Inside the Ivanhoe, the compartment began to fill with black smoke from burning oil and grease. The track wheels clanked and whined, trying to keep purchase on the iron track plates as they slipped.
“Oh hell, don’t let us throw a track now, please God,” said Reggie, crossing himself as he passed Norman a shell for the port gun. Before returning to his gear station, he let off a short burst from the belt-fed Hotchkiss machine gun, the bullets chewing through another tentacle.
“It’s no use, I can’t get a shot!” Norman bellowed over the engine noise.
From his seat at the front, Mathers indicated that Reggie and Alfie should use the track gears to try to swing the tank to starboard and get him a better shot.
Reggie put his track into second as Alfie, cursing under his breath, shifted his into neutral. The tank began to swing round to the right. Alfie could feel the gears beginning to judder through the gear lever.
AS THE IRONCLAD occupied the creature’s attention, Atkins, Mercy, Gutsy and the others dragged Pot Shot to safety across the clearing. A little distance away, a foul smelling fire was still burning itself out.
Lying discarded on the ground nearby were the two tank crew coveralls, stuffed with stone jars and sacred scents. Chandar chattered and insisted they carry them to safety, too. They picked them up as they passed, dragging them along.
“Over here!” Nellie waved from the edge of the clearing. “Where’s Chalky?”
Mercy shook his head.
“Oh.”
As soon as they laid Pot Shot down, Nellie, thankful for the opportunity to do something other than watch the tank struggle with the creature, fell to her knees and set to work examining him.
“Is he going to be all right?” Gazette asked, fearful of the answer.
With as much care as a battlefield would allow, she gently slipped Pot Shot’s steel helmet off. In some cases she’d seen, that had been all that was holding the skull together, or the brains in.
Delicately Nellie felt his skull, feeling for fractures or breaks.
“Is he—?”
She let out a small sigh. “No. Thank God. It’s only a scalp wound. He’s suffering from concussion. His helmet probably saved him. He’ll live.”
Atkins turned his attention to the tank. All he had to do was bring the tank back. One simple order. One simple bloody order. It should have been a piece of cake. His heart sank as he saw it losing its struggle against the creature. The engine whined and the tracks churned up the ground. Despite its weight and power, it seemed to be fighting a losing battle, but at least it was still fighting. “Let’s see if we can’t convince that thing to let go!” Atkins said.
They moved as close as they dared, took up position and fired at the sinuous tentacles gripping the ironclad. Bullets tore through flesh; others struck the iron hide, sparking as they did so.
Inside the Ivanhoe, splashes of molten metal, caused by the impact of the bullets, flew around the compartment.
Cecil shrieked as one hit his cheek, “Jesus, now our own side are trying to kill us too! Why the hell are they shooting at us? Oh, God. Frank said Mathers would get us killed, he did!”
Jack turned and with a warning glance at Mathers’ back in the driving seat, bellowed into Cecil’s ear. “Button your lip!” Not that Mathers could have heard him over the noise of the engine.
Across the clearing, Gutsy pulled out a rifle grenade. “Last one,” he said. He dropped it into the barrel of his rifle, braced the shoulder stock on the ground, and fired. The grenade arced through the air, landing near the entrance. It exploded, shredding a tentacle and releasing the tank, even as others sought to take its place.
The Ivanhoe lurched backwards as its tracks, running in reverse against the pull of the edifice creature, engaged with the ground. Once it had ripped free of the smaller tentacles, Mathers slammed on the brakes. “There’s your shot,” he yelled over the engine.
“Thank you, sir!” shouted Norman ecstatically as he manhandled the portside gun round. He fired. Through the gunner’s vertical viewing slit in the gun shield, he saw the shell explode and a section of huge, black tentacle vaporise in a plume of atomised flesh and ichor. “Yes!”
Seconds later, Jack fired the starboard gun. That, too, hit home. The creature thrashed in pain, its tentacles demolishing the edifice, sending rubble crashing down on the Ivanhoe. The tank jerked into motion, reversing clear of the tumbling debris.
The Ivanhoe’s guns fired again, bringing down more of the decaying structure. The tentacles wavered uncertainly, and then, by degrees, retreated into the ruins with a long, low rumble of pain.
WATCHING THE ROUT of the creature, as the shelling of the ironclad drove it back underground, the Fusiliers cheered in jubilation. It was short lived.
Cutting through the rumble of the edifice and growl of the tank, came the crashing sound of trees creaking and falling and the high-pitched jabbers and squeals of animal fear.
Atkins’ eyes narrowed. Where the hell had they come from? The dulgur had hunted the area clean of game, hadn’t it? He noticed the queer cast of light across the clearing, a strange kind of pre-storm twilight. It was as if the sun were being filtered through dirty glass.
“What now?” He looked up, irritated.
An immense bank of drifting clouds was obscuring the sky. No, not clouds; creatures, with vast snake-like members hundreds of feet long, hanging beneath them, tearing up trees, lifting them into the sky, plucking animals from the canopy as though they were grazing.
The ruined edifice and the clearing around it fell under a twilight shadow as they drifted across the sky, eclipsing the sun overhead.
Atkins watched in horror as the animals were flayed, as they rose to where yet more tendrils grasped the things and fed them into great wet mouth tubes. Underneath the tubes, swarms of black things danced like flies around dung.
Mercy gaped up at the sight. “Holy Mary, Mother of God!”
“Get under cover!” yelled Akins. Not that anyone needed telling. They ran for the shelter of the trees. They all saw what was happening to beasts snatched up by the shoal of airborne leviathans overhead. None of them wanted to be next.
The great sky-borne creatures filling the sky drifted over, oblivious to their presence. The light strained through the massive translucent gas sacs that kept them aloft, like huge living zeppelins.
“What the hell are they?”Atkins yelled above the cacophony.
Chandar chittered and shrunk down on it legs, almost as if it were trying to curl itself into a ball. “GarSuleth protect us!”
“Kreothe!” said Napoo, craning his neck and watching them in fear.
“That’s bad, then, is it?” Mercy remarked as he looked up to watch the stately procession of creatures across the sky. Most had their long limbs curled up under their gas sacs. Only a few of the bigger ones fed as they drifted lazily over the jungle, dragging their long snake-like limbs, dredging the ground for food.
There was a terrible sound, a long low bass cry from the edifice, accompanied by the sound of collapsing walls crushing vegetation as they fell.
A huge Kreothe floated sedately over it, its long harvesting tendrils draped below it, into the ruins. Although the creature was hidden by the ruins, Atkins could see its black tentacles lashing and wrestling with the trailing tendrils of the Kreothe, wrapping themselves around them, trying to pull the sky leviathan down.