CHAPTER TWENTY

 

“There’s a Silver Lining in the Sky-ee...”

 

 

EXHAUST FUMES BELCHING from its back, its engine growling, the Ivanhoe clawed doggedly at the ground as it hauled against the tentacle clutching it, like a determined hound worrying a rope. It made some ground, its track plates pawing at the earth, pulling away from the tentacle until it began to lose its grip on the tank, but the creature was unwilling to let its prey go. More tentacles whipped out, lashing themselves around the ironclad, drawing it back again, foot by foot towards the collapsing ruins.

In a tug of war for its life, the tank fought back valiantly. Bursts of machine gun fire tore through the tentacles. The port gun spoke, demolishing a section of the edifice, bringing it down on yet more tentacles.

The Ivanhoe’s engine began to whine under the strain. The tracks slipped, losing traction against the slow, insistent pull of the tentacles. Gradually, but certainly, it was being drawn into the edifice. The tank’s tracks scored great long furrows in the ground as the tentacles dragged it towards the gaping entrance.

Inside the Ivanhoe, the compartment began to fill with black smoke from burning oil and grease. The track wheels clanked and whined, trying to keep purchase on the iron track plates as they slipped.

“Oh hell, don’t let us throw a track now, please God,” said Reggie, crossing himself as he passed Norman a shell for the port gun. Before returning to his gear station, he let off a short burst from the belt-fed Hotchkiss machine gun, the bullets chewing through another tentacle.

“It’s no use, I can’t get a shot!” Norman bellowed over the engine noise.

From his seat at the front, Mathers indicated that Reggie and Alfie should use the track gears to try to swing the tank to starboard and get him a better shot.

Reggie put his track into second as Alfie, cursing under his breath, shifted his into neutral. The tank began to swing round to the right. Alfie could feel the gears beginning to judder through the gear lever.

 

 

AS THE IRONCLAD occupied the creature’s attention, Atkins, Mercy, Gutsy and the others dragged Pot Shot to safety across the clearing. A little distance away, a foul smelling fire was still burning itself out.

Lying discarded on the ground nearby were the two tank crew coveralls, stuffed with stone jars and sacred scents. Chandar chattered and insisted they carry them to safety, too. They picked them up as they passed, dragging them along.

“Over here!” Nellie waved from the edge of the clearing. “Where’s Chalky?”

Mercy shook his head.

“Oh.”

As soon as they laid Pot Shot down, Nellie, thankful for the opportunity to do something other than watch the tank struggle with the creature, fell to her knees and set to work examining him.

“Is he going to be all right?” Gazette asked, fearful of the answer.

With as much care as a battlefield would allow, she gently slipped Pot Shot’s steel helmet off. In some cases she’d seen, that had been all that was holding the skull together, or the brains in.

Delicately Nellie felt his skull, feeling for fractures or breaks.

“Is he – ?”

She let out a small sigh. “No. Thank God. It’s only a scalp wound. He’s suffering from concussion. His helmet probably saved him. He’ll live.”

Atkins turned his attention to the tank. All he had to do was bring the tank back. One simple order. One simple bloody order. It should have been a piece of cake. His heart sank as he saw it losing its struggle against the creature. The engine whined and the tracks churned up the ground. Despite its weight and power, it seemed to be fighting a losing battle, but at least it was still fighting. “Let’s see if we can’t convince that thing to let go!” Atkins said.

They moved as close as they dared, took up position and fired at the sinuous tentacles gripping the ironclad. Bullets tore through flesh; others struck the iron hide, sparking as they did so.

Inside the Ivanhoe, splashes of molten metal, caused by the impact of the bullets, flew around the compartment.

Cecil shrieked as one hit his cheek, “Jesus, now our own side are trying to kill us too! Why the hell are they shooting at us? Oh, God. Frank said Mathers would get us killed, he did!”

Jack turned and with a warning glance at Mathers’ back in the driving seat, bellowed into Cecil’s ear. “Button your lip!” Not that Mathers could have heard him over the noise of the engine.

Across the clearing, Gutsy pulled out a rifle grenade. “Last one,” he said. He dropped it into the barrel of his rifle, braced the shoulder stock on the ground, and fired. The grenade arced through the air, landing near the entrance. It exploded, shredding a tentacle and releasing the tank, even as others sought to take its place.

The Ivanhoe lurched backwards as its tracks, running in reverse against the pull of the edifice creature, engaged with the ground. Once it had ripped free of the smaller tentacles, Mathers slammed on the brakes. “There’s your shot,” he yelled over the engine.

“Thank you, sir!” shouted Norman ecstatically as he manhandled the portside gun round. He fired. Through the gunner’s vertical viewing slit in the gun shield, he saw the shell explode and a section of huge, black tentacle vaporise in a plume of atomised flesh and ichor. “Yes!”

Seconds later, Jack fired the starboard gun. That, too, hit home. The creature thrashed in pain, its tentacles demolishing the edifice, sending rubble crashing down on the Ivanhoe. The tank jerked into motion, reversing clear of the tumbling debris.

The Ivanhoe’s guns fired again, bringing down more of the decaying structure. The tentacles wavered uncertainly, and then, by degrees, retreated into the ruins with a long, low rumble of pain.

 

 

WATCHING THE ROUT of the creature, as the shelling of the ironclad drove it back underground, the Fusiliers cheered in jubilation. It was short lived.

Cutting through the rumble of the edifice and growl of the tank, came the crashing sound of trees creaking and falling and the high-pitched jabbers and squeals of animal fear.

Atkins’ eyes narrowed. Where the hell had they come from? The dulgur had hunted the area clean of game, hadn’t it? He noticed the queer cast of light across the clearing, a strange kind of pre-storm twilight. It was as if the sun were being filtered through dirty glass.

“What now?” He looked up, irritated.

An immense bank of drifting clouds was obscuring the sky. No, not clouds; creatures, with vast snake-like members hundreds of feet long, hanging beneath them, tearing up trees, lifting them into the sky, plucking animals from the canopy as though they were grazing.

The ruined edifice and the clearing around it fell under a twilight shadow as they drifted across the sky, eclipsing the sun overhead.

Atkins watched in horror as the animals were flayed, as they rose to where yet more tendrils grasped the things and fed them into great wet mouth tubes. Underneath the tubes, swarms of black things danced like flies around dung.

Mercy gaped up at the sight. “Holy Mary, Mother of God!”

“Get under cover!” yelled Akins. Not that anyone needed telling. They ran for the shelter of the trees. They all saw what was happening to beasts snatched up by the shoal of airborne leviathans overhead. None of them wanted to be next.

The great sky-borne creatures filling the sky drifted over, oblivious to their presence. The light strained through the massive translucent gas sacs that kept them aloft, like huge living zeppelins.

“What the hell are they?”Atkins yelled above the cacophony.

Chandar chittered and shrunk down on it legs, almost as if it were trying to curl itself into a ball. “GarSuleth protect us!”

“Kreothe!” said Napoo, craning his neck and watching them in fear.

“That’s bad, then, is it?” Mercy remarked as he looked up to watch the stately procession of creatures across the sky. Most had their long limbs curled up under their gas sacs. Only a few of the bigger ones fed as they drifted lazily over the jungle, dragging their long snake-like limbs, dredging the ground for food.

There was a terrible sound, a long low bass cry from the edifice, accompanied by the sound of collapsing walls crushing vegetation as they fell.

A huge Kreothe floated sedately over it, its long harvesting tendrils draped below it, into the ruins. Although the creature was hidden by the ruins, Atkins could see its black tentacles lashing and wrestling with the trailing tendrils of the Kreothe, wrapping themselves around them, trying to pull the sky leviathan down.

The two great beasts grappled tentacle-to-tendril, appendages slipping and sliding through and round and over as they each tried to gain an advantage.

The Kreothe’s vast gas sacs inflated and it rose up, accompanied by the sound of crashing as walls collapsed. There was a terrible cry, a deep bass groan that shook the ground around them and a deep sickening tearing as the Kreothe ripped the creature from its setting amid the ruins, uprooting it, and drawing it up into the air.

As the Kreothe drifted over the section, it worked to haul in its slippery catch. Long harvesting tendrils firmly gripped the black, shapeless creature. Where they gripped it, great wounds opened, as if it were being flayed. Now seen whole, the creature looked to Atkins like a shellfish plucked from its shell, slick, wet and raw.

In retaliation, the creature threw up tentacles around the Kreothe’s feeding tendrils, while lashing down at the spindly scab trees below, trying to anchor itself, but they, too, were torn from the ground.

The black shapeless mass writhed and shifted, extruding new tentacles to thrash against the gas sacs of the Kreothe. Locked in a life or death struggle, the two creatures each fought to dominate and subdue the other, tentacles wrapping, enfolding, and choking.

The flock of scavenger things began to swarm about the shapeless creature, pecking and tearing.

The creature had now gained a purchase on the sky beast’s gas sac and pulled itself up, allowing its form to change and flow, trying to engulf and swallow its opponent.

They drifted off over the crater, the slow silent battle shifting first one way and then the other. It seemed that the epic sky duel would continue until one lost out to sheer exhaustion.

“Only!”

Atkins’ attention returned to the ground. A smaller Kreothe had latched onto the tank and was trying to haul the Ivanhoe up, but the sheer weight of the ironclad resisted its efforts. It lowered several more harvesting tendrils in an effort to increase its grasp on the vehicle.

It proved too heavy for the Kreothe to lift, yet it was unwilling to let go of its prize and, as the wind drove the enormous creature on, it dragged the Ivanhoe backwards with it across the clearing, almost, but not quite, lifting it clear of the ground.

The tank couldn’t get enough traction on the ground to drive in the opposite direction and break free. Occasionally, the tracks would bite into the earth and it would make some small, defiant gain of ground, only to be lifted off again. Atkins could see its guns trying to target the Kreothe above, but they couldn’t get enough elevation.

“Damn! Come on!” said Atkins. “Napoo, stay there with Nellie and Pot Shot, don’t let anything happen to them.”

The section moved off quickly, staying in the shelter of the trees to take cover from the great dredging sky limbs. Chandar lagged behind, hesitant.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Gutsy, dropping back and waving the chatt on with his rifle. “We’re not losing you as well.”

Chandar snapped his mandibles together aggressively, but complied with great reluctance.

The Kreothe was slowed down by having to drag its dead twenty-eight ton weight through trees. The section raced ahead of it. The thinning jungle gave way to hardy shrub for several hundred of yards. Beyond that yawned the great crater, the land that, according to Chandar, did not exist.

Already, those Kreothe at the head of the shoal were drifting majestically out over it.

 

 

INSIDE THE TANK, the crew were thrown about as the Ivanhoe was dragged, crashing through a small grove of scab trees. Much to Reggie’s disapproval, they were shouting and cursing, peering through pistol ports to see what the hell was going on.

All except Mathers. The officer was calm almost to the point of indolence, and seemed heedless to the danger, just when his crew needed him the most.

For all Alfie’s efforts, the engine was beginning to show the strain. His petrol fruit-filtered vision was returning to full strength now as the engine fumes flooded his body. He could see from the deep blues and indigos emanating from the engine that it was at the limits of its capacity. The track gears were engaged in second forward speed but it wasn’t making a blind bit of difference. They were still being dragged backwards.

Cecil opened the sponson door, hung out looking up at the underside of the Kreothe, with its tongue tendrils and mouth tubes, and fired his revolver up at it. They didn’t have any effect. “Bleedin’ ’ell!” you ought to see the size of this bugger! It’s bigger than any bloody Zeppelin.”

“Get back in, you daft sod!” yelled Jack.

Cecil ducked back in. “Like a giant bleedin’ jellyfish it is!” He reached out to close the sponson door and stared in horror. “Fuck! There’s a cliff coming up!” he yelled.

The petrol fruit fumes building inside the iron hull worked on Mathers, helping him break free of the ennui exerted over him by the things he carried inside him.

Jack heaved on the shoulder stock of the gun and howled in frustration. “I can’t get enough elevation on the gun to hit it, sir, if I could hit it, we’d have a chance.”

“Get out,” said Mathers. “Abandon the tank.”

“We won’t leave you, sir.”

“You don’t have a choice, I’m ordering you out. If the Ivanhoe’s done for, then there’s no point in you all dying.”

“But, sir...”

“That’s an order, Clegg. And... Wally? Some good has to come out of all this. Tell the Corporal, tell... Atkins, I’ve seen it, Jeffries’ trail. It leads to the crater. It leads there for a reason. It’s the blank on the map the chatts fear, the place that doesn’t exist. The name they will not admit to. Make sure he knows that. It’s more than chatt myth. I suspect it’ll be of some importance to him.”

“Sir.” Wally slipped from his driver’s seat and joined Jack in the starboard gangway.

Cecil opened the hatch again. He could see the precipice approaching fast. Above, he saw the great long tendrils reaching up towards the underside of the Kreothe as it dragged the Ivanhoe along.

“Time to go, lad,” Jack said. He pushed Cecil out of the sponson hatch before the lad could object, and then followed him.

Wally braced himself on the hatch jamb, looked across at Alfie, still at his gear station, and nodded before launching himself from the tank, rolling clear of the tracks.

Over on the other side, Reggie and Norman jumped from the port sponson hatch. “And you, sir?” called Alfie.

Mathers turned and looked at him. “We’ve both seen these things in me. I’m dead already, Perkins.”

“But not yet, sir. And neither is the Ivanhoe. I’m not leaving, sir.”

Neither knew if the Kreothe could bear the weight of the tank without the ground to support it. If the Kreothe could carry its weight then it would sail out hundreds of feet over the crater, where it still might drop to destruction. On the other hand, its weight might just drag the thing right out of the air.

The tank, in one last effort to avoid it fate, roared its defiance as its metal tracks grated and clawed at the ground, raising a cloud of dust that momentarily obscured it, until updrafts from the crater snatched it away.

For a moment, the Ivanhoe held its own against the great sky creature, anchoring it as others drifted on past. The Kreothe’s long harvesting tendrils stretched taut, like an anchor chain against the pull of the tide.

Snorting like an obdurate old bull, the Ivanhoe inched forwards away from the precipice. The men cheered the ironclad on. It seemed beyond all belief that the intrepid machine could take on the weight of the vast creature above. Slowly, however, its little gain was lost and it lurched back towards the edge of the crater, its back end sliding perilously close to the rim. Then, with a lurch, the rear steering tail toppled over the edge.

The track wheels clanked and squealed, trying to gain traction, but as they churned, they ate away at the very ground supporting the ironclad. Its nose rising up off the ground, the tank began to tilt over the edge.

Mathers smiled though the pain. “You’ve made your choice after all, Perkins. You could have left with the others, been reunited with your sweetheart.”

Alfie ignored him. “We’ve got one chance, sir. We’re tipping. We just need a few more degrees to get the gun elevation we need to hit that thing. I need you to be ready.”

The tank lurched, tilting sharply. The sponson door swung open, banging against the bulkhead. Alfie reached out to grab it, catching a vertiginous glimpse of a steep rocky cliff below them, bevelling out to a shrub-covered slope descending into a canopy of thick jungle below.

A spanner skittered down the gangplank, hit the rim of the hatch with a clang and pinwheeled out into the void.

Blanching, he reached out, pulled the hatch shut, and secured it. He didn’t want to lose his balance and topple out.

“This is it, sir!” He lurched unsteadily towards the loaded gun. Grunting with effort, he gripped the shoulder stock under his armpit and heaved the gun barrel up as far as it would go and fired.

The Ivanhoe’s gun pounded. Above it, the shell exploded against the Kreothe. The concussion wave sent ripples round the gas sac, before tearing out of the upper side. The blast shrivelled the smaller tendrils beneath it and, with raucous shrieks of alarm, the flock of scavengers that swarmed beneath it scattered. The harvesting tendrils holding the tank whipped back up, like cords cut under tension, and the Ivanhoe’s front track horns crashed back down onto solid ground.

 

 

FROM THE SHELTER of the trees, Jack and Cecil burst out in a jubilant chorus and Reggie, Norman and Wally joined in.

“The Sub did it! He bloody did it!”

“The Sub and Alfie,” Jack reminded them.

Atkins puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. Jesus, that was close. A slow, burning anger overwhelmed his relief. From now on, he was bloody well in charge. He had orders to get the tank back to camp and, now, that was exactly what he was going to do. It helped matters that the tank would have to return with them to refuel. All of a sudden, he was eager to start back.

 

 

INSIDE THE IVANHOE, Alfie, dazed, picked himself up from the gangway and saw Mathers slumped in the commander’s seat. The visor plates had slammed shut with the impact and nothing but a flickering festoon light lit his plaque-ridden face. Alfie clambered forwards into the driver’s seat to check on him.

Mathers’ chin rested on his chest. Alfie gently lifted the officer’s head to check for injuries. His eyes snapped open. “I can feel it, Perkins, a pressure inside my head, in my belly.”

“We need to get out, sir.”

“No.”

“Sir, we’re on the edge of the cliff.”

“You go, Perkins.”

“Come with me, sir.”

“If I go out now, I’ll die. Whatever’s inside me, they’re making me want to go out there. They need me to go out there. They want me to offer myself to those things. But I won’t. I refuse. I absolutely bloody well refuse. I am clothed in iron and armed with cordite. I will not go like this!”

Alfie’s eyes met Mathers’, but the iridescent swirls that looped and whorled within them disconcerted him. “Then just drive forward, sir. Away from the cliff edge.”

Mathers shook his head. “The track gears are jammed.”

Jammed? Perkins frowned and glanced back down the compartment, over the top of the engine. “Then I’ll go back and see if I can free them. You hang on, sir.” The gearsman stepped down onto the gangway and edged his way to the back of the compartment.

Mathers continued talking, raising his voice over the engine. “It’s a bloody good machine, Perkins. How you’ve kept it running these past few months is beyond me. A bloody miracle. I was... wrong about you.”

Alfie shrugged it off. Now wasn’t the time for recriminations, least of all against an officer. “You weren’t yourself, sir.”

“Did you know I had shell-shock, Perkins, before I joined the Heavy Section?”

Alfie didn’t know what to say, but felt that the moment called for honesty. “There... there were rumours, sir,” he called back.

The tank groaned and creaked under him as he edged his way past the gun and Hotchkiss towards the starboard gear panel.

“I was buried in a dugout for four hours, couldn’t move a muscle. Dead man lying of top of me. Bugger probably saved my life. Funny how fate catches up with you.” He waved his hand, indicating the interior of the tank. “Here I am, entombed again. No matter how far you run, there you are. It’s a rum old world.”

Something in the tone of Mathers’ voice made Alfie glance back. Mathers was raising his revolver to his temple. “I wonder if Skarra will be waiting...”

Alfie lunged up the gangway. “Sir, no!”

There was a grinding crunch and sudden lurch. The tank tilted, slipping backwards, sending Alfie reeling back down against his gear station. The weight of the hydraulic steering tail, ironically designed to be used as a counterbalance when crossing wide trenches, was now having the opposite effect and was dragging them over the edge to destruction. He felt the tank pitch steeply as it slipped backwards.

Alfie could almost imagine the scene outside, as if he were back at Elveden, watching one of the tank trials. In his mind’s eye, he saw the rim of the crater, weakened by the grinding of the tracks and the weight of the ironclad, begin to splinter and crumble. Boulders tumbled away, drawing with them steady streams of soil.

He tried to reach for the manhole above him, but lost his footing as the Ivanhoe tilted further and he fell back against the gear station.

The ground beneath the tank slipped away like sand through an hourglass, crumbling under its weight in a gentle but inevitable landslide of rock, soil and roots. The Ivanhoe’s front track horns reared into the air, like a startled stallion, its angle becoming more unstable until, like a sinking ship, it slipped from sight.

A gunshot reverberated loudly inside the iron hull.

Stores broke free and tools tumbled loose, ammo boxes crashed out of their slots. A Pyrene fire extinguisher slipped from its fixings and span toward Alfie. He screamed.

The ironclad went over the edge.

 

 

SHOCKED, THE FUSILIERS and surviving tank crew watched as the tank toppled over the rim. From the crater came the sound of tortured metal and rock. Seconds later, there was a loud crashing, an eruption of animal calls and flocks of green-skinned bird-like raptors took to the air in panic from the crater jungle below.

Atkins ran to the edge, Gutsy, Mercy and Porgy hard on his heels. Nellie came running up, in time to see the tank go over the edge. She screamed. Gazette wrapped his arms around her, not so much for comfort as restraint.

Atkins stopped, feet from the lip, and cautiously stuck his head out over the edge. A few loose rocks broke away and tumbled down. “Oh, bloody Nora!”

“Jesus!”

“Buggerin’ hell!”

The drop wasn’t sheer but it was a very steep camber. They could see the twin furrows gouged down the escarpment as if the Ivanhoe had been dragged down into hell, fighting all the way. It was possible to track its path down the crater-side, where it had torn trees and plants from their roots before it crashed down through the canopy hundreds of feet below, to be swallowed by the jungle beneath.

Atkins felt sick and lighted-headed. His whole body sagged.

The tank was gone.

Above, the last of the Kreothe drifted sedately over the crater, and the sun began to peer out from behind them, a gleam of sunlight reflecting off the edge of its translucent gas sac.