutiny unfurling around him.

  “What if we do not wish to give them up?” one of the men asked, measuring himself up against the gaunt man.

  “I do not wish to fight you,” replied Poré, his teeth gritted, his nostrils flared wide, “but I will if I have to.”

  The men laughed. “How will you do that, old man? We number six and you’re only one!”

  “The pelts,” another hissed. “They are the least we deserve for what we have done for you.”

  “Least you deserve?” spat Poré. “When I found you, you were snivelling drunks, barely able to piss straight! I have given you hope, belief.”

  “You have given us power. Leave now if you must, but the pelts stay.”

  His temper flared and Poré lunged towards the man but, as he did so, the window to the room burst inwards and two robed figures swung into the room.

  “Inquisitors!” cried Poré, dropping to his haunches and rolling away, as the first of the gunfire erupted. Two of the men were hit, thrown back and lying still on the floor of the room.

  The door to the room was still open and Poré made a dash for it, grabbing his bag and hobbling low as yet more gunfire raked the wall. He reached the exit and threw himself through it, staring back at the confusion of dust and tumbling bodies to see two of his men shudder into wolf forms and leap at the swelling numbers of Inquisitors. The rest of his men had been too slow, splayed over the floor, their dead eyes staring blindly across the room.

  Bloodcurdling howls accompanied the sounds of armed combat as Poré hobbled as fast as he was able down the connecting corridor to the door at the far end. He threw it open and fell out into the side alleyway. The air was torn open with howling, explosions and cries. More sustained gunfire followed and then silence descended like a shroud, the last crackle of shooting dissipating in Poré’s ears.

  “Are any of them Poré?” he heard one of the Inquisitors shout, and his blood ran cold.

  So they knew he was alive. They knew he was here.

  They were here for him, this unit sent to kill him. He didn’t know why he was surprised. For months now he supposed they would have been hunting him, the fact he had escaped from Paris and survived now known to the Holy See and Inquisition after the trail of carnage he had left for them across Europe.

  “I think he crawled this way!” one of them called. “Out of the room.”

  “The rat, he must have gone down here!”

  Poré could hear footsteps in the corridor behind him. Urgently he looked both ways along the alleyway. There was a door opposite him and he tried it, relieved to find it unlocked. He vanished inside the moment the Inquisitors burst out into the alley behind him.

  “You sure he came this way?” someone asked.

  “Opposite,” an Inquisitor replied, and Poré sensed the man was pointing to the door through which he had just gone. “He must have gone inside.”

  Beyond the door, Poré pulled the pelt from his bag and dragged it over his head.

  “Come and get me,” he muttered, as rage flowed down from his scalp and into his limbs. Everything turned red and silver and an insatiable hunger grasped him.

  The handle of the door turned and the wolf exploded from the other side, decapitating the leading Inquisitor and removing the arm of the next in line.

  “Shoot it!” one of them cried from behind a hail of silver bullets, as Poré leapt, clawing and slashing at everything that moved, snapping wildly with his vile, monstrous jaws.

  FORTY NINE

  ITALY. ROME.

  Grand Inquisitor Düül heard the jostling of weapons in the passageway outside and stood in readiness as the Inquisitor bounded into the room.

  “Tacit!” he said. The Inquisitor had sprinted all the way from Vatican City and was drenched in sweat, fighting hard to catch his breath.

  “What about him?” replied Düül, his eyes narrowing, his pulse quickening.

  “He’s been spotted! In the Vatican. The inquisitional hall!”

  “Take a unit!”

  “A whole unit? Can we afford a whole unit?”

  “This is Tacit we’re talking about,” said Düül. “We know what he’s capable of. Seal off the building. Make sure he doesn’t escape. Find him and bring him back here alive.”

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  Düül took his eighteen-inch scimitar from its sheath on his belt and ran his f
inger along its keen edge. “No,” he said, drawing blood from his thumb, “I’ll wait and apply final judgement to the man as he kneels before me.”

  FIFTY

  THE ITALIAN FRONT. THE SOČA RIVER. NORTHWEST SLOVENIA.

  It had not taken long for Pablo and the rest of his unit to become entrapped within the battle again, as if the war were a vortex pulling them forever towards its centre. Three hundred yards across the plain, a renewed onslaught came from the shallow ridge at the end of it, bristling the rock all about them with small calibre rocket-fire.

  “I have no ammo left!” cried Pablo to a soldier beside him, as they trundled into a run and charged towards the waiting enemy. The air felt hot and drenched with smoke, the ground beneath rising higher over broken rocks, which tested the legs and lungs and made chests burn. “I have no ammo left!” he cried again, knowing he was as helpless as a child as he charged towards the enemy trench.

  At the top of the ridge was a scene straight from the fiery depths of hell. Every yard of the landscape was scarred with shell holes, splintered stone and the detritus of war, broken weapons, wagons, guns, shell fragments. The ground was covered in a crimson sheen turning black under the sun, spilled blood from the soldiers, both those attacking and defending. Body parts had been thrown over the place, torn apart by the ferocity of the battle that had raged here.

  Pablo’s feet tangled in something and he went down with a cry onto the sharp rocks, cutting his hands and wrists deep, tearing the front of his uniform. His rifle scuttled from his grip and a voice barked behind him to pick it and himself up. He watched as a slim Sergeant careered past, and Pablo looked down to see that his boots had become snagged by telephone wires from a communication base. He picked himself out of the trap and staggered on, wiping his hands, slick with blood, on the front of his coat, seeing that Corporal Abelli was waiting for him, crouched in a shell hole, the bottom of which was filled with blood.

  “I have no ammo left!” he cried pitifully to another soldier, reaching out to him with a clawing hand. “I have no ammo left!” He realised that he sounded pathetic and desperate and the soldier didn’t turn to look at him. “Help me! I have nothing to fight with!” He shook him by the shoulder and the soldier toppled over onto him, dead, a great hole punched through his chest.