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calm the boy. He briefly remembered Ginger. That seemed a lifetime ago. He focused on the wave of advancing chatts marching across the poppy field towards them.
    As they marched through the flowers, the closed ranks of disciplined scentirrii began stumbling about. They lost their measured step. The line broke. They began to mill about in confusion as though blinded, like chlorine gas victims.
    “What’s happening to them?” asked Prof.
    “No idea,” replied Mercy. “But it looks like they’re funking it.”
    Gazette sneered. “That makes ’em easier to pick off.”
    Others had the same idea. In answer, a volley of NCOs’ orders rang out along the outer front line trench. The air filled with the crackle of gunfire and the reassuring smell of cordite and the chatts began to fall.
    A jubilant cheer went up from the trenches behind them, “The chatts are funking it. We’ve got ’em, lads. We’ve got ’em!”
    Whatever was affecting the scentirrii, it didn’t seem to be affecting the battlepillars. Atkins’ stomach shrank to a hard knot in his belly as one of the beasts, its great mandibles scything through the tube grass, advanced implacably towards them.
     
     
    E VERSON WATCHED THE centre of the Khungarrii attack collapse. On the flanks, the chatts broke into a charge. The Lewis machine gun emplacements raked a line across the first wave and the advance faltered.
    Tulliver’s Sopwith 1½ Strutter roared low overhead, sweeping along the Khungarrii advance, his machine guns stuttering, enfilading the enemy.
    Then, in answer to some unheard, unseen chemical scent command, what was left of the ranks of chatt scentirrii began to withdraw, all except those in the poppy field, who still staggered round as if in a stupor, unable to obey.
    Panning his binoculars across the mass of the Khungarrii army waiting in reserve, Everson caught sight of what he presumed was their general. It watched from the howdah of a large battlepillar that had reared up, its head and front legs resting atop a copse of trees, affording a better view as his mount scissored idly at the foliage with large mandibles.
    And he knew he’d met this chatt before, deep in the nurseries of Khungarr. He almost felt like saluting him, as he had once done with a German officer who appeared above the Hun parapets one morning.
    That felt like an age away.
     
     
    G AZETTE TOOK MEASURED shots at the electric lancers in the battlepillar’s passenger cradles. Three chatts collapsed, and one fell backwards out of the cradle to land on the ground with a crack. Its companions in the adjacent cradles now turned their attention towards Gazette. Blue streams of electric fire arced from the cradles towards the ground but fell short, incinerating the trampled tube grass.
    Gutsy picked the rider off. It fell back, caught awkwardly on the howdah’s side by the reins.
    Atkins reached into his webbing for a Mills bomb. “Cover me!”
    Porgy looked at him. “What the bloody hell are you going to do?”
    Atkins grinned and patted Porgy’s cap as he got up. “Something stupid.”
    He dashed off, running in a crouch though the poppies, zigzagging towards another oncoming battlepillar.
    Crackling ribbons of blue-white fire arced down around him from the electric lancers.
    He pulled the pin from the Mills bomb and threw it. It skittered to a halt in front of the battlepillar.
    He didn’t wait to see the great armoured larval beast, unperturbed, continue its relentless progress over it. He darted back to his section, where they laid down covering fire.
    The grenade exploded beneath the beast, red-hot shrapnel shards slicing up through its vitals. It reared up, exposing a huge wet gaping wound in its soft underbelly, hot organs slopping out as it toppled over to the side. The huge beast crashed down, twitching.
    Some of its riders lay crushed beneath its huge bulk. Others though, scrambled to get away from it. Gazette and the others rushed forward through the trampled