His face and back began to prickle with drying sweat, he felt a wave of nausea rise up, and he vomited on the ground. What the hell did he think he was doing? His hands began to shake. Thinking of himself up on the tank beating that damn thing with a rock made him heave again. Jesus. His head began to pound.
There was a screech of triumph as the jabberwock rose from the ground, talons locked tightly onto the beetle. The stone beetle’s legs thrashed weakly, defenceless. The pair rose higher and higher as Mathers scrambled to his feet. Trembling, feeling faint and clammy, he staggered towards the tank.
The jabberwock cawed loudly and released the beetle, which dropped like a dead weight. There was a wet cracking sound as the beetle slammed down onto the tank’s roof. It clawed feebly. Triumphant, the jabberwock flew down and began to prise at the cracked carapace with a taloned foot. Its long neck and hooked beak began ripping at the innards, tearing its soft wet organs.
Thirty feet away, Mathers made to creep towards the sponson hatch, but the gimlet-eyed predator spotted him. For a moment, he thought it was going to attack, but it just extended its neck, screeched in his direction, warning him off, and went back to tearing at the beetle carcass.
The jabberwock kept one eye on him, jealously guarding its kill as it ripped and tore, throwing back its head to swallow lumps of offal. He needed to get the thing and its meal off the tank. Slowly, still trembling, he edged round to the front of the tank and ducked round the starboard track horn, and over the pervasive rumble of the engine shouted into the driver’s cockpit.
“Clegg, the beetle thing is lying on the starboard track. If you drive forwards the track might run it off the front of the tank.”
Clegg nodded his comprehension through the driver’s visor. Mathers saw him turn back in the tank and yell something. Her ran up the engine and the tank jerked into life, then began, clanking track plate by track plate, to inch forwards. The beetle carcass moved. The jabberwock didn’t notice at first, but when its kill was tugged away from it, it looked around for the unseen rival.
Mathers backed off and watched the progress of the dead beetle as it ground slowly forward. The jabberwock, furious that its meal was being snatched, put one clawed foot on the body to hold it. The tracks ground on inexorably, shredding the underside of the carcass and leaving viscous blue stains on the track plates. The weight of the jabberwock was holding it back.
Mathers would have to do something. Picking up a rock, he threw it at the jabberwock to draw its attention. The first one hit its body; it turned and hissed at him. The second hit its neck. It roared in his direction. A third had it rearing up over its kill and spreading its huge wings. But Mathers now felt no fear. He grinned to himself. His crew had better be ready for this.
“Come on!” he yelled at the beast, waving his arms. “Come on! You great ugly trout! Over here!” Ugly trout? Really? Was that the best he could do? Never mind. It seemed to do the trick. The jabberwock flapped its wings and took off, shrieking at him all the while. Mathers backed off even further, trying to draw the creature away from the tank. He glanced behind him. There were several boulders that might provide cover, if he could reach them.
Without the weight of the jabberwock, the beetle carcass began moving as the Ivanhoe advanced, and flopped limply off the front track horns, where it fell to the ground. The tank rolled over it, crushing it and staining the ground blue.
The jabberwock advanced on Mathers in short agile hops. Mathers wasn’t a serious threat to it, no more than an annoyance.
Now would be a good time, thought Mathers as he backed away, facing the creature.
A burst of machine gun fire from the driver’s position raked the jabberwock, perforating a bloody line across its wingspan. The jabberwock turned on the new threat. The landship lumbered towards it. There was another burst of machine gun fire and the jabberwock’s head vanished in an explosion of bloody vapour. The body staggered on another few yards under its own momentum before collapsing, also to be crushed under the tracks of the advancing Ivanhoe.
Mathers collapsed against the boulder, his breath coming in great heaving pants, sweat trickling down his back. He could feel his heart banging in his chest and waited for it to settle down.
The tank halted and Clegg called out through the driver’s visor. “Lieutenant, are you all right?” Mathers nodded and waved his hand to brush off his driver’s concern, his mouth too dry to speak.
From the back of the tank, he could hear the sponson hatches clang open and the crew staggering out into the fresh air, a tangle of voices, to survey the bodies.
Perkins ignored the dead creature, turning his attention to the tank. Mathers watched him. He walked along its length checking the tracks and track plates, tapping rivets. Eventually he was satisfied.
“Damage?” asked Mathers, remembering his position, straightening himself up, and striding purposefully towards Perkins.
“We were lucky, a couple of buckled plates, but they should be all right. The track tension will need adjusting soon, but we’re all tickety-boo, sir.”
“Good man,” he said, patting him on the shoulder and walking off towards the tank.
“Sir?” asked Perkins.
Mathers turned. “What is it, Perkins?”
“I was just wondering, sir, shouldn’t we be heading back to camp? We’ve come far enough. We’ve found no sign of Jeffries so far and we’re reaching the limits of our range. Our fuel is limited, we should think about returning. I mean, they’ll be expecting us back, sir.”
“But we’re all right for now?”
“Yes, sir, but—”
Mathers stepped closer and fixed Perkins with a stare, aware that his eye had started to twitch again. “Any complaints?”
If Perkins noticed it, he didn’t say anything. “Complaints, sir? No sir.”
“Then we’ll carry on. As you were, Perkins.”
THE IVANHOE HEADED off, leaving the corpses behind to be picked over by whatever scavengers found them. They made for the forest a couple of miles off.
Mathers was still walking in front of the tank, only now he carried a large suitably gnarled wooden staff tied to the top of which was a PH gas hood, looking like some desiccated head. He wore his ‘turtle shell’ helmet and splash mask, even though he was outside. It afforded him some meagre protection at least. But more than that, right now it served to accompany his rain cape, daubed as it was with hand prints and strange arcane symbols, or at least what the crew had decided passed for magical signs: spirals, stars, lightning flashes and unblinking eyes. Mathers fancied himself the subject of some fantastical Arthur Rackham illustration. He looked for all the world like a tribal shaman leading some great, tamed antediluvian beast.
Which was exactly how it was supposed to look.
Behind him, the Ivanhoe squeaked, clanked and growled its way closer to the jungle, its periscopes up, looking like eye-stalks or antennae.
Mathers could hear the whispering again. This time it was more insistent. This time he thought he could detect words in the tinny susurration. It was coming from behind him, from the Ivanhoe. It was the Ivanhoe. No, not the Ivanhoe. It was Skarra.
Mathers walked on. And listened.
THEY HALTED AT the jungle edge. When Mathers looked there was nothing, but he knew they were there. The fumes from the tank allowed him to see their breathing; slight yellow eddies in the air around the undergrowth.
Through the protective eye slits of his splash mask, he caught a movement from the tree line. A group of urmen stepped out from under cover. One came forwards hesitantly.