The Fallen (48 page)

Casado leaned across to Adansoni as they stood watching from the rear of the ambulatory, their faces drawn tight, their hands clenched. “It was a shock,” said Casado, nodding to himself. “A shock to us all.” He looked across at Adansoni. “For him to have died this way.”

“He fell on his back,” replied Adansoni. “His face was almost entirely undamaged.”

“God's grace. God's way of preserving his body. It is a shame God could not have preserved his life for a few years more. Goodness!” he exclaimed, “I am amazed I am saying this!”

“He was old,” countered Adansoni gently, reaching with his hands and patting Casado's in a show of kindness and care. “He must have slipped and tumbled out of the room. Probably chasing crows. You know how he hated those crows!”

Casado chuckled sadly, a solitary tear rolling down his face. He let it run down the length of his cheek to his chin where it welled and hung from the coarse white hairs missed from his morning's shave. “He could be a difficult man sometimes,” Casado said, turning his head a little so that only Adansoni would hear. Casado nodded his head. “But he'll be missed. He was loved.”

A cry rang out, high pitched, from the line of mourners and both Casado and Adansoni frowned. The line jostled and then withdrew, hurriedly. People were shouting, some were screaming but everyone was running, fleeing from the casket, trying to get away from it as quickly as possible. Both Cardinals stepped forward, watching as people scrambled to get away. A woman went down and people ran over her in their urge to flee.

“What is it?” called Casado as a member of the Swiss Guard, posted to oversee proceedings, rushed forward in an attempt to bring calm. Something was stirring within the coffin. Casado and Adansoni saw it as they stood behind the casket, saw the pallid grey of Korek's scalp rise to reveal the butchered crushed wound at the back of his head, caved in and blackened with congealed blood. Both of them fell back, their hands to their mouths.

“Lord preserve us!” Adansoni cried, his heels catching on the ground and causing him to lose his balance. He flailed out and Casado caught him, just managing to hold him upright.

“What is that thing?” Casado cried, his eyes firm on the hideous ghoul, as it began to sit up in the casket, bony hands gripping the edges of the box.

“When the dead rise …” Casado heard Adansoni say, above the clamour and roar of the disintegrating line. The Cardinal Secretary of State turned to look at his fellow Cardinal and friend. “The third ritual! The pride of life!”

At the far end of the church, doors were thrown open and Inquisitors surged in, sprinting up the aisle to where Korek was now attempting to
stand in the casket. Words were on his rotting lips, indiscernible sounds, but baleful and cruel. A revolver was raised and trained at the creature. As a shot sounded, Korek's blackened mouth twisted into a smile before he was thrown backwards. He somersaulted off the back of the casket and flipped over onto the white marble of the apse. Korek's corpse twitched and stirred for just a moment and then fell back onto the marbled floor. Black blood seeped out from the wound in his chest. But this blood seemed strange. It didn't flow. It looked as if it was crawling, as if it was made up of individual little elements, each moving, writhing out from beneath the body of the Cardinal. And then they realised the blood wasn't blood at all but a host of tiny insects, biting and stinging creatures burrowing out of his chest and out of hell's depths.

PART SEVEN

ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

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Pablo realised that there was no one left to fight, just a carpet of dead, three bodies thick, all around him. Already corpses had started to bloat and expand in the heat of the day. Around him he saw other Italian soldiers, bloodied and bowed from the scourge of battle, clutching their battered makeshift weapons, all dripping with the remains of the enemy. There was nothing else, only bodies and ash and smoke and stone, all punctuated with the mournful cries of the dying, for whom Pablo could do nothing, and had no compulsion to help either. Not anymore.

Pablo felt sticky and hot and sick. His whole body shook and he dropped the short bloodied pick he had armed himself with mid-way through the battle. It fell with a dull thud onto the bodies beneath him and he looked east to the haze of the plateau's horizon, the smudge of grey growing more faint as the last of the Austro-Hungarian army fled the field.

He wanted to cry, to roar out his passion to the heavens, but he had no energy to do so. And so instead he just stood and stared, stared into the eastern haze, mind empty.

And then he stopped and he blinked the filth from his eyes. Corporal Abelli.

Desperation grasped him like a noose. Now the tears came and he sobbed, weeping for his loss, weeping for fear he was the last one alive from his unit on that mountainside. A cloud passed in front of the sun and he shivered.

He dropped his head and slumped his shoulders with it, falling to his knees, the blood of the fallen seeping into his trousers. The limestone ground was soft, like a sponge, a carpet of pulverised flesh, skin and blood. Kneeling there Pablo felt he could stay slumped on that field of murder for an eternity, caught within the pall of death, neither able nor willing to leave it.

“Pablo!” called a voice, and at once his heart stirred, for he recognised it.

He gathered himself to his feet and staggered towards the sound, his vision blurred by exhaustion and the clouds of smoke rolling over the battlefield.

“Corporal Abelli?” he cried. “Is that you?”

Figures swam into view and Pablo hurried towards them at the edge of the battlefield. At their head stood Abelli, battered, blood covering his uniform and the side of his head, his hair matted with the stuff.

“I am pleased to see you're still alive!” Pablo cheered, reaching out to him as a friend might to another.

Pablo thought it strange that Abelli did not reply. Instead the tallest of the figures, dressed in a gown of black and sewn jewels, took Pablo by the shoulder and turned the young soldier so he might look at him more closely. And Pablo shivered, as if remembering a terrible dream.

“Prepare the defences!” a Sergeant called from a little way off. “Strengthen our line. Come on, you bastards! You might have won the scrap but you've not won the battle. They'll be coming back to have another go! You!” he barked at Pablo, and Pablo instantly turned and drew roughly to attention to answer his commanding officer. “Where's your fucking rifle?”

“Not this one,” commanded the bearded figure, his face partially burnt away, waving gently with his hand. Pablo noticed that the man's fingers were very long and his left hand encased a ram's head cane.

Without question, the Sergeant nodded and turned to leave.

“There will be another,” the bearded man called after him, drawing the Sergeant to a halt. “A large tall man. He goes by the name of Tacit.” The Sergeant nodded, mute, his face expressionless. “Let him pass. I have need of him, on that pinnacle.” And he unfurled his fingers to revealed the blackened stone monolith behind, as if up to that point it had been invisible.

The High Priest turned to look at Pablo again and smiled slowly. “Come on, Pablo,” said Abelli, putting a hand to his shoulder and leading him on, “it is time.”

ONE HUNDRED AND THREE

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If it surprised Henry and Sandrine that the climb to the summit of the Carso went unchallenged, it didn't Tacit. He knew why they let them pass, why he had been summoned. He knew the Darkest Hand was here.

They climbed the final few steps to the edge of the Karst Plateau and each of them took a moment to try to take in what they saw. Bodies covered every inch of the field, bodies on top of each other, intertwined, smashed together so it was impossible to see where one ended and another began. None of them had ever seen such a thing before, not even Henry in his short time on the western front.

No trees stood across the entire vista, no colour gave life or hope to the scene. The world beyond was nothing but an undulating mess of grey and brown uniforms, drenched scarlet with blood.

The smell, like that of a slaughterhouse, engulfed everything. Underneath the rancid veneer of roasting flesh one could smell fear, sweat, shit, all festering beneath the unerring sun above.

“What are you three up to?” called a voice, a soldier walking over from where he had been organising the disposal of bodies.

“No, it's okay Lance Corporal,” said a Sergeant, waving a hand and stepping into his path. He put the hand around the man's shoulders and led him away. “They've been allowed through. Special dispensation.”

Tacit nodded and walked on, Henry and Sandrine following. A bleak solemnity had descended upon them. They looked no longer to the right, over the battlefield

The path they followed was raised along the lip of the summit, away from where the majority of the fighting had taken place. Only occasionally now did they come across strewn corpses of soldiers, often in pairs, as if they had died at each other's throats.

The pinnacle of black rock, reaching for the pure blue of the heavens above, was just ahead now. A cave mouth stood its base, partially concealed by numerous thrusting shards of limestone stalagmites. Here the battle had been severe. Bodies were strewn in deep piles about the fingers of rock as if the cave were some sewer into which the detritus of the war had flowed.

“I suppose this is the place,” said Tacit.

“Part of me feels it'll be a relief to get inside,” replied Henry. “Away from all this.” He waved his hand over the butchered landscape of the battlefield behind him.

But Tacit growled and peered into the darkness beyond. “I wouldn't be so sure about that.”

ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR

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The cave mouth soon narrowed to a dark claustrophobic passageway. Tacit searched inside a pocket for his lantern, before remembering back to the corridor in the Vatican when he had thrown it in an attempt to delay those pursuing him. He cursed.

“Does anyone have a light?” he asked, turning to look at them. Henry and Sandrine shook their heads, and Tacit cursed again. “It looks like we're going in blind.” He shrugged and took a swig from his bottle, the last of the bottles he'd picked up from a shop as he left Rome. “At least they won't see us coming.”

They went forward slowly and carefully, feeling their way into the black. The tunnel was dry and smelt of earth, sharp jutting faces of rock lurching out from the walls as the path deviated left and then right. Uneasily, Tacit had to blindly squeeze his muscular frame around each corner. He was aware that the path was slowly descending and eventually it ran true, down towards what appeared to be a wider cavern, out of which crept faint orange light from a lantern.

The light came as both a relief and a burden. Tacit stopped and took what he supposed might be the final drop of brandy he ever tasted. He ran the stinging sharp drink around his mouth, savouring every aroma, every allure of the spirit. Throughout his life, brandy had been his one constant. The one thing he could always rely on. He had deviated of course, when geographies and cultures had forced him to, the local spirit sometimes having to suffice. But nothing had rewarded him quite as much as brandy. Uncomplicated. Uncompromising. Rewarding.