whether it could actually accommodate him.
‘Yes. Get in now. Those planes are coming back and we don’t want to be here when this place goes up!’
Suddenly a thought struck Ryan.
‘Hang on a minute. What happened to the other bike you had? Someone said you were seen stealing one.’
Tristram gave him a rather sheepish look.
‘I… err… I kind of trashed that one. But don’t worry about that now, we need to go.’
‘Like that’s reassuring,’ moaned Ryan.
He gave the sidecar one more doubtful look and then climbed in. There really wasn’t an awful lot to it; a small cocoon of metal with an insufficiently padded seat, a wind deflector and a wheel to his right. This last feature he found quite alarming, since the lack of space and his corpulent frame meant that he couldn’t keep his arms inside, leaving the wheel awfully close to his elbow.
He was given no time to raise any more concerns though, as Tristram leapt onto the bike’s saddle and fired it into life. At that very moment the second wave of bombardment began, shaking the foundations of the buildings around them and drowning out the sound of the bike back-firing, as Tristram gunned the engine. In a shower of snow from the garage roof, they tore out into the street, drifting and slewing from one side to the other as Tristram fought to gather the bike up. Ryan turned awkwardly in his seat and was nearly blinded by an explosion, as a bomb annihilated the building they had just been sitting next to.
‘Bloody hell!’ he cried. ‘Crank it open Tristram, we need to get out of here!’
‘Easy, easy,’ came the reply. ‘If I put this one in a wall as well, that’s not going to help us.’
Suddenly, up ahead, the lights of another vehicle cut through the darkness, dazzling them both. Clearly the occupants did not have much of a grasp on what was going on in the village, but when they caught sight of the carnage being wrought behind the fleeing motorcycle they took evasive action. With no attempt to slow down, the vehicle – a small off-roader – turned sharply and began pirouetting down the street towards them.
Tristram swore so vehemently that Ryan was too shocked to come up with a curse of his own. The front end of the vehicle ploughed into one of the buildings to their right, but its momentum kept it cannoning down the street like a whirling dervish.
‘We’re gonna die!’ cried Ryan.
Tristram gritted his teeth and tried to judge whether they had any chance of getting through unscathed.
‘Stop the bike!’ shouted Ryan.
His sentence was punctuated by a percussive succession of explosions that rattled his insides and denounced his statement as being a really bad idea. Suddenly Tristram came to a decision and twisted the throttle hard, sending the bike leaping forwards towards a gap between the spinning vehicle and the left-hand wall; a gap that was closing far too quickly for them to have any chance of getting through in time.
‘What are you doing?’ cried Ryan, not at all happy that he had been left out of the decision.
‘Cover your face,’ came the reply.
As the gap closed to nothing and the truck slammed into the wall yet again, now only a few metres ahead of them, Tristram feathered the throttle. Then as it ricocheted away and the gap opened up, he let it rip, and they surged past in a shower of mortar and shattered glass. A second later the off-roader was no more, as another bomb impacted and blew it to smithereens.
‘Woohoo!’ yelled Tristram, a huge smile spread across his face. He reached across and ruffled Ryan’s hair as the boy emerged from behind his hands.
He muttered something rather rude under his breath.
‘What’s that?’ asked Tristram, above the noise of the engine.
‘I said; you’re a bloody lunatic!’ replied Ryan, who couldn’t help smiling back. In truth, he had only been seconds away from soiling himself.
‘What? Have you never done anything like that in one of your computer games?’
‘Well, yeah, but this is a bit different, isn’t it?’
‘Not really,’ said Tristram. ‘Just use your imagination.’
Another stomach-churning explosion almost lifted the bike off the ground, reminding them that they weren’t out of danger yet. They were on the outskirts of the village and could see a thick pine forest up ahead. The road stretched out towards it and across their path lay a barrier, flanked by two hamsters who were watching the annihilation of the village in wide-eyed disbelief.
There was no time to exchange pleasantries, and Ryan was forced to cover his face for a second time, as the motorcycle smashed through the checkpoint and sped away into the wood.
As Ryan shook the detritus out of his hair he looked over his shoulder and saw the two hamsters angrily shaking their paws at them, while behind them the second wave of bombings had left the settlement in ruins.
He sighed and settled back into his seat facing forwards again, as Tristram kept the throttle wide open and they raced on through the dark wood. The sky had brightened a little, but they still required everything the bike’s feeble headlight could give them in order to see the road ahead.
‘Okay, you can slow down a bit,’ said Ryan, realising that he was gripping the rim of the cockpit so hard that his knuckles were as white as the snow being thrown up beside him.
‘You all right down there?’ smiled Tristram. ‘Didn’t scare you, did I?’
‘No,’ scoffed Ryan. ‘You’re a total nutter though. What happened back there? We should be dead by now, or awake at least. How did you get us out of that?’
Tristram laughed.
‘You mean; did I do any Dreamweaving to stack the odds in our favour? I’m afraid the answer is ‘no’. That was all plain luck, or perhaps good judgement. Feel free to look at it either way.’
‘What? So you just winged it?’
‘Yep. I’m afraid I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie at heart, and dreams like this help me to get it out of my system.’
‘Well, would you mind checking with me first next time? You know; before you decide to take your next hit?’ Ryan frowned.
‘You’d have said ‘no’.’
‘I… well, not necessarily. It was a pretty awesome manoeuvre, I’ll give you that.’
‘You’ve still got a lot to learn about dreams, Ryan,’ Tristram grinned. ‘You need to just relax and go with the flow. The crazier an idea sounds, the more likely it is to work.’
‘There must be limits though, surely?’
‘Of course, and that’s where Dreamweaving comes in. It allows you to take those limits and throw them out of the window. But remember this; Dreamweaving may be tough on the body, but as you get better at it, the temptation will be to use it at every turn. However, more often than not it’s easier just to roll with the story. Some of the best experiences I’ve had have come from plain old-fashioned dreaming.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind. So, what next?’
Tristram eased the throttle back and they slowed to a more gentle cruise.
‘We carry on along this road until we reach that river. From there, your guess is as good as mine, but we shouldn’t be far from the castle.’
‘And you think Soph will be there?’
‘If she’s still in the dream at all. I rather hope she isn’t. The presence of Rasputin’s men is worrying, and it would be better if none of you were here. I hope the Academy is keeping an eye on things.’
‘There was nobody standing around looking in the dream when I came back,’ said Ryan.
‘Ah, no, there are other methods of monitoring dreams that we have. However, what you’ve said does mean it will take them a while to reach us if things go awry. The library is having a few teething problems and is not yet ready to be used in anger. We’re stuck with doing things the old way for the time being.’
‘The library?’ frowned Ryan.
‘I’ll explain later, if I get the chance.’
Ryan looked up at Tristram.
‘You really like drip feeding me information, don’t you?�
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‘I just give you sufficient to dige…’
Tristram’s features were suddenly cast into shadow. They both looked over their shoulders and saw a pair of bright lights tearing up the road behind them. Whatever it was looked and sounded extremely big, and Tristram did not hesitate in opening up the throttle again to save them being run off the road.
‘Hang on,’ he yelled, as they turned into a tight hairpin corner. The bike drifted round it facing nearly at right angles to its direction of travel.
As Tristram got it squared up again, Ryan looked behind them and saw the lights of the vehicle swing round the corner with far less drama.
‘They’re gaining on us!’ he cried.
‘Well then, now might be a good time to ready that gun of yours,’ replied Tristram.
Ryan had completely forgotten about it. He had tucked the pistol away into the waistband of his trousers, as he’d seen done in so many movies, and had not given it a second thought. He had been wondering why his seat felt so uncomfortable.
‘I’m not sure whether I can get at it,’ he said, trying to make space around the rim of the tiny cockpit to fit his hand down.
‘Where is it?’ asked Tristram.
‘I tucked it down the back of my pants,’ he said, rather embarrassed.
‘You did wh… what did you do that for?’
‘Dunno. It seemed like the best place to put it.’
‘Sure, if you want to blast yourself a new one,’ said Tristram. ‘Oh, hang on, mind yourself.’
He swerved the bike to avoid a low hanging branch and deftly flicked it into another long, sliding turn.
‘All right, so it was a bad idea,’ said
Dreamweavers: Awakening Page 44