Pat Kelleher - The Alleyman

Atkins followed unsteadily, and more carefully, so as not to dislodge rocks onto his superior.

“Sergeant Dixon, you and your work party see if you can’t clear some of this scree by the time we get back, so we can get a proper look at this thing.”

“Right you are, sir.”

“Riley!” Everson called as he reached the bottom. The Signals Corporal turned from overseeing the unloading of gear from one of the panniers on Big Willie.

“Sir?”

“See what your man makes of that by the time we get back,” invited Everson, gesturing towards the wall.

Riley turned to Buckley and put his arm around his shoulders. “Buckley, I’m leaving you here with this sorry bunch of reprobates and a Moritz station. See what you can pick up. And don’t get into trouble while I’m gone.”

“No, Corp.”

“Good lad.”

Everson wasn’t unduly concerned about leaving the two sections of working party at the canyon. They had urmen Karnos to guard them, and Tulliver would be flying over three times a day. The party could signal the aeroplane if there were any problems or important developments.

With a last look at the wall, Everson ordered the battlepillars to move out, and they set off for the Croatoan Crater.

ALFIE AWOKE WITH a start to find himself lying in darkness. “Lieutenant?” he croaked. His lips were dry and cracked, his mouth parched.

He felt around with his hand and was startled to find warm, damp earth under his hand, not iron plate. He wasn’t in the tank, then. He lay still for a moment, trying to collect his thoughts. All around him, with his petrol-fruit-muddled senses, he could see the faint ambient sounds of animals’ noises bursting and fading like Very lights. He felt a vague craving for the fuel. He didn’t usually feel that unless he’d been away from the tank for some time. How long had he been here? Where was he?

He could make out a soft, low horizontal glow of light, as if from under a door. He raised himself up on his elbows to get a better look. His head began to pound and his right leg jangled with pain. He let out an involuntary cry.

The hide draped across the doorway as protection against the elements swept open, and the shock of radiance caused Alfie to cry out again, throwing up an arm to block the light.

The silhouette of a man resolved itself against the flare. It spoke. It took a moment for Alfie to make out the words, as his fuel-addled brain interpreted them as the bittersweet flavour of marmalade and the childhood feeling of the tassel ties on his mother’s front parlour curtains against his skin.

“…name is Ranaman, shaman of the Ruanach clan.”

In the light, Alfie could see he was no longer wearing his coveralls. His right leg had been crudely splinted. Lengths of wood had been strapped against it, and they had unwound and used his puttee to bind it.

He tried to move, thinking about escape, but his leg was bound tight; and if that didn’t stop him, the pain surely would.

The man, clearly an urman, knelt before Alfie and bowed until his forehead touched the earth. The youth who entered behind him did the same.

God, not again, thought Alfie. They revered him. The crew of the HMLS Ivanhoe had met such reactions before. Lieutenant Mathers had decided in the past to take advantage of it and of the urmen they met. It started out as a scam, growing into a mad scheme to build a colony of the British Empire here on this world. Urmen had bowed before them, thinking them gods, or the heralds of gods. Some, like the Khungarrii, thought the tank to be Skarra, the chatt god of the underworld. The crew didn’t disabuse them of it; it had got them food and women. Alfie’s opposition to this madness had almost cost him his friendships. He had never agreed with Mathers’ scheme, but now it might save his life.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“Croatoan’s Barrow,” said Ranaman, hardly daring to look up. “After his battle with GarSuleth, defeated and cast down, here fell Croatoan. To be thus conquered broke his heart in twain, and he was dragged into the underworld to be punished by GarSuleth’s brother, Skarra. And here the Ruanach stand vigil, as our ancestors did before us, keeping watch over his heart, awaiting his return and eventual triumph over GarSuleth.”

The crater, thought Alfie. They must mean the crater.

“Where are my friends?” he asked in a deep imperious tone, one that he’d heard Norman adopt on occasions like these.

Ranaman cocked his head to one side and frowned. “Friends?”

“Others. Like me.”

The youth shook his head, puzzled. “There were no others. There was only you. You were alone. You appeared before Tarak on his vision quest to become a man, a warrior.”

The words spilled from the youth’s mouth in a torrent of nervous energy…

TARAK WAS NOT yet a man but no longer a boy. He was in the process of becoming. Or dying. That was always a possibility. It was his time, and he had undergone the rite. He had ingested the venom of the hurreg and had then been ceremonially cast out of the enclave. Now he must circle the Barrow and seek out his vision. If he survived, he would return to the enclave a warrior.

His skin burned, his eyes itched from the poison, his palm felt slick around the handle of his knife and otherworldly visions came and went. He heard a tortured screech that made him wince, followed by a roar so terrible that it silenced the jungle. There followed an impact he felt through the soles of his feet.

Fearful, he headed towards the sound. He stumbled through the undergrowth until he saw it, resting where it had fallen, as Croatoan had once fallen from the sky.

He watched as if in a dream as an opening appeared in the sky rock and an urman like himself – no, not like himself – stepped out and fell to the ground. Tarak watched, trying to decipher the vision.

There was a deep growl and something dropped from a low bough and landed on all sixes, ready to leap on the sky-being.

Though the hurreg poison seared his joints, Tarak leapt on the creature’s back with his knife firmly in his fist. He felt the warm pelt beneath his flesh, smelled the damp fur and thrust the blade in. The creature bucked and writhed, trying to throw him off, but he pressed his thighs against its flanks, tightened his hold on the shaggy fur with his other hand and drove the knife in again. And again. Its legs crumpled beneath it. Tarak pulled back on the horns, exposing its throat, and slipped his knife across it. The creature shuddered beneath him, blood pulsed out of the ragged slit. He held it until it had stopped, then let the head fall. Ordinarily he would have taken it back to the enclave as a gift from Croatoan and returned a hunter. But he had something more important to bear.

He looked at the sky-being.

He stood up and circled the great iron rock from which he’d appeared. Never had anyone in his clan had a sign like this, though many had sought it. This was his omen, given to him, but he had no idea what it meant. Ranaman would know.

He hoisted the sky-being over his shoulders and began his triumphal return to his enclave, not as a boy but as a man. As a warrior…

“TARAK IS TO be envied,” announced Ranaman proudly as the young man finished his tale. “But his fortune is the clan’s fortune. Your arrival when the Torment of Croatoan is nigh, when the earth erupts with his pain, is a great omen!”

“And if the boy’s vision proves false?” Alfie’s voice quavered, looking at Tarak.

“Then he will be cast out as punishment for bringing a Dulgur, an evil spirit, amongst us. He will die and his spirit will not join the ancestors in the Village of the Dead. His body will be left to ward off other Dulgur.”

Tarak looked alarmed and glanced at Alfie for confirmation that he had done the right thing.