Atkins could see the muzzle of a Vickers machine gun poking out of the window of the farmhouse. Past it, he saw angled wooden doors leading down to the old fruit cellar.
“Lance Corporal Atkins, 1 Section 2 Platoon, C Company!” he called out to the machine gun section inside. “We’ve got a prisoner. We’re coming in through the cellar. Cover us!”
“Stoppage!”
“Well get it cleared, man, you know the drill!”
Bloody Nora, the day just gets better, Atkins thought as he shot the bolt and flung open the cellar doors.
“In,” he yelled. “Make for the sap at the rear of the house!”
Prof, Chalky, Nobby, Pot Shot, Gazette, Mercy and Porgy tumbled into the dark hole.
Gutsy pushed Chandar down into the cellar and Atkins followed.
A shadow fell over him as he hit the floor. He turned, rifle at the ready, as a scentirrii sprung through the cellar opening at him. It was dead before it fell on his bayonet, a bullet hole through its horned flat facial plate. Gazette was covering them from the cellar door across the low room.
Gutsy ushered Chandar through.
Another scentirrii appeared at the cellar opening. Crouching, spider-like, it let out a challenging hiss. Atkins pulled his trigger but his magazine was empty.
Gazette fired again, sending it spinning out of sight.
“We need to get these doors shut,” Atkins said.
A third chatt sought to clamber in. Gazette killed that, too, and a fourth crawled over the bodies of its comrades to reach them. That, too, fell. No more attempted to come through.
Atkins steeled himself, reached out and pulled the cellar doors shut, jamming them closed with the handle of a broom that he found stood in the corner.
Above, he heard the machine gun stutter start up again.
“About bloody time!” he spat. He clapped Gazette on the shoulder. “Thanks.”
He staggered up the worn stone cellar steps and out of the house, following his men down the sap trench towards the front line.
Alarmed by the appearance of Chandar in the fire trench, several Tommies swung their Enfields in the chatt’s direction as 1 Section emerged from the sap.
“It’s all right, he’s with us,” said Atkins. He looked around and saw a private with a runner’s brassard. “You. Tell Lieutenant Everson that we have someone he’ll want to meet.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE HEAVILY SANDBAGGED command post looked out over the lines of trenches, breastworks and earthworks now crawling with Pennine Fusiliers as they dispatched straggling and retreating chatts. Linseed lancers of the RAMC scuttled about with stretchers, collecting the wounded and carrying them back to the aid posts and hospital, while flocks of carrion creatures were already circling and descending on the bodies. Frustrated ‘hell hounds,’ smelling the blood, could be heard howling across the valley.
Lieutenant Everson looked out through a loophole with his binoculars, across the wire weed entanglements and the bodies that hung on them, already being ensnared and sapped of their life by the slow-moving thorny creepers tightening around them. His gaze didn’t rest there, but was drawn out across the veldt where he watched the Khungarrii retreat.
They had repulsed them, but only because of their guns, and their ammunition was rapidly running out. Of course, the chatts didn’t know that, but at some point, the Khungarrii would attack again. No doubt they could hold off several such attacks. His counterpart was exceedingly clumsy, tactically. With their short-range weapons, the alien scentirrii seemed to be much more proficient in small police actions, defending their edifice and the like, but the growing confidence evident in recent raids on urmen enclaves showed his nemesis was a fast learner and damned if he wasn’t learning it all from the Pennines.
The observation posts on the valley hilltops had reported no sign of a support column. They must have been foraging food along the way. Nor were there any signs of siege machines. So they didn’t see this action lasting very long. A short brutal engagement, then, to stamp out their enemies.
However, if the chatts were to lay siege to the stronghold and this turned into another war of attrition, then God help them. They had barely held their own against the Hun on the Somme. This time, without reinforcements, without logistical support, they couldn’t hope to hold out against such a superior force. Everson gave them a fortnight at best, a month at the outside. The Pennines’ own foraging parties had to range further and further to find food and wood. Even with the help of the refugee urmen, feeding this many men was becoming a nightmare without some degree of successful agriculture. He couldn’t allow a siege to happen. He needed to deliver a swift, decisive blow. Something that would have the Khungarrii give them a wide berth in future. To do that, he needed to know more about them, and he recognised that the captured chatt represented a slim opportunity.
“Is this absolutely necessary?” asked Padre Rand nervously, from the other side of the sandbagged room. He’d asked the Padre here because he’d had dealings with them in Khungarr.
“Yes, Padre, I’m afraid it is. But don’t worry. You’re only here to observe. It won’t touch you. I’ve taken precautions.”
The Padre, though, seemed little mollified by this.
Sergeant Hobson appeared in the doorway. “The prisoner is here, sir.”
Everson turned from the unsettling sight of the chatt army regrouping out on the veldt. “Show him in, Hobson.”
Atkins, accompanied by a grim Napoo, escorted the captured chatt into the dugout. It hobbled into the room with a lopsided gait that suggested old injuries and new pains. Everson felt a cold shock of recognition. Most chatts looked the same to him, even now after all this time, but this one, even with its featureless white facial plate, was unmistakable. Its worn stumps of antennae moved with feeble jerks like a broken clockwork toy. This was no mere chatt soldier. This was the chatt that Jeffries had held hostage in Khungarr. Everson remembered that the damn thing had refused to help them when they were trying to find a way out of the labyrinthine tunnels. But there was so much information it might give them, not least about Jeffries’ last movements and intentions. If it would talk. But every moment it was here it could be gathering information about them; numbers, layout, weapons.
Atkins stood smartly to attention, by the prisoner. Sergeant Hobson brought up the rear of the escort party and stood, stiff and formal, behind the chatt, his eyes never leaving it. In the far corner was Padre Rand, backed against the sandbagged wall, his hands clutching his bible to his chest as though it were a shield, his lips moving silently in prayer, his eyes following the chatt warily as it looked around. Even captured, its curiosity seemed insatiable.
“Your herd is truly different from that of other urmen,” it said, in its breathless, monotone way. “They build their flimsy dwellings on the ground. I had heard reports from raiding scentirrii that Tohmii dwellings and burrowings imitate those of the Ones. This structure is crude, but strange and wondrous nonetheless.”
Everson stepped toward the arthropod and held out a hand.
“I’m Lieutenant James Charles Everson, Acting Commanding Officer of the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers. We’ve met,” he added pointedly.
The chatt finished surveying the room before answering. “Yes. This One is Chandar, gon-dhuyumirrii, olfactotum to Sirigar, liya-dhuyumirrii of the Khungarrii Shura.” It appeared to swallow air and force it out, as if having to shape words with organs not meant for human speech. “In gratitude this One offers you a blessing in the name of GarSuleth,” it said, opening its arms, tilting its head back and opening its mandibles.