The Veil

By Jon Jacks

As one of the Sisters of the Fallen, Polyboia has pledged to sacrifice her life and regiment in the battle to quell the rebellion led by the New Siegfried. Disgraced when she’s the sole survivor of a humiliating defeat, she must atone by seeking out the legendary Hagen’s Spear, used to kill the original Siegfried. But perhaps the most powerful icon of all is the Veil...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Oct 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005926724

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Chapter 1

‘Sisibe; once again, we’re relying on you to get us all safely though this!’

Polyboia tenderly caressed the metallic flanks of her tank.

It was strange how you could form a bond with a creature formed of hardened steel and lubricating oil; as if she’d somehow attained a soul, after sharing the fears and jubilation of almost constant combat.

‘Here’s to Sisibe!’ Polyboia’s driver Hansa agreed, raising a glass of ‘thankfully retrieved’ wine in a grateful toast.

‘Sisibe!’ Gresta, the gun loader, happily joined in. ‘Long may she continue to guide and protect us!’

Of course, they weren’t against cursing their dear little Sisibe whenever they believed she was failing them (which was often!). Her interior, after all, was cramped, roasting – hard.

Every one of them had been seriously bruised or even deeply slashed at some point as they’d been violently thrown against the cumbersome, bared mechanics of levers, bolts and ratchets.

Simply rushing at speed across lightly rolling land was enough to cause the most unexpectedly brutal jolts; but once you’d hit rockier ground, or found yourself abruptly whirling about in the far more complicated manoeuvres of battle, then the painful knocks were unrelentingly constant.

And yet…so far, their dear little Sisibe had managed to keep them all safe, while others about them had died in the most gruesome ways imaginable.

Tomorrow, however, was to be the mother of all battles: a day when they hoped to at last bring the rebellion of the New Siegfried to an end.

And so, putting their drinks aside, Polyboia and her crew took up their still reasonably white wimples and – sweeping aside a clearer space in the snow – knelt to pray.

They prayed for the aid of those already bravely Fallen.

*

Even the lightly falling snow couldn’t hide the fact that the forces the New Siegfried had managed to array against them were startlingly unimpressive; their numbers were small, their armoured divisions almost pathetically invisible.

Viewing everything through her binoculars from Sisibe’s uppermost hatch, Polyboia was surprised that their enemy had chosen to make their stand here.

Had they become as tired of their uprising as everyone else across the Empire had?

Did they also wish to draw the suffering and agonies of unrelenting war at last to an end?

Or perhaps Operation Fafnir had been even more successful than had been hoped, eventually forcing a beleaguered foe into an unenviable position were every move could only lead to further disasters.

Polyboia glanced over towards the commanders of the other tanks lined up alongside Sisibe. Those closest to her, like her and her crew, were all Sisters of Sorrows, albeit recruited from convents other than her own.

Still, she’d naturally talked to them, compared experiences. Of course, they’d soon discovered they all had much in common, their experiences closely tallying.

Orphans, mainly (there were so many these days, naturally), raised from childhood to follow the tenets of the Fifteen Sorrows. But many had been placed at an early age in the convents by proud parents, committing them to a life of service to their country while keeping alive the memory of the Fallen.

The other tank commanders grinned at her now, sensing an easy victory.

Below her, Hansa and Gresta were in an equally exuberant mood, swapping jokes about how hard they’ll find returning to the relative peace of the convent once all this was over.

‘How long do you give them, Polly?’ Gresta called up. ‘An hour?’

‘That’s sir to you, Gresta,’ Polyboia snapped back, reminding her that the easy familiarity that had naturally grown between them as they’d served together had to come to an end, at the very least, on the eve of a battle.

‘So, what should we place your money on, sir?’ Hansa replied mischievously.

Polyboia looked out once more towards the poor forces spread across the far side of the snowy plain.

‘Two hours,’ she said, sensing it was a poor move on her part, but recognising that the lower time frames would have already been claimed by the others. ‘If we include the time taken mopping up,’ she instantly clarified, even though she was fully aware this wouldn’t count in the slightest when it came to apportioning the winnings.

Rather than mechanised divisions, Siegfried’s line up included cavalry, horse-drawn guns, and wagons.

There would be very few of them capable of escaping once the main bulk of the army had been shattered.

Would Siegfried himself, at last, be amongst those captured?

She doubted that: he was a wraith, and a pestilent one at that.

*

Chapter 2

Siegfried was renowned for his ability to surprise.

The guerrilla attacks.

The night-time strikes, when no one knew his forces were even close.

The unfathomable, even apparently careless manoeuvre that turned out to be a stroke of genius.

Even so, Polyboia was sure, no one could have anticipated that his poor excuse for an army would be the first to advance across the plain.

It was a truly startling commencement to the battle.

A stupid one, too.

His only hope today – what little there was left of it – would have been to take up a defensive position, ready at all times to make a withdrawal that might save what was left of his forces.

The strongest form of defence, some say, is attack.

Well tell that to the poor lines of fodder you’re sending forward to die, probably needlessly.

About her now, Polyboia’s companions swapped elated smirks before snapping their veils into place.

There was, too, a quick, brief lowering of heads as, like her, each commander gave an urgent warning to their respective crews to expect the order to advance at any moment.

Not that the crews, despite their close incarceration within the bellies of their mounts, required a verbal warning.

The enemy had already reached a point where the heavier guns were now picking off the potentially more dangerous armoured sections, the more fortunate tanks simply slewing to a grinding halt as they spewed the remains of a track into the air, the less fortunate abruptly transforming into a raging bonfire of warped metal.

The mounted troops would be next, then the ridiculously vulnerable infantry.

We could just sit here and watch this slaughter, Polyboia thought miserably: just let our heavy guns wreak havoc