Black Hand Gang (38 page)

Any moment now, they would be upon them. Atkins readied himself for fighting at close quarters.

"We're going to need something bigger than bullets," yelled Gutsy to Gazette, hefting a grenade from his pack, from the bottom of which projected a stick. "Rifle grenade."

"Not from my rifle you don't," said Gazette. "Bugger up your own bore."

"Well there's nothing to lose now, is there?" said Gutsy inserting the shaft of the stick into the barrel of his rifle. He put the stock of the rifle butt against the ground and aimed the barrel towards an opening on the far side of the chamber, through which Chatts were swarming. He pulled the safety pin from the grenade and then pulled the trigger. The bomb arced across the chamber and exploded within the ranks of Chatts, shredding body limbs in a hail of shrapnel. Showers of dust and debris rained down from the chamber ceiling.

"Bloody hell, Gutsy, you'll bring the whole place down on top of us," said Pot Shot.

The tremors grew stronger and a deep rumble filled the chamber.

"That wasn't me," he protested.

The Chatts wavered uncertainly, their leader - Rhengar - holding them in line as the rumbling continued. To the Tommies' left, the wall began to crack and crumble before exploding out into the chamber with a tremendous roar as the great bulk of an armoured beast crashed through it.

It was the Ironclad,
Ivanhoe
, covered in the dust and dirt of shattered earthen walls as it rolled implacably forward. It came to a halt, its engines growling and filling the chamber with acrid exhaust fumes, its great six-pounder guns trained on the ranks of Chatt soldiers. Light from the breached wall behind it filtered through the settling dust, bathing the tank in an ethereal glow.

A cheer went up the from the Tommies, while the Khungarrii hissed and backed away from the terrible vision before them, sinking down on their long-limbed legs, cowering as if in obeisance to the enormous beast.

"Skarra," hissed Chandar, also sinking down.

"Skarra?" said Everson.

"God of the Underearth. Dung Beetle Brother to GarSuleth himself, who takes the dead and guides them through their last metamorphosis so that they can rise and dwell in the sky web of GarSuleth forever."

Another rumble filled the air. Everson looked up at the roof and, in that moment, Chandar saw its chance and scuttled back along the wall behind the line of Tommies to the hole through which they'd entered, now covered by another cohort of Chatts.

"Sir!" said Hobson, swinging his rifle round to follow the limping arthropod.

"No, let him go, Hobson," said Everson. "Best save your bullets. We might need 'em."

Safe, Chandar turned, and its eyes met Atkins', who stared back wonderingly before the scentirrii parted and the old Chatt was lost in the swarm.

"Follow the bloomin' light," yelled a face peering out from a loophole in the side of the ironclad. A hand pointed needlessly to the gaping hole behind the landship.

Everson ordered the men towards the breach, the nurses and injured going first while a burst of fire from the landship's forward machine gun kept the Chatts at bay. Everson and 1 Section kept the retreat covered, before abandoning their position and falling back to the tank. The confused Chatts, hampered by their superstition, held back.

Everson banged on the small door in the rear of the left gun sponson. It opened a crack. "You're not coming in. There ain't room!" the leather and chain-mail masked crew member retorted.

"How the hell did you find us?" Everson bellowed above the growl of the engine.

"We didn't," yelled the cockney gunner. "When the explosions went off in the tower, Lieutenant Mathers ordered us forward, we hadn't got twenty yards across the clearing when the bleedin' ground collapsed beneath us. How were we to know it were riddled with tunnels and the
Ivanhoe
here a bleedin' twenty eight ton behemoth? Wah-la, as the Frogs say. We found ourselves down here."

"Well thank God you did," shouted Everson. "They think the tank is the god of their underworld, but I don't know how much time that will buy us."

"Well that's handy to know. You follow the others back to the surface. We'll keep the buggers busy." The door clanged shut again.

Everson waved 1 Section back as the tank's forward machine gun spat another hail of bullets across the chamber, keeping the Chatts at bay. They scrambled back along the tank's rubble-strewn path of destruction and into the bottom of a wide sinkhole. Ahead men were scrambling up the sides, hauling the injured up with them. Atkins and the others scrambled up the slope after them as the tank reversed back out of the nursery chamber towards them.

One of the gearsmen was looking out of a loophole at the rear of the tank, attempting to guide it. The landship lurched as it begin to climb up the side of the sinkhole; the engine labouring to propel its twenty-eight ton bulk up the steep sides, the tracks squealing in protest as they struggled to maintain purchase. At one point it looked as if wasn't going to make it but then it reared over the lip and, with a heavy crash, it slammed down onto level ground.

They emerged from the ground not thirty yards from the great earthen edifice that now towered above them, black smoke roiling up from a break in the wall high above. Further down the edifice, a familiar sickly green gas vented lazily from holes and sank down along the walls. Atkins was astounded at how much damage they had caused. And they hadn't stopped yet.

As Chatt soldiers poured out of the edifice, the air filled with the chatter of machine guns as interlocking fields of fire from the flanks mowed them down. The
Ivanhoe
fired shells at the entrances to the edifice, bringing rubble crashing down to block them, slowing any further pursuit. The hollow
plomps
of trench mortars sent shells arcing over the clearing to drop down among the remaining Chatts now trapped outside the edifice, while rifle fire and the odd grenade mopped up the rest. Plumes of smoke drifted slowly across the increasingly pock-marked clearing. It was all beginning to take on a familiar feel to the men of the Pennines. As Atkins took in the commotion, he caught a movement on the side of one of the midden piles buttressing the edifice. It was a soldier. Had they left someone behind? Atkins squinted and recognised him at once. Jeffries. The man stopped on the crest of the heap and turned to watch the carnage briefly.

"Atkins!" Do you want to get yourself killed?"

Atkins looked towards the cry. Hobson was ushering the last stragglers into the undergrowth where Hepton was cranking the handle on his kine camera, filming the battle of a lifetime. Atkins dashed for the cover of the encircling woodland and the rest of the support sections. When he looked back in Jeffries' direction, he had gone.

INTERLUDE 5

Letter from Flora Mullins to

Private Thomas Atkins

22
^nd
October 1916

My Dearest Tom,

I write, praying this finds you safe for I do not know what else to do. You are the only friend I have left in this world who will understand. I could not bear to lose you as well.

Although we vowed that we would never speak of the passion that overcame our prudence that night, I fear we must. I have got myself into such a mess. Oh Tom, I am with child and the child is yours. Of that, there can be no doubt.

At first I denied the possibility even to myself, but my condition has begun to show and can be hidden no longer. I cannot continue to work at the Munitions Factory for the shame of it. There was a frightful row and my father is in a terrible rage for they know the child cannot be William's. He demands to know who the father is, but I have not told them. William was always a hero in their eyes but since he has been missing, he has become a saint and they will have nothing gainsay it. They told me that to do such a deed behind my fiancé's back I must be a wicked girl and he was all for throwing me out on the street there and then, but my mother, God bless her soul, calmed him down. They are to send me to board with my Aunt Peggy in Ulverston. Tom, I am afraid they mean to take the baby from me once it is born and give it up to an orphanage. I do not know what is to become of me. Alive or dead, I fear William will never forgive us and that is anguish enough, but to lose my child, Tom, that would be more than I could bear.

Oh, Tom, I know you are a good man. You have to come home to me and make this right. I do not know what I would do if I lost you, too. I need you, Tom - we need you. I pray ardently for your safe return. Write by return of post if you are able. Each day I do not hear from you weighs heavily on me.

Your loving

Flora

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"Glorious, Victorious..."

Atkins read Flora's letter several times on the long journey back to the entrenchments. The tear-stained paper in his hands left him reeling with a vertiginous sense of guilt. He was so self-absorbed he barely noticed as Gazette fell in beside him.

"Want to talk about it, mate?"

"No. Not really."

"Fair enough. Fag?" he said, offering a crushed Woodbine. Atkins shook his head.

"So, Dwyer the devil worshipper, eh?" said Gazette. "Bloody hell, that was a turn up for the books and no mistake. The most notorious man in England. Think of the reward money we'd get if we could turn him in, eh? Pity he scarpered. If there's any justice in this world he'll be a bag o' bones by now."

"I said I don't want to talk about it."

Porgy trotted up and was about to speak when Gazette shook his head, so Porgy just matched his stride with theirs and they walked along in uneasy silence.

"Wait, something's wrong," said Pot Shot behind them, holding up a hand. "Half Pint's stopped grousing."

Eyes turned to look at the curmudgeonly private being carried along on a makeshift stretcher. Behind him, Napoo was being carried on another, Poilus now constantly at his clansman's side. Around them walking wounded limped along in ones and twos or helping those blinded by Chatt acid, all of them constantly herded along by the nurses, like sheep.

"Half Pint, what's the matter?" called Gutsy, over the ever-present rumble of the tank up ahead.

"Shhh!" warned Sister Fenton. "Poilus has given him crushed berries of some sort. It seems to have numbed his pain."

"And his ability to complain, too, by the sound of it," said Pot Shot.

"No it hasn't," said Half Pint drowsily, "I just don't know where to bloody start."

"Off on the wrong foot, knowing you, probably!"

"No thanks to you, you bugger," said Half Pint, sticking up a pair of fingers in Gutsy's direction. Gutsy puffed out his cheeks with relief.

Everson drove the men on. They had made longer marches than this in France and in worse conditions and he knew they wouldn't be safe until they reached their entrenchment. But would it still be there? That was the question that went through the mind of every man in the column, the thought that made every one of them sick at heart.

Weary, footsore and hungry the bedraggled column marched on, although the two day trek back was not without incident. Along the way, a small group of Chatt soldiers harried them, although they mostly kept their distance, still awed by the sight of the ironclad.

When they reached the open veldt the trail they had followed days ago was still there, cutting across the vast expanse of tube grass, but to what would it lead them?

The answer to their prayers came on the wind in the form of a faint insect drone. A dot in the sky resolved itself into the flimsy shape of Tulliver's Sopwith as it circled them. Seeing the biplane raised their spirits and sent their hearts soaring. A rousing cheer went up as it passed low overhead. They waved their rifles and hats jubilantly above their heads and were delighted to receive a waggle of the wings in return. Knowing that that the muddy field they called home had not disappeared in their absence, their mood became more ebullient. The aeroplane wheeled above them once more, then flew on ahead, leading them home.

Jeffries staggered up the hill, away from the crashing sounds in the forest below. Whatever it was, it had been following him for some time now.

Escaping from the edifice in the confusion, he'd managed to pick up his dropped weapons and equipment, although the barrel of one Enfield was broken beyond use and he'd had to discard it.

Panting, he reached the crown of the hill and dropped his equipment. Paled into grey by the distance he could make out the Khungarrii edifice behind him, still smoking. He took the map out of his pocket, unfolded it and smoothed it out on a rock. His eyes flicked from the parchment to the landscape and back again as he orientated himself, matching landmarks to symbols. He turned the map. Satisfied, he studied it more closely. He tapped a Croatoan sigil thoughtfully and looked out over the forest towards a line of hills some twenty miles away before folding the parchment away again. He checked his rifle, picked up his load and set off down the far side of the hill.

He was on the final road to meet his god and when he did, The Great Snake would rise again.

Everson hardly recognised the trench system when they saw it. In four days, Company Quartermaster Sergeant Slacke had begun to turn the field of Somme Mud into something resembling a defensible stronghold, a corner of a foreign field that was to them, for now, all that was England. A fire trench now ran all the way around the perimeter with saps and OPs projecting out into the scorched earth cordon.

Everson went to the hospital tents, where Napoo and Half Pint were made comfortable. They were gravely ill, but stable. All they could hope for was that infection didn't set in. Padre Rand, who had been melancholic all the way back from the edifice, insisted on discharging himself from the MO's care. Everson was keen to hear about his experience.

"I don't know what to say, Lieutenant," he told Everson. "What I experienced there severely tested my faith to the point where I rejected my God, but then," he said with a self-effacing smile, "even St. Peter failed that particular test as I recall. Jeffries had me fooled. He had everyone fooled. I'm sure he had some machinations of his own. What they were I don't know, but I do know he was willing to sell us all into slavery to get what he wanted. And these Khungarrii, although they look hideous to our eyes and their culture is like none I have encountered before, would we have reacted any differently in their shoes? Even so, I have a horrible feeling that we may have started a war where none was looked for."