Fireball

by John Christopher

  Curtius was more maddened by this than any of them. His instinct, as a trained and experienced Roman soldier, was to attack; he wanted to go up and drive the watcher away, killing him if necessary. The fact that this could only mean a full-scale assault from the rest of the Algonquian braves did not seem to bother him, and Brad and Simon had trouble talking him out of the project. It was a relief that another snowstorm started while they were arguing; even if the Indian remained at his post they could not see him. But they could not go out to hunt, either, with landmarks obliterated by the driving snow.

  The storm lasted all day and most of the night. Next morning there was another three feet of snow outside the door. Bos set to work shovelling a path round the hut. Brad was standing by the open door, and Simon joined him.

  “No sign of our watcher.”

  Brad shook his head. “He’ll be back.”

  While they were staring up at the ridge, they heard Bos shout with an urgency that got them running. They rounded the corner of the hut to see him standing in front of the animal pen. He turned towards them, his face showing a mixture of anger and misery.

  A section of the pen had been crudely broken, and tracks led away from it across the snow.

  Bos said: “I heard sounds in the night, but thought it could have been the wind battering.”

  “What have we lost?” Brad asked.

  “The nanny goat.”

  “Indians?” Simon asked.

  Bos shook his head. “There were paw marks and a trail of blood. A bear.”

  They stood in silence, taking in this totally unexpected disaster. The nanny, with a kid growing in her belly, had represented a hope for the future. And they had all been fond of her, Bos especially. The big man looked as though he might be going to cry. Possibly in a bid to prevent that, Brad said harshly: “It’s a nasty blow. But we couldn’t have kept them, once we headed west. The same with the hens. I’ve known for some time we had to think of them as meat.”

  Bos surveyed him with heavy eyes. “So we might as well kill the billy now, before the bear comes back, and butcher him for our larder?”

  Brad nodded.

  “I think I will leave that task to you, Bradus.”

  Brad did not answer.

  Bos fixed his gaze on him for a long moment, then said: “Don’t worry. I know what is man’s work. I will see to it. You are better skilled at talking. But watch your tongue, boy.”

  • • •

  The winter dragged slowly on. The billy goat and chickens provided a temporary addition to their food supplies; while they lasted, they did not need to buy meat from the Indians and could conserve the diminishing supply of wampum. There was still a watcher on the ridge, though, and the snares they set stayed empty. Red Hawk had suspended his visits, but uncannily, as though he knew the exact contents of their larder, he returned when they were down to the last chicken and the last haunch of goat meat. His rates had gone up again, and a lot more winter lay ahead. There was a brief period of milder weather, but it was followed by a series of bitter storms which kept them inside the cabin, in unhappy and hungry confinement.

  The next clear spell saw Red Hawk back with his braves. They brought two rabbits and some withered roots. He wanted twelve strings of beads for each of the rabbits. For the roots—he gestured magnanimously—three only.

  They were stunned into silence. Red Hawk’s face was expressionless as usual; then, astonishingly, it cracked into a smile. He pointed at Bos, and spoke to Brad. Simon picked up the occasional word: hair . . . knife . . . wampum . . . Brad was asking, offering, finally appealing. The smile went from Red Hawk’s face, and there was no mirth in Brad’s. At the end, he said to the others: “Get them the wampum. Twenty-seven strings.”

  “We are on the last sack,” Bos said.

  “I know.” Brad shrugged. “We have no choice.”

  The weather had cleared to a frozen calm, and they had the shutters open. They watched the Indians travel easily up the slope and over the ridge. Turning away, Brad said: “Well, that’s that.”

  Simon said: “Tell us the worst.”

  “I was going to.” He paused. “The first bit was joke time, Algonquian style. He said we needn’t pay wampum for the roots. They would take Bos’s beard in exchange.”

  To the Indians, who plucked out what little facial hair they had, Bos’s curly and luxuriant beard had been a source of interest from the beginning; they had grown used to the women and children giggling over it when they visited the village. Bos uttered a Roman curse. Brad said: “I refused the offer politely, and Red Hawk said they would not hurt him by hacking it off with their poor stone knives; they would buy our strange sharp ones and use them. For two knives they would bring us a turkey. I said no, we would not sell the knives, and he said it didn’t matter anyway.”

  Brad took a deep breath. “That was when I offered him the cabin.”

  They stared at him. Simon said: “You did what?”

  “I explained that we would be moving on, as soon as the snows melted. I said that if they would give us food until the spring we would give them the cabin then, and some knives, and an axe, and other valuable things. Things which were our possessions, which belonged to us.”

  Simon said: “I suppose . . .”

  Brad went on: “He said it was true these objects were ours, but only as long as the Great Spirit continued to breathe life into our mouths. Dead men, he said, had no possessions. Before the winter ended, we would be dead. Then any man might take things which no longer had an owner.”

  After a pause, Bos said: “As you told us, they are not thieves. They only starve men to death, then take their goods.”

  Curtius said: “I have had enough of this. Let us attack them, while the strength is in us. I would rather die as a soldier than as a famished rat!”

  Bos growled approval.

  Brad said: “I agree about doing something while we still have the strength. But something better than committing suicide, which is what that would amount to. One possibility would be to abandon the cabin now and head south.”

  Simon said: “That gets my vote. This place has become a death trap. And providing we don’t freeze to death, heading south means heading for the sun. It’s the best chance we have.”

  “Except for one thing,” Brad said.

  “What?”

  “Red Hawk thought we might think of that. He said if we left, he would send braves to follow us. They would keep us in sight as long as we were in Algonquian lands, and when we left those lands, they would return to report our deaths. Because the next lands to the south are inhabited by the Iroquois, who kill strangers. They do this slowly, but he can be certain that within a week we will be dead. Knowing that, they will feel entitled to take possession of the cabin, and everything in it.”

  Bos said: “I will take that chance, sooner than starve here.”

  “I, too,” said Curtius. “And I think we will kill a few of the Iroquois before they kill us.”

  “I might agree,” Brad said, “if there were no alternative.”

  Simon said: “Starving to death, freezing to death, getting killed in an attack on the Algonquians, being tortured to death by Iroquois . . . not just alternatives: we have a multiple choice.”

  Brad ignored him. “North and west, Algonquians, for hundreds of miles. South, more Algonquians, followed by Iroquois who seem to be rather worse. There’s still east.”

  “Sure,” Simon said, “the ocean. Three thousand miles of it. Quite a swim.”

  An early storm had brought seas sweeping high up the beach to batter a hole in the side of the ship which had brought them from England, and later storms had completed her destruction. Curtius in particular had been depressed by the loss of this solitary link with his homeland, remaining gloomy for days.

  Brad said: “You know how cold the water’s been here, even in summer? It’s caused by a strong current from the north that skirts this coast. The Stella’s finished, but we could make a raft out of he
r timbers. The current will take it south. We might be able to miss Iroquois territory altogether. At least we’ll be heading towards a better climate.”

  He looked around at their faces.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think,” Bos said, “that we will start right away.”

  • • •

  It wasn’t easy; it was murderously difficult, in fact. They had to break the Stella up to get at the deck timbers. Although it didn’t snow, the wind remained easterly, howling over the grey breakers and peppering them with freezing darts of spray.

  When the raft was half-built, the disheartening realization came that it was not only well above the tide mark but would be too heavy to drag down once completed: they were obliged to break it up and begin again at the water’s edge, with bitterly cold waves breaking over their legs. They took turns in going back to the hut to thaw themselves out. Then they had to drive in heavy stakes to anchor it against being carried away by the incoming tide.

  All this time they were under observation by the Algonquians. Since the purpose of their activity was so obvious, Simon wondered whether the Indians might intervene to stop them, but they never approached nearer than a couple of hundred yards. The reason, it eventually occurred to him, was that, in Red Hawk’s view, putting out to sea on a raft was the equivalent of going into Iroquois territory, as far as the outcome was concerned: the moment they did it, they were as good as dead. He straightened up from hammering and looked across the heaving swell. It seemed to stretch into eternity, grey sea merging into grey sky. Red Hawk was probably right, at that.

  At last it was finished. They stacked what was worth taking with them, including the meagre store of food, in the centre of the raft. Curtius wanted to set fire to the cabin, but the others said no: it might provoke the Indians to see their prospective spoils going up in smoke. The last thing Bos took was a pouch, which he tied securely to his belt. In it were roots of vines in a protective cocoon of moss. He had brought them with him from the emperor’s own vineyard in Rome, and his promise to himself was that someday, in some place, they would grow, and flower, and fruit; and he would make wine from the grapes.

  It only remained to float the raft. That wasn’t easy, either. They had to struggle, knee-deep in near freezing water, to move it. At last it bobbed clear, and they scrambled on board. It was about fifteen feet across, with a low surrounding gunnel. It would have been a mad idea for four men to entrust their lives to such a craft even on a placid lake in summer. They had erected a small mast and had a sail but could not use it with the wind blowing steadily towards shore. They paddled the raft out through the breakers.

  It helped a bit when they could strip off their soaked clothes and put on dry. The ridge beyond the reach was crowded now with figures; Simon thought he recognized Red Hawk in the centre of them. Gradually they dwindled in size and began to fall away astern.

  “That’s it!” Brad said. “We’re in the current—heading south.”

  JOHN CHRISTOPHER is a pseudonym of Samuel Youd, who was born in Lancashire, England, in 1922. He is the author of more than fifty novels and novellas, as well as numerous short stories. His most famous books include The Death of Grass, the Tripods series, The Lotus Caves, and The Guardians.

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  Also by John Christopher

  From Aladdin

  THE TRIPODS SERIES

  The White Mountains

  The City of Gold and Lead

  The Pool of Fire

  When the Tripods Came

  THE SWORD OF THE SPIRITS TRILOGY

  The Prince in Waiting

  Beyond the Burning Lands

  The Sword of the Spirits

  THE FIREBALL TRILOGY

  New Found Land

  Dragon Dance

  The Guardians

  The Lotus Caves

  A Dusk of Demons

  In the Beginning

  Empty World

  Wild Jack

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  This Aladdin hardcover edition October 2015

  Text copyright © 1981 by John Christopher

  Previously published in 1981 by E.P. Dutton.

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2015 by Anton Petrov

  Also available in an Aladdin paperback edition.

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  Jacket designed by Karin Paprocki

  Interior designed by Hilary Zarycky

  The text of this book was set in Venetian 301.

  Library of Congress Control Number 2014948957

  ISBN 978-1-4814-2010-5 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-2009-9 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4814-2011-2 (eBook)