The Ironclad Prophecy Read Free

encouraged their distressed families.
    “Ruined my soddin’ day, this has,” said Gutsy as he jogged past with a young lad on his back. Too exhausted to cry any more, the lad just clung to the brawny butcher’s shoulders, his small chest heaving with dry sobs.
    “Saved mine,” said Mercy, the section’s inveterate scrounger, with a grin. “Nobby was just about to start telling jokes. He’s only got three and they’re all bloody rubbish.”
    “Look at this, nearly took me bloody leg off!” said Pot Shot.
    Mercy glanced down at the lanky soldier’s charred calf-wrapping as he trotted alongside. He shook his head and grinned. “Just be thankful it’s your puttee that kaput-ee, and not you, you grousing sod.”
    The incorrigible Porgy, and Gazette, the best sharp shooter they had, trotted along with several new replacements. Prof, Nobby and Chalky had brought the section up to strength. The other new addition, Shiner, had died three weeks earlier when, on patrol, he’d stopped to take a leak. He peed on something in the undergrowth that took exception to the act. Atkins winced whenever he thought of it.
    An explosion of shrieks and feathers erupted to their right – Gazette wheeled around with his rifle to meet the threat. A flock of grubbing bird-things, startled by their passing, took to the air with raucous cries.
    Atkins watched an urman woman clutching a baby to her breast as she ran, a wild desperation in her eyes. He thought of Flora, his missing brother’s fiancée, now pregnant with his own child. He had only found that out here, after discovering that Ketch, his old corporal, had spitefully withheld her letter from him. She was his Flora, now. Not William’s. Not his brother’s. His sweetheart, waiting for him on Earth. His child, growing up fatherless. Or it soon would be. He’d kept count. Flora would be seven months gone by now. And he was stuck here on this benighted world.
    He felt more alone now than ever. More than once, he thought about confiding in Porgy, but stopped himself. That someone else would take your wife or sweetheart while you were fighting at the front was every soldier’s worst nightmare. He doubted he’d find much sympathy, and he feared the friendships he’d lose.
    He would do whatever it took to return home to Flora, to his child. He wouldn’t rest until she was in his arms again. But to do that he had to survive the day.
    To do that he had to run.
     
     
    S INCE THEIR ARRIVAL on this God-forsaken planet, Padre Rand, the army chaplain, had watched the Pennine Fusiliers re-dig the parallel lines of Somme trenches into a defensible stronghold, encircling the area of Somme that had come with them, protecting all they had left of Earth.
    Without the distraction of constant Hun artillery bombardment, they were able to dig deep dugouts, after the German fashion, with the time to construct them properly, dry and strong and deep.
    Now linked by radial communications trenches, three concentric circles of defensive trenches ringed the ground at the centre, now home to a parade ground and assorted tents and crude wooden hutments. Lewis and Vickers machine gun emplacements strengthened the perimeter.
    Above it all, in the centre of the small parade ground, the torn, tattered Union Jack hung lifelessly from its makeshift flagpole.
    It should be snapping in the wind, the Padre thought, proud and glorious, filling the men with hope and pride. Instead, it seemed limp and forlorn, unable to instil anything in anyone. It looked the way he felt.
    It had been three months since Jeffries had conducted the obscene occult ritual that had apparently condemned them all to this place. The Padre had a hard time dealing with that one. That someone as evil as him could have access to such supernatural power as to bring them here while he, with his prayers and his Almighty, barely seemed to accomplish a thing. He felt insignificant in comparison. It challenged his faith in a way the war itself never