“Let me see,” she said to Chandar, examining the sodden bandaging.
Chandar brushed her hand aside. “Not yet.” It raised its head, looking past her. “Look,” it wheezed.
Edith looked. Around her the entire Shura was sunk on their legs, looking down at them, at her. The Queen’s scent, she realised. She had been Chandar’s final proof.
“You are blessed. Untouchable. Even Sirigar dare not move against you while you exude the Queen’s scent.”
Chandar steadied itself and addressed the Shura.
“The Shura has seen how they have been misled, and if further proof were needed that these urmen were not the Great Corruption we long feared, behold, this urman djamirrii, anointed by the Queen herself. How is that possible if they were ever such a threat? The true threat has been amongst us all this time. The Shura’s attention had been falsely turned outwards, when the real threat was within.” And it pointed at Sirigar.
Sirigar sank into a crouch. The evidence of its treachery was inescapable, permeating the very air around it.
Rhengar stepped from the shadows, and at some chemical command, the scentirrii seized Sirigar and led it away.
It was only once Chandar had the Shura’s assent and had been instated as liya-dhuyumirri, the position held by Sirigar, that it allowed Edith to escort it back to the chamber to treat its wounds once again.
“What will happen now?” she asked.
“Now? The Tohmii will uphold their end of the bargain. They have been absolved. A chemical decree has already been disseminated throughout Khungarr. This view will become the established view. This will always have been the view.”
THE THREE KHUNGARRII battlepillars had been decorated with lengths of coloured, scented silk and bore a multitude of silk pennants. There was an air of pilgrimage about the procession as it headed to the Pennines’ camp, accompanied by grating dhuyumirrii chants and the beating of chest carapaces.
The swaying of the battlepillar’s howdah unsettled Edith’s stomach and she grasped the sides to steady herself as it rocked from side to side. Despite the little fluttering of girlish glee, Edith had to keep reminding herself that none of this was for her benefit, favoured by the Khungarrii Queen as she might be. No, this was in celebration of the long-lost ancient texts in the Pennines’ possession, which would now be returned to the care of the Ones. It was part of the agreement made with Everson, in return for some kind of Treaty between the Pennines and the Khungarrii. She looked out happily across the veldt. She hadn’t felt this relaxed since they had come to the planet. For once, the alien sun was shining and all seemed right with this world.
THE PADRE DIDN’T feel quite so ebullient. Thoughts of his vision churned away at his guts like three-day-old army stew. Like the men, he knew that being out of the line was temporary. At some point, courage or not, they would march back up the line towards the mud, shelling and shooting. He, too, knew that the terrors of his vision, and the choice he would have to make, were still waiting for him out there somewhere. But now, for Nurse Bell’s sake, he smiled and allowed himself to be distracted.
TULLIVER’S SOPWITH SWOOPED low over them several times in their progress across the veldt, adding to the carnival atmosphere with its rolls and loops.
Delighted, Edith leaned out of the howdah and waved joyfully at the flying machine as it performed its daring aerobatics.
Beside her, Chandar watched the aeroplane with keen interest…
LIEUTENANT PALMER STOOD on the observation platform of the old Poulet farmhouse. He handed the binoculars to Sergeant Hobson, who stood beside him. “What do you make of it, Sergeant?”
Hobson peered through the glasses at the approaching procession. “A white flag of truce. I can’t tell if the Padre or Nurse Bell are there.”
The battlepillars didn’t present a huge threat. The Machine Gun Section could cut them down before the chatts came within the range of their own electric lances.
Still, their appearance sent a ripple of unease along the line, men shuffling nervously on the firesteps. But this was a delicate time; Palmer didn’t need nervous or trigger-happy troops. Those not on sentry duty were confined to the support and reserve trenches. Nobody wanted an incident.
The battlepillars stopped several hundred yards beyond the wireweed, along the line of the old Khungarrii siege, and upwind of the poppies that spread like a bloodstain across the scorched cordon sanitaire.
“Learnt their lesson, then?” said Hobson. “Bloody good job, too.”
“Quite,” said Palmer.
The white pennant flapped and snapped above the lead battlepillar as it chewed the tube grass.
Lieutenant Palmer, Sergeant Hobson and a small party walked out to meet them under a white flag of their own. Nervous, Palmer glanced back at the lines, like an unconfident swimmer too far from shore.
A faraway muffled cry rang out from the trenches and a shot cracked across the veldt, echoing off the hillsides.
There were angry chitterings and hissings from the chatts.
Several arcs of blue-white lightning leapt from electric lances towards the Fusilier party.
Palmer threw himself down on the ground and drew his Webley. Hobson hit the dirt beside him.
“What the hell’s going on, Sergeant?” he yelled, picking himself up. “The men had strict orders!”
There was a deep, wet roar and a woman’s scream. More shots. Roars. The keening cry of injured scentirrii. The brief buzzing crackle of electric lances.
Palmer froze as several hundred pounds of fur, muscle, fangs and claws leapt out of the tube grass at him.
A bright, white-blue, erratic bolt of lightning arced through the air, blasting the animal, earthing through it as it crashed gracelessly to the ground with a dull thud and a snapping of bone. The smell of charred meat, burnt fur and voided bowels filled Palmer’s nostrils.
Hell hounds. They must have been stalking the battlepillars.
Rolling away from the smouldering corpse, Palmer got to his feet, seeking another target. He turned and emptied his revolver into another hell hound as it slunk through the tube grass toward the chatt party.
By the time the gunshots and electric bolts had died out, the ground was littered with hell hound dead.
Life had been difficult for the veldt predators since the arrival of the Pennines. The Fusiliers had decimated them, driving their packs further and further out into the veldt, and the recent harvesting of their natural prey by the airborne Kreothe had forced the packs into desperate actions to survive. The battlepillars were much too large to be brought down, but their passengers were a different matter.
Miraculously, there were no casualties on either side. Between them, the Fusiliers and chatts had made short work of the hell hounds. Perhaps this was the first sign of an entente cordiale?
PALMER AND HOBSON approached the battlepillars. The scentirrii watched them intently, waving their long segmented feelers in their direction and tracking them with their electric lances and spears.
Nurse Bell climbed down a rope ladder from the battlepillar’s howdah and graciously accepted the Padre’s hand as support as she stepped down onto the ground. The chatts around her all sank down and bowed low, their feelers almost touching the ground.
Palmer glanced at Sergeant Hobson, who just shook his head. The sergeant had ceased trying to figure this world out, and just got on with it.
“That’s quite an effect you have on the chatts there,” said Palmer, intrigued.
Nurse Bell blushed. “Long story.”
He stuck out his hand and shook the chaplain’s. “Padre.”
“It’s done,” the Padre said. “Chandar has carried out its side of the bargain.” He nodded toward the encircled system of trenches and Somme soil. “We’re still on their territory, so there are things to be worked out, but generally a state of truce now exists between us.”