“If you’ve got a plan, Lieutenant, I’m all ears.”
“We need a diversion. We have to get the wall down, get that thing among the chatts.”
“We’ve got Mills bombs.”
“We’ll never throw them that far.”
From a trouser pocket, Rutherford produced a braided length of rope with a bark cradle. “Sling,” he said.
Everson glanced at it. “Good man. Evans, give Rutherford a bomb.”
Mercy handed over a Mills bomb from his webbing. “I’ve used a trench catapult to throw bombs, but a sling? Jesus. Isn’t that a little dangerous?”
Rutherford just laughed as he fitted the bomb into the cradle, pulled the pin, whirled it around his head, and then let it fly. It arced up into the darkness and was lost until the wall of the arena exploded in a fireball and the faint whistle of red-hot iron shrapnel. The blast flung chatt bodies into the air, briefly silhouetted against the fireball.
Caught by the blast, a supporting column began to crumble, bringing down a section of the chamber’s dome.
The section fired again, this time concentrating their volley to one side of the creature driving it away, towards the rubble-strewn breach. It scrabbled over the debris to escape the gunfire, causing panic among the chatts, their acid spit proving ineffective against the creature’s thick hide.
In the confusion, Everson ordered Atkins and the Tommies across the arena towards the beasts’ entrance. Going back the way they came would only lead them back into the edifice. Everson reckoned they must get these creatures in here through a dedicated entrance somewhere, without endangering the general population. Perhaps that way lay an exit.
Pot Shot hurled a Mills bomb at the gate. The explosion ripped the toughened gate from its root hinges in a plume of dirt and resinous sawdust.
Atkins and his section walked through the cloud, smoke billowing down the tunnel and swirling round their feet. Bayonets caught the pale blue lichen light as they advanced in trench clearance formation, ingrained in them at the training camps in France. They’d swept through Hun trench systems time after time, and it was reassuring that their training and tactics suited battle in a chatt edifice so well.
This was something they knew how to do, and do well.
TULLIVER’S MOUTH WAS dry with anxiety as they watched the third and final glass negative plate reverently slipped into the solution by the acolyte, almost as if it was being anointed or baptised. After a second failure the chatts seemed to decide that what the process lacked was prayer and began a clicking, smacking chant, almost as if they were counting: one elephant, two elephant.
The air of tension was palpable. Werner rubbed a finger inside the stiff Teutonic collar of his uniform.
Hepton fidgeted impotently as he watched the chatts wash the chemicals over the plate.
“I just wish they’d bloody well let me do it,” he whispered. “I just wish–”
An image began to form.
Hepton, in an effort to preserve the image on the plate, stepped forward, only to be warned off by the chatts.
“Wash it!” he said. “Wash it. The other tray!”
The chatts understood and slipped the plate into the other tray to stop the process.
When the chatts saw the image, the chanting stopped. They stepped back in awe, touching the heels of their long-fingered hands to the bases of their antennae and then to their thorax.
“What is that?” Hepton asked, squinting at the negative image that had appeared. The man might be a photographer, but he had no experience in aerial photograph interpretation. The composition was odd, the angle oblique.
“Look. Lines radiating out across the landscape from two central points.” Werner was triumphant. “I knew I was right.”
Tulliver, too, saw the images he’d glimpsed all too briefly as his bus spiralled down out of control. “You were right, Werner. But what are they? The scale of those things; they’re miles long. What does it mean?”
“They are the Threads of GarSuleth,” hissed the chatt, beholding its new relic. “Divine proof that this One never thought it would see. These Ones are truly blessed. Our scentures tell us that GarSuleth came down from his Sky Web to spin this world for his Children, the Ones. You have seen them and by GarSuleth’s Will have brought us this holy glyph. This is a most miraculous spinning. The elders must be told.”
The discussion was interrupted by the arrival of several scentirrii, one of whom addressed Werner.
“The urman like you and its dark scentirrii have escaped. You know what you must do.”
Werner looked shocked.
The news shook Tulliver as well. Not so much the fact that Everson and his men had escaped – that much he expected of them – but the fact that he was now stuck here, alone. No, not alone; with Hepton, which frankly was less preferable.
However, Hepton took it the worst. The man was torn. He didn’t know what card to play. Where did his best chance of safety lie, with the Fusiliers or with Werner and the Zohtakarrii? Confusion and alarm washed across the man’s face like a rip tide.
Tulliver looked at him in disgust. He had no sympathy for the man.
“You are to come with us,” the scentirrii urged Werner. “You are to be the acid on the Breath of GarSuleth and strike down those who defy his Will.”
Tulliver stepped forward and grasped Werner’s forearm. “Werner, you can’t do this.”
“I don’t have a choice,” Werner said, averting his eyes as he pulled his arm free of Tulliver’s grip.
“You always have a choice.”
“And I choose to fly. I am sorry, my friend. I truly am.”
Tulliver looked the German pilot in the eyes and saw that his decision was not without cost, but it was one he was willing to pay. Service to the chatts for the chance to fly.
“Fly with me,” Werner appealed to him. “You and I, up there. The Zohtakarrii have only kept you alive because you are like me.”
“I’m nothing like you, Werner. Nothing,” said Tulliver vehemently.
After Werner had been escorted away, the two remaining scentirrii moved in to seize him and Hepton.
“Don’t take me,” Hepton wheedled. “I helped you. I can still help you. I helped reveal the Threads of GarSuleth. That must count for something!”
The feeling of impotence welled up in Tulliver again, summing up his whole time here on this world. It left him feeling grounded. Useless. He’d had enough of that with Everson. He’d never liked being helpless. That’s why he joined the RFC. By God, not any longer.
He pulled the revolver from his waistband and shot the scentirrii.
Hepton looked on in horror as he saw his chance for salvation dissipating with the cordite smoke before his eyes. “What the bloody hell are you doing, man?”
“My duty,” snapped Tulliver. “Move.”
Waving the chatt apothecaries back with his revolver, Tulliver picked up the glass plate negative, wrapped it in its cloth and backed out of the chamber, Hepton accompanying him only with the greatest reluctance.
One chatt raised itself up on its legs and hissed venomously. Tulliver put a bullet through its head and it dropped to the floor before it could exhale its soporific benediction.
The others hesitated and sank back down again in a submissive posture, unwilling to risk their new relic.
Tulliver glanced at Hepton. “Come on. We’re leaving.”
“But my equipment!” begged Hepton.
“You want it, you carry it,” said Tulliver still covering the chatts, who looked as if they were just waiting for a moment to strike. “But I’m not waiting.”
Hepton hastily loaded himself up with the canvas bags of film canisters, and picked up his tripod and heavy wooden camera box and shuffled as close to Tulliver as he could.