By the time they had readied themselves, there was not much left on the floor; a bayonet, the odd battle bowler and several pieces of webbing lay unclaimed.
Mercy went through the webbing pockets pulling out spare ammunition and the odd grenade and redistributing them.
By the time they were fully and correctly attired, they felt whole again, each item adding a little to their fortitude.
When they were ready, Everson instinctively looked at his wristwatch. “Stand by,” he said, for no other reason than habit. Whatever they were about to face, they were as ready for it as they would ever be.
Atkins felt he could almost be back in the trenches, staring at the hated ladders, waiting for zero hour. He stood by the living door, through which they could hear chanting and carapace-beating. It began to recoil and open, shrivelling back towards the walls of the circular opening.
A breeze blew down the tunnel towards them, carrying on it the sound of massed chatts… and something else: the smell of blood and shit and cordite.
For a few seconds, the men hesitated, though not from any sense of wind-up or funk. Atkins and the others turned their eyes to Everson, who stepped forward to the van. If they were going to go ‘over the top,’ they would go when he gave the order and not before.
Instinctively, Everson put his whistle to his lips and blew. Holding his sword and drawing his pistol, he began to walk down the tunnel and his men followed.
IN THE CANYON, Sergeant Dixon balanced on a block of unstable scree and glared at the ruddy-faced Buckley, hunched over his precious wooden box of tricks by the metal wall, a hand cupped over one of the earphones clamped to his head.
They had tried repeatedly, at different times of the day, with the same result. Dixon shifted his weight. The rocks clattered under his feet.
Buckley turned and shot him a dirty look. “Shhh.”
Dixon glowered but bit his tongue.
The signalman finally pulled the earphones down around his neck, looked up at Dixon and shook his head.
“I’ve not heard a peep, Sarn’t. But maybe that just means they’re not doing anything the equipment can pick up.”
“Is there anything else we can do?”
“Well, I could try sending a telegraph. If there’s anybody inside listening, they might pick it up. Unless you have any better ideas, Sarn’t.”
He couldn’t see the point of trying, but Lieutenant Everson would want a full report on his return. It wasn’t as if they had anything better to do. The mystery of the wall was fast beginning to lose its allure.
Dixon frowned. “No, I haven’t. I just blow stuff up. Frankly, if I can’t bomb it, mine it or call a barrage down on it I’m at a loose end, and any more cheek from you and I’ll have your name.”
Buckley looked up at the Sergeant, unsure if that was an order or not.
“Well hop to it lad, hop to it,” said Dixon impatiently. “We haven’t got all day.”
That, though, was exactly what they did have, so Buckley busied himself connecting up a field telegraph to the wall and began tapping on the Morse key.
EVERSON AND HIS men walked warily from darkness into twilit gloom, until the tunnel opened out into a deep trench leading out in to a large arena. It was surrounded by a wall some twelve feet high, beyond which were stands of chatts, mostly scentirrii. So large was the space that, unlike any chatt chambers they had seen, it needed columns and buttresses to support the roof.
At the sight of the Tommies in the mouth of the tunnel, the carapace-beating from the assembled chatts quickened aggressively. On the wall above, chatts armed with electric lances urged the soldiers out into the killing space.
The spectating chatts grew quiet with anticipation.
The bodies of Fusiliers and Karnos lay strewn about the arena, twisted and broken. Rifles lay scattered and discarded, along with several limbs, and shallow blackened grenade craters dimpled the arena floor.
The centre of the arena was dominated by a large striated outcrop of rock thrusting up through the floor at an angle, creating a small incline about twenty feet high with an overhang beneath its peak.
Lieutenant Everson, sword in hand, led the advance into the arena. Atkins, Mercy, Porgy and Gazette spread out in a line either side of him. In a second line, Riley and Tonkins advanced with their kitbags of electric lances and backpacks, flanked by Gutsy and Pot Shot. The Padre was unarmed and while refusing to carry weapons, had loaded himself down with the Signals gear and brought up the rear with Jenkins, the Linseed Lancer, with his small medical knapsack and more Signals gear.
As they headed for the outcrop, they saw, round the other side, the body of a huge pale toad-like beast, larger than an elephant. It lay slumped by the rock, glassy-eyed, its side torn open by shrapnel, its rib cage shattered, allowing its viscera to slop out onto the ground.
As Atkins watched, an urman stepped forth from the bloody cavity, stripped to the waist, covered in encrusted blood and gore. To the accompaniment of hundreds of scissoring mandibles, the warrior hefted the creature’s heart above his head and threw it to the ground. Covered as he was with blood and viscera, it was hard to make out details, but Atkins could see that the warrior was bare-chested apart from some sort of harness. Around his neck, he wore a collar hung with small round adornments. The only clothing he wore were trousers tucked into knee-length boots, and he carried two long knives, their straight blades dripping with a dark ichor. He glared up at the watching chatts with contempt as he wiped the knives clean on his trousered thighs before thrusting them into loops hanging at his waist.
“Bloody hell,” said Gutsy, aghast. “And I thought I was a butcher.”
“We could do with a few men like that,” said Pot Shot. “Let’s hope he’s friendly.”
The warrior ignored them and began searching the bodies of the dead Fusiliers nearby.
“Oi, mate, fuck off!” warned Gazette, lifting his rifle and sighting him as they edged towards the outcrop.
Crouching over the body, the bloodied warrior turned his blood-grimed face towards the Fusiliers, white teeth clenched in a snarl as he glared at them with undisguised contempt. He continued to search the dead man, going through his pockets and webbing, extracting a paybook, bullets and a grenade, before ripping the identity disc from his neck, like a trophy.
Atkins’ brow furrowed. Despite the warrior’s savage appearance, there was a familiarity to the man’s actions, and Atkins saw with growing horror that he had been wrong. They weren’t knee boots. They were puttees. They weren’t knives, they were bayonets. It wasn’t a harness, it was webbing. This was no savage urman warrior. Dear God in heaven, this man was a Fusilier.
ABOVE, IN THE apothecary chambers, Hepton supervised the conversion of a small chamber into a makeshift darkroom. He filtered the diffuse blue-white bioluminescent lichen light by using the large translucent petals of a red flower. A dull amber glow now filled the room.
Chatt acolytes had laid out shallow bark bowls to use as makeshift developing trays on a plain earthen work counter.
Tulliver watched as Werner entered the dark chamber, accompanying a handful of chatt alchemists holding up an amphora, like a Eucharistic sacrament. They were followed by acolyte nymphs bearing a shrine the size of an ammo box. To them this was as much a religious ritual as a chemical reaction.
“Have they done it?” asked Hepton, the dull red glow lending an aptly Faustian cast to his features.
Werner merely shrugged his shoulders. This was out of his hands now.
THE CHATTS CARRIED the portable shrine to one end of the chamber. There, they removed three exposed glass negative plates from within, each held reverently by a nymph. They were about eight inches by five and wrapped in several layers of black silk cloth, like relics. These plates, the chatts believed, would provide physical evidence of the existence of GarSuleth.