Knightfall - Book 1 of The Chronicle of Benjamin Knight

by Robert Jackson-Lawrence

  Chapter 5

  I

  By midday, the small group of survivors had reached the mainland and were making their way slowly south west across the rich and fertile farmland. Joe had taken Ben from Carl’s shoulder, giving him a chance to rest, while Catrina, almost comatose in her blank and unresponsive state, was carried tenderly by her brother as they continued on their journey.

  It was on Peter’s advice that they travelled southwest, away from the Great Road, but still in the general direction of the Southern Baronies. They were intending to turn south again later, when the risk of being discovered was no greater than the risk of the invading armies reaching the Southern Baronies before them.

  As they neared the first farmhouse, dry mouths and rumbling stomachs reminded most of them that they had not eaten for almost two days. It had only been sheer terror and periodic surges of adrenaline that had allowed them to continue this far.

  As the rest of them secluded themselves within the high grasses that made up the morata crop, Peter buttoned up his militia jacket and, trying to make himself look presentable, approached the farmhouse to attempt to secure them some supplies. A large, greying elderly woman opened the door on his third knock.

  “Good day to you, ma’am,” Peter said, overemphasising his accent to convince the lady that he was a local. If news of the impending war and the escape of the prisoners had already spread this far, suspicion could be their undoing.

  “What do you want, now?” she asked, snapping at him.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he began, but the woman only turned away from him, returning into the house. Taking a moment to look back and make sure that everything looked all right, he followed her in.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry to intrude,” he shouted after her as he followed her through the shabby stone structure to the kitchen, “but I have some pressing business. I ask only that you could spare me some food and water for my men?”

  “You already took all we could spare,” she informed him. “You promised us enough to live on.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Peter replied.

  “It's only been three weeks since your men took most of our harvest, taking our wagon too. If you take what we have left, my husband and I shan’t survive.”

  She directed his attention to the old man snoring loudly by the fire, an equally haggard-looking skeet asleep at his feet.

  “Please, start from the beginning,” Peter asked. “Who took your food?”

  “The soldiers,” she said, looking at him as though the answer was obvious. As she continued to speak, she returned to stirring the large pot of food that she was preparing on the stove. The smell was making Peter’s mouth water.

  “Three weeks ago now,” she continued. “Told us that all of our produce and cattle was now the property of the Regent, to supply the soldiers during the war. It was the first we’d heard of it, but, you know, Jack and I don’t get into town much anymore.”

  The skeet nuzzled at its master’s feet, much to the annoyance of its master, who kicked it away, his sleeping voice telling it to “feck off” as he did so. The skeet shuffled sleepily across the floor and collapsed nearer to the fire.

  “And this was three weeks ago, was it?” Peter asked as he watched the small interaction between man and beast. Three weeks before, the Regent, his Regent, was very much alive, and as far as Peter knew, no one was even thinking about war. It seemed that the plot was far more widespread than he had first thought.

  “Yes, my two sons went with them,” the old lady said. “They were going to teach those southerners a lesson, they said, show them who’s boss. Jack and I agreed to let them go, but you see, without my boys here to harvest the morata, we’ll need all that we’ve got left to keep us going until they get back.”

  “I see, Mrs. . . .?” Peter asked.

  “Joan, please,” she replied as she collected two plates from the wooden shelving to the right of the back door.

  “Joan,” he continued, “I’m here on a separate business entirely. My officers and I, well, we’re, chasing some particularly dangerous criminals. They escaped, and we’re tracking them to bring them to justice. If you could just spare some water, bread, perhaps a little cheese, just to keep us going until we bring these dangerous men in.”

  Joan seemed to ponder this for a while as she served up the meal that she had prepared, a mixture of unidentifiable meat and vegetables, which she ladled out onto the plates. “How many people with you?” she asked eventually.

  “Six,” he lied. Around six was the usual number; any more may have made her suspicious.

  After a lot of consideration, she bundled three freshly baked loaves and a small amount of cheese into a sack, which she begrudgingly handed to him. “There’s a bucket beside the pump outside,” she told him. “We use it for the pigs, but I can offer you no more.”

  “You are very kind, Joan. I can’t thank you enough,” Peter said, accepting the sack and looking down towards the meal that she had prepared.

  “Well, as you can see it's meal time,” she said, implying that it was time for him to leave. Peter took the hint. Bidding her a good day, he turned and left by the front door, smiling to himself as he heard the mumblings of “feck off, woman, can’t you see I’m sleeping” from behind him.

  The food was distributed equally among the travellers, though Catrina refused anything and Ben was still unable to eat. Even though Ben’s and Catrina’s states were due to different causes, their appearances were frighteningly similar, expressionless and unresponsive. The only difference was that while Ben’s eyes remained firmly closed, Catrina’s were held wide open, staring at a fixed point somewhere ahead of her, tortured and tormented. While sips of water could be given to Ben while he was propped up, Catrina held her mouth firmly closed, refusing all help from any source. Matthew sat with her, comforting her as best he could.

  Peter returned to refill the bucket, carefully avoiding any of the windows in the farmhouse, not wishing to be observed. He doubted that he could explain his presence a second time, but as far as he could tell, he wasn't spotted.

  After everyone felt as rested as they could, considering the circumstances, they continued on their way. They slowly turned south as the day went on, trying to run parallel to the Great Road, but far enough away from it to avoid detection. As night fell, they secluded themselves in a barn on the edge of a wheat field and bunked down in the hay to sleep. For most of them, sleep came slowly.

  Overruling Carl’s insistence, Matthew took first watch, focussing upon the incessant drumming of rain on the roof of the barn that began a little before midnight. Though it was warmer than when he had travelled north on the Road Trains, it was still far from comfortable, and Matthew found himself nesting in a mound of hay as he clutched the half empty machine gun in his cold hands in front of him. It was far too dangerous to start a fire within the barn, but shelter from the rain was more important than heat. Given the ferocity with which water pounded the roof, he wondered if maybe the rainy season had started early that year.

  II

  Tell me about the laboratory.

  About the laboratory.

  The laboratory.

  For only the second time since the escape from the dungeons, Ben showed some signs of life, stirring in his sleep as the images came to him.

  Tell me about the laboratory.

  About the laboratory.

  The laboratory.

  Beneath Ben’s eyelids, his eyes darted left and then right, rapidly alternating from one side to the other as the distorted images played through his mind. He pulled his weakened arms tight against his chest as he curled into a foetal position, making himself as small as possible to protect himself from the mental assault.

  The laboratory.

  That’s right, Mr Knight. I want to know everything about it. Firstly, I want you to tell me where it is.

  “Garstang, near Garstang, in the mountains,” Ben said, his voice slow and slurred, as though
he had to think about the formation of each word in turn.

  “And that is?” Alexander asked, turning his attention towards the guard supporting Ben’s head.

  “In the Wastelands,” Ben repeated

  “Where in the Wastelands, Mr Knight?” Alexander asked. “Where do I need to go?”

  “The Wastelands, before the train, the snow...”

  “We're getting nowhere,” Alexander grunted, looking at Samuel and shaking his head. He turned his attention back to Ben, though with Ben’s eyes focussing somewhere in the distance, absolute eye contact was impossible. Alexander wanted the secret of the electricity so badly that it was starting to hurt. “Could you show us the exact location on a map, Mr Knight?” he asked.

  “Garstang, in the mountains,” Ben said, his voice slightly more slurred than the last time he spoke.

  “Who built the laboratory?” Alexander prompted. “Was it someone in the Baronies?”

  “No. Excelsior. It was Excelsior,” Ben informed him.

  Alexander looked confused. “And they are?” he asked worryingly. His first thought was that there was a new faction within the Southern Baronies, or possibly someone in the Wastelands gathering resources together in an attempt to civilise the area. His worst fear was that the barely known civilisations of the east were moving against them.

  “Excelsior Technologies,” Ben continued. “Ezekiel Mustaine. Klaus. Gravity.”

  Ben said nothing more. Neither of them had the slightest idea as to who or what he was talking about, but technologies meant something to Alexander, something he wanted all to himself.

  Grabbing Ben by the neck of his stained T-shirt, Alexander pulled him forwards and spoke directly into his face. Ben only drooled and gave no indication that he was even listening.

  “Just tell me who you really are and how you ended up here!” he hissed.

  Ben didn’t reply, but the drool on his chin turned into a steady trickle of vomit that ran down the inside of Alexander’s hand. He pushed Ben back against the chair in disgust and hurriedly wiped his hand.

  Ben mumbled, “Benjamin Adrian Knight,” but Alexander paid him no more attention. He was still attempting to get his hand clean.

  “We could mount an assault, sir,” the second soldier suggested. “Take the laboratory by force.” Alexander was in no mood to tolerate stupidity.

  Throwing his arms into the air, he shouted, “We don’t know where it is, what kind of forces they have. We still don’t know who they are. You’ll be suggesting I postpone the war with the Southern Baronies next and send the armies into the mountains, losing any credibility I have with those stupid peasants.”

  The soldier looked down towards his feet.

  “No, we need to know more about it first, exactly where it is, how to get in and learn its secrets. Just get out, leave us,” Alexander ordered with a wave of his hand.

  As the guards left, Ben mumbled “mountain,” ''door,” and “pager.” His words were barely audible or intelligible, but Alexander was able to pick up on it.

  He removed the pager from his pocket and turned it over again in his hands, pressing the small button that activated the number display. He wondered if the numbers 6479 were maybe a secret password, to be spoken at the door, or a reference to its position on a map. Without more information, he didn’t want to send a team against an unknown enemy. It wasn’t that he felt any compassion for the men he commanded, most days he would have gladly killed them all himself, but he didn’t want to give any enemy an advantage and warn them that he was coming. As far as he was concerned, information was ammunition, and should be used accordingly.

  Alexander stood and pondered things for a while longer before turning and leaving the cell without comment or explanation, mumbling to himself as he turned and made his way down the corridor.

  Hmm. It’s all in the details. This calls for a different plan of action entirely.

  Ben fought weakly with the coat that Joe had covered him with, pulling at it as he stretched and retracted his legs, fighting an unseen force. The sudden activity pulled Matthew from his doze, the gun gripped tightly in his hands as the shuffling and the whimpering called his senses into action.

  Kicking off the small mountain of hay that he had managed to bury himself in, he quickly scanned the insides of the barn. The rain was still drumming on the roof, making the location of the sounds more difficult to determine, but Matthew’s gaze was soon drawn to Ben’s slowly flailing body. As he cautiously and quietly approached him, Ben had already started to slow down his actions and drift back into the comatose sleep that had claimed him for the last day or more.

  Matthew pulled the coat away from Ben’s face to ensure that there was nothing more sinister happening. He’d seen the use of Droca weed before, and knew it wasn’t uncommon for the victim to choke on his own vomit as his body eventually gave up. He could see that Ben was still breathing, shallow to begin with but slowly getting deeper. He decided to sit with him until Carl took over the guard duty sometime nearer dawn.

  It was late the following day that they found the empty, abandoned farmhouse. Peter approached as he had done on the previous day, knocking politely on the door in a ruse to acquire them some more food. After finding the building deserted, he went against all of his training and broke in.

  The large window at the rear of the building was easy to lift out, and he was confident that he could replace it if he had to, and make it look reasonably normal and untouched. He climbed onto the metal sink unit beneath the window, being careful not to knock over any of the crockery that was precariously balanced along its length. After a preliminary check to ensure that the building was truly empty, he opened the back door and called for the rest of the group to follow him in.

  Carl had resumed his role of carrying Ben on his shoulder, taking him across the threshold and placing him carefully on one of the two beds in the back room. So far, he had shown no more signs of life since the brief episode the previous night, but no one would have ever considered leaving him behind. He was one of them now, one of the few survivors from the Road Trains, and it was a very exclusive club that couldn’t face a drop in its members.

  Catrina had started walking by herself, but she still refused to speak or interact with any member of the group, even Matthew. She took direction, accepting food when it was offered and following the group from behind as they made their way south, but her mind was still elsewhere.

  Matthew and Peter began rummaging through the cupboards and shelves in the kitchen, looking for anything that would hold back the gnawing hunger that was consuming all of them. Unfortunately, it looked as though whoever lived in the house had taken all the food with them.

  “Hey, you should see it back there,” Carl commented as he returned from the bedroom. “The room's almost entirely empty.”

  “Same here,” Matthew said as he stood, closing the last of the cupboard doors.

  “What do you think? They take everything with them wherever they go?” Carl asked.

  “Or they’re not planning on coming back any time soon,” Peter cut in. “Maybe it’s not only the people in the city who are going to war.”

  “Well, whatever the reason,” Matthew said, “it’ll be dark soon and this is the best-looking shelter we’ve seen all day. If someone could start a fire, I thought I saw some chickens or something over the back as we came in.”

  Matthew and Peter left the house to try to catch some food, Arian following close behind to draw some water from the well beside the house. There were still snippets of sunlight colouring the landscape, but the land was strange and unfamiliar and she didn’t want to get caught outside by herself after dark. She drew as much water as she thought she could easily carry and returned hastily to the house.

  It wasn’t long before the two men returned with five plump chickens, holding them by their feet, the chicken’s heads swaying about their cleanly broken necks. A little after nightfall, the house warmed by the roaring fire in the living roo
m and the heat from the stove, there was food and water enough for everyone. However, there was none of the usual fun and frivolity that was shared by the people of the Road Trains, none of the laughter that had been so present as they had sat around campfires only a week or so before.

  At Arian’s objection to leaving the house for a second time, it was Carl who collected the second bucket of water, which they used to clean themselves up. Though they had been travelling with the Road Trains for as long as most of them could remember, few of them were actually used to roughing it, the trailers carrying all of the comforts of home.

  Most of them would have admitted to enjoying time out in the countryside, fending for themselves, catching their own food, and finding their own water, but when it became a necessity, it was a different story. Catching your own meal lost any of its appeal when there wasn’t the comfort of a friendly farmhouse just over the next hill, or a delicious home cooked meal only a short ride home. With the farmland quickly giving way to The Wastelands in only a few days travel to the south, their situation could only get worse.

  Most of them spent the night in the living room, huddling together after the fire went out, necessity overriding any sense of modesty. Peter did his share of guard duty, followed by Mike some time after midnight. It was an hour or so before dawn when the noises from the bedroom stirred him, much in the same way as they had Matthew the night before.

  Mike entered the room cautiously, weapon ready. For a moment, he didn’t recognise the restless blanket-covered figure for what it was.

  Ben was dreaming of the interrogation again, attempting in his sleep to fight off his attackers with arms that were so weak and useless at the time. Matthew had told the group what had happened to him, and what the dangers were. Mike didn’t know if the new and unexpected movement was a good or bad sign, so he decided to wake Matthew just to be sure.

  By the time Matthew entered the room, Ben’s words were almost intelligible, something about a laboratory, mountains, and a door. Matthew held him down, securing his arms as they thrashed beneath the blankets, more a danger to himself than any unseen force. For the briefest of moments, Ben’s eyes opened and connected with Matthew's, a sense of awareness in an otherwise absent face, and then he was sleeping again, unable to be roused, and alone in his nightmares. For the second night in a row, Matthew sat with him until the sun illuminated the single bedroom window with its golden glow, the start of a new day.

  Most of the rest of the group were woken by the sound of the cockerel that morning, the same cockerel that later became breakfast as they distributed the few items of clothing that they could find. The clothes that had been left behind were obviously the ones not deemed good enough to take with them, but they were still better than the century-old garments recovered from the caves below Island City.

  It was midway through breakfast that Ben surprised them all and staggered from the bedroom to the kitchen, hand gripped tightly to the door frame to help support his weakened legs. He looked as bad, if not worse, than when Matthew had first found him. Mouth dry, eyes sunken, and dark with bruises, he looked as near to death as he could be. Carl helped him to a quickly vacated chair near to the fire, offering him some water that Ben sipped slowly.

  “Ben, lad,” Carl said gently, “you’ve had us so worried these past few days. How you doing now, how are you feeling?”

  Ben was bombarded by questions from all around him, though they were all asking generally the same thing. It was Carl he looked at as he replied.

  “Like there’s someone in my head trying to kick his way out,” he managed to say, voice shallow and distant, raspy and almost unrecognisable as belonging to him. “Where are we?”

  “An empty farmhouse, south of Island City,” Matthew said as he moved to help Ben reposition the blanket that was slumped around his shoulders. “Carl and Peter here have been telling us how north and south are now at war, it’s just that the Southern Baronies don’t know about it yet. We’re trying to get there first, before everyone from Island City arrives and starts telling them in their own special way.”

  Ben only nodded, sipping at his water. “What happened?” he asked.

  Matthew started to tell Ben about the murder of the Regent and Alexander framing the people of the Road Trains to take the fall. Ben tried to nod, but he could barely keep his head up. Matthew realised that Ben was more interested in why his head felt the way it did. Politics and war could wait until later.

  “Droca weed,” Matthew told him. “There are people who take it for fun, but it has a much better use in interrogation. Whatever they wanted from you, you’re more than likely to have told them.”

  “I . . . I can’t remember anything they wanted,” Ben said. “I know that new Regent was there, Alexander, but I can’t remember anything else.”

  Ben rubbed his bruised and swollen jaw as he spoke, vaguely recalling the repeated blows to his face, but still not remembering why he took such a beating.

  “What could they have wanted from you that me, or any of the others here, couldn’t have told them?” Matthew asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It might,” Ben said, his voice noticeably more his own the more water he drank, “but I need time to think. I need more rest.”

  “We need to get moving soon,” Matthew told him. “If you’ve got something to say, then say it, but we need to get on our way as soon as we can.”

  “No, I need to rest,” was all Ben replied before he pulled himself to his feet and slowly returned to the bedroom. Matthew stood, intending to follow him, but Carl got there first, his look asking the others to stay back.

  As Carl entered, he could see Ben shivering violently as he pulled the blankets up over himself, even though the fire and stove in the other room had made the house quite warm.

  “Don’t worry,” Carl said as he sat on the bed beside him. “You’re just coming down, that’s all. Looks like they gave you a huge dose of that stuff, and your body gets kind of used to having it in your system. You’ll be right in another day or so.”

  Ben said thank you as he rolled over to face the wall, not wanting to speak, but Carl pulled him back. Ben’s face and shoulders were so hot that Carl could feel the heat radiating off them as he turned Ben over.

  “Ben,” Carl said, “I’m not sure if it’s just the fever or what, but you don’t seem to understand what’s going on. There’s an army somewhere over there and it’s intent on setting my homeland alight. We need to get there and warn them.”

  “Carl, please, I’m not stupid and neither are you,” Ben coughed as he pulled himself from Carl’s grip, sitting himself up against the back wall. “How much sooner do you think that we are going to get there? A day, two at most, and what do you think you can accomplish in that sort of time? There are things I need to tell you, tell everybody, but I need to sleep. From what you’ve told me, Alexander probably already knows, but I can help you, help everybody, I just need to sleep.”

  Ben was starting to slip away as he spoke, eyes opening and closing faster and faster until they eventually stayed closed. For Carl, Ben’s raspy breathing was a reassuring sign, a sign that Ben was still alive.

  Instead of following his instincts and dragging Ben from his bed, Carl followed his head and left the sleeping teenager where he was and returned to the dining room. The group was sitting there in silence, waiting for him.

  “What did he say?” Matthew asked as he finished the last of his breakfast.

  “Outside, just for a moment,” Carl said.

  Matthew reluctantly agreed and followed Carl out, closing the door behind them. The remainder of the group looked at them as they left, desperately wanting answers and a sense of hope that only Matthew could give. For all of their recent misfortune, Matthew was still their leader, and in their eyes, he always would be.

  “Go on,” Matthew said as he closed the door behind him. He wasn’t happy with the way things were going. The world, his world, had changed in ways he still couldn’t beli
eve, and the role of leader that he had always so eagerly embraced was becoming more and more of a burden. He was starting to feel like Ben, tired and drained, and he wanted only to sleep, sleep for an age and wake up to find it was all a dream, a nightmare he could escape from with the coming of day.

  “It’s Ben,” Carl told him. “He said some things and, well, they kind of make sense. I think I trust him, boss. I think that you should listen to him.”

  “What did he say?” Matthew asked again. “What did he tell you that’s made you think about staying here any longer than we need to?”

  Carl reeled on him. “What chance have we got of getting to Maleton before the armies do?” he said. “And even if we do get there first, what do you think we’re going to be able to do anyway? Most of Draxis' troops were way south already when we left, patrolling the borders with Oster and Phalathlan. It'll take weeks to get them into a position where they can make a difference. There's just not enough time, Matthew. You can see that as well as I can.”

  “So what? We just sit here and try to forget about it?” Matthew replied. “Maybe plant some crops and wait for it all to go away? I thought you had more guts than that.”

  Matthew turned to re-enter the house, but Carl grabbed his sleeve and spun him around, slamming him against the door. The people inside would no doubt have heard the commotion, but Carl didn’t care. He needed to make Matthew listen to him and understand.

  “Your father would have listened,” Carl said as he suppressed his rage, pinning Matthew firmly against the door. They both knew how to handle themselves, and if it came to a fight, both of them would come off badly. “Just think for a minute, won’t you. They’ve filled him full of Droca weed and nearly killed him, all because of something they couldn’t beat out of him. Something in his head. He told me it could help us, get south or defeat the armies, I don’t know, but if Alexander already knows what this secret is, you can bet he’ll use it against us. Our chances of winning this war are slim at best, and if he’s got something new that we don’t know about, our chances are pretty much gone.”

  Matthew struggled to free himself. He was the taller of the two men, and was eventually able to. They squared off against each other in the courtyard as the door opened, Joe and Peter bursting out into the early morning sunlight. Each man was silent as they stood, tensed, watching each other and waiting for one of the others to make the first move.

  “Think about it, Matthew,” Carl continued. “We need help, and this is all we’ve been offered. We just won’t get there before the armies.”

  “We’ll go faster, travel all night if we have to,” Matthew suggested. “We have to keep moving.”

  “Look at us,” Carl pointed out. “Ben’s in no shape to travel yet, and neither is Catrina. You’re not looking too hot yourself!”

  “But we’ve lost so much already,” Matthew pleaded. “I need to do something, I need to.”

  “Just listen to yourself!” Carl continued. “You need this, you need that! What about us? If we keep going like you say, half of us will be dead by the time we reach Draxis. Ben, Catrina, Arian. It’s not all about you, can’t you see that! This is bigger than you!”

  Matthew opened and closed his mouth a few times, searching for something to say. Eventually, he stormed past Carl, avoiding eye contact, and walked with his shoulders hunched towards the barn. Joe and Peter looked on, their heads moving from one man to the other as they struggled to understand what was happening. Carl only shook his head and returned to the house.

  Matthew returned a short time later, head held low as he entered the kitchen. He sat down at the kitchen table without a word, composing himself.

  “I’m sorry,” he began, looking around the room and meeting each person’s gaze in turn, “I’ve been selfish these last few days. I didn’t stop to think how this is affecting all of you. Carl tells me Ben has offered us help, a chance to make a difference to the armies marching towards our homeland. I think we need to listen to him. He needs to rest, but perhaps tomorrow, he might be able to tell us more.

  “We need to face facts. The chances of us reaching Draxis before the Regent’s armies are almost non-existent. We need to be doing something, here and now, that will make a difference at home.”

  Matthew sat back in the chair, giving everyone a minute to think over what he had said. “If anyone has anything to say, please say it now,” he finished.

  “What’s this help Ben offered?” Mike asked. It was the question on everyone’s lips, but he was apparently the only one with the guts to ask.

  “He didn’t say,” Matthew told them. “He’s still not too good, and it may all be nothing. There’s a lot of Droca weed still going round his system. He could just be hallucinating, I don’t know. But Carl here says he trusts him, and that’s good enough for me.”

  The two men looked at each other and both realised that their long friendship was still as strong as it always was. It sometimes took a crisis to open your eyes to the truth.

  “So what do we do?” Mike continued. “Just sit here waiting for Ben to tell us how to sort this? What if it all comes to nothing? Are we still going to be sitting here when the home cities are burning?”

  “There's so much more to this than we know at the moment,” Matthew said. “Pete has already told us that members of the Regent’s Guard were here three weeks ago, taking supplies and conscripts for the war. Alexander has had this planned all along, and we're just trying to guess what his next move might be.” Matthew’s voice was getting louder as he spoke, searching for the answers that would instil trust in his followers. “There’s no point all of us going south like this if we have a chance, even a slight one, of getting hold of something that can give us an edge, a chance of stopping these armies before it’s too late.”

  The people only looked at him, unsure what to say or do next. They had followed him for years, and he had always led them to safety and prosperity. However, their hearts were telling them to go south, to warn their families and friends about the impending disaster that was about to befall them. For each of them, it was the first time since they had worked with the Road Trains that they truly doubted him.

  “What’s your plan, boss?” Carl asked. He squeezed Matthew’s shoulder as he said it, reaffirming the confidence that he held for him, hoping that his show of faith would inspire the rest of the group to feel the same.

  After taking a deep breath, Matthew outlined the finer points of his plan.

  “Okay, first things first,” he began. “Mike’s right; we need to warn Draxis what’s coming. Whoever goes, they’ll be on their own, so I’ll ask for volunteers.”

  “Hey, my idea, so my responsibility, right?” Mike asked, but Matthew shook his head.

  “No, I want you with me,” he told him. “Joe and Carl too. You’re too well known by the city militia and the people. If you run into a patrol or something, it’s all over.”

  “I could do it,” someone said from the back of the small group. Matthew looked up from the table, not instantly recognising the voice.

  “Go on, Matthew, you can trust me,” the voice said. “I'm faster than most of these anyway.” Stan pushed his way to the front, pleading with Matthew to let him go, but Matthew only stared at him, a thoughtful look on his face.

  Stan was only fifteen, but Matthew had to agree that Stan was the fastest of the group and that his father, Andrew, had taught him everything about hunting and survival. The thought of sending a boy to what could feasibly be his death still knotted Matthew's stomach.

  The boy had already lost so much this trip. His mother and father had been killed resisting the palace guard in the first assault, and then Andrea, his sister, was taken from his side to suffer the same fate as the other children that had travelled with them. Matthew considered his options and decided it was best if he took the proposal seriously.

  “As I said,” he told him, “you’ll be on your own for the entire journey. Think you can handle that?”

  “S
ure, I guess,” Stan reassured him.

  “And if you were captured, they’d almost certainly kill you, you know that?” Matthew continued.

  “I know, but Matthew, please, let me do something, I need to help. I watched, saw my dad when they shot him. My mom too.” Stan was close to tears as he spoke, pleading. “I can travel faster than all of us together, move mostly at night. Dad showed me how to hunt. Matthew, please, I know I can do it.”

  Matthew could see so much of himself in the boy that it was hard to let him go, but he knew that Stan was right, and besides, if they didn't let him go, he would probably go anyway. He had grown up so much in last the last few days, so much stronger than many other members of the small group.

  Eventually, Matthew nodded. “All right,” he said. “Unless anyone has any objections, you’ll leave immediately. The sooner you get going, the sooner Draxis will be able to mount some kind of defence.”

  The second stage of the plan was for Tom to take a trip east and gather information on the enemy. He was tall and wiry, in his late teens. This had been his first trip with the Trains, learning from the drivers in the hope that one day he could drive a train on his own, so no one from Island City should recognise his face.

  After some consideration, Matthew decided that Tom would then go south also, to give the Baronies a firsthand description of what they were up against.

  “Whatever you say, Matthew, but I thought you wanted Stan to go alone?” Tom said, shrugging his shoulders dismissively.

  Stan looked up from the bag that he was packing, a hurt look on his face. “Please, Matthew,” he said. “I don’t need to be looked after like a kid. I thought you trusted me.”

  “I do,” Matthew insisted. “Tom will leave tomorrow, after he’s reported back here on what he’s seen. I want to leave a decent gap between you, so there’s no chance of you meeting up or getting caught together. I’ll be honest with you, there’s a fair chance one of you’ll be captured, perhaps tortured and killed before the end of this. I’m just hoping that between the two of you, we can get some word home, but if either of you want to back out, I’ll understand. Just tell me now and I’ll say no more about it.”

  The two of them looked at each other for a moment, thinking over Matthew’s words and the responsibility that he was putting on them. After a moment, they both smiled at each other.

  “No way, I’m in, all the way,” Stan said, the smile on his face growing broader by the second.

  “If the kid’s going, there’s no way I can back out now, is there,” Tom replied.

  Matthew smiled. He seemed to be winning back the confidence of his people, but the hardest, and possibly most dangerous part of his plan was to be delivered last.

  “How’s your uniform looking, Pete?” Matthew asked. Peter snapped his head around, surprised at his name being spoken. He still didn’t see himself as one of them and wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to be.

  “Bit shabby, but not too bad,” Peter replied. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Matthew told him. “Some misinformation, some sabotage, I’ll leave it up to you. How many people could know you were involved in our escape?”

  “A few, maybe,” Peter said. “I’m not sure. All the guards who saw us in the dungeons are dead, but there’s a chance maybe someone saw us in the streets that night, put two and two together. Of course, there’s them who’ll be asking where I’ve been for the last few days. They might suspect something.”

  “But on the whole, do you think you could get back in with the armies and be accepted?” Matthew asked. “I mean, you don’t think they’ll have orders to shoot you on sight or anything?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Peter mused. “Besides, I can blend in with the general public, tag along at the front or back or something. Hey, not everyone in the city knows me.”

  “That’s not quite what I had in mind,” Matthew continued. “You'll need the uniform to get closer to anything vital, sensitive, that most other people won’t be able to get near to. I want you to slow them down, weaken them, do anything you can to delay their attack and to give us a chance to be able to defend ourselves.”

  “I don’t know what you think of me,” Peter said, “but from what you’re saying, I . . . look, I’m not on your side in this, but I’m not on theirs either. I won’t kill my own people, my friends, just to make it easier for the Baronies to kill the rest of them. I went against the new Regent because I know he’s wrong, quite possibly mad, but that doesn’t mean I’ve gone against my people. I want to stop this war, get back home, and make things like they were before, that’s it. Anything else, and it’s up to you. I want no part in it.”

  The room was silent as Matthew replied, not entirely sure what he was going to say. Peter had saved them all from certain death at the gallows in Island City, but they hadn’t really thought about his role in the war. Carl, Mike, Matthew, and the rest of them were ready to fight and to die to defend their homeland, but they hadn’t thought for a moment that men like Peter were just who they were about to protect their homeland from.

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” Matthew told him. “It means that we’re fighting on the same side. I don’t want this war any more than you do, and I’m going do everything I can to stop it. That’s why I want to hear what Ben has to say, see what he has to offer.

  “I don’t want to fight, but if they force me, I’ll fight with everything I have. If you have to do the same for your side, I think I speak for all of us here when I say that we’ll understand. We each have to do what we think is right in this, Pete. If you can speak to the people in the armies, show them the truth and get them to turn around, we’ll all be better off.”

  “Just as long as you realise, I’m no traitor,” Peter reminded him. “Not to my friends, not to my people, not to anyone.”

  “Good, I wouldn’t want you any other way,” Matthew continued. “If you can count us amongst your friends, that’s good enough for me. Conrad and Simon here will go with you, Donald too, but I want you to know that you’re in charge.”

  Matthew offered his hand, but Peter only smiled. He still wasn’t entirely sure what was wanted of him and whether he was comfortable with it. After a moment’s thought, he decided that he would go along with it for as long as his conscience would allow.

  “All right, Matthew,” he said. “I’m in, for now. When do we leave?”

  “Tomorrow, maybe the day after,” Matthew replied. “After we hear what Ben has to say. Depending on what he has to tell us, maybe it won’t be necessary, maybe we can all stay together, but I doubt it.”

  “I’m going with them,” Catrina said as she approached the table. These were the first words that she had spoken since their escape and the room looked around as one in surprise as she entered the centre of the group.

  “I’m going with them tomorrow when they leave,” she continued, “and there’s no way you’re going to tell me otherwise, Matthew.”

  Everyone could see that Catrina had changed, that they all had, but perhaps she the most. She had spent the time since arriving on the mainland in a near comatose state, not eating or drinking, only sitting silently, arms curled around her legs as she gently rocked back and forth on the floor.

  “You heard him, Matthew,” she said. “He won’t do what’s needed. Whoever goes into the enemy camp needs to be able to do whatever is necessary to stop the armies before they get to our home, and that man just isn’t him.”

  “Catrina, you can’t go,” Matthew pleaded. “Please, look at yourself. You’re not well, you don’t know what you’re saying. Conrad, Simon, they’ll be doing all the things Peter can’t, we only need him to get them close.”

  “I’m going, Matthew,” she said defiantly. “Either I go now, on my own, or you let me go with Peter. It’s up to you.”

  Catrina turned and left the room, muttering to herself over and over, they have to pay, they have to pay. She entered the door to the second bedroom and
slammed it closed.

  Matthew just sat there, the memories of the dungeon playing over and over in his mind. Edward's death. Catrina killing the guard in cold blood. The explosion of the handgun in the confined space, and then the incessant clicking as she continued to pull the trigger, over and over, only stopping when the gun was forcibly removed from her hand. He saw the scene from outside of his own body, witnessing the look on his own face as well as his sister's, the momentary look of pleasure that preceded the look of terror and then the silence that seemed to last forever.

  He knew that she was broken, but then so was he. He had lost his nephews, lost his friends. He hadn't really slept in three days and he didn't know how much longer he could hold it all together.

  Matthew stood and moved to the chair beside the fire in the living room, warming his hands before he sat down. If he had finished what he was saying, he didn’t comment, but he looked so tired that it was hard to believe that he was thinking straight at all.

  His eyes were dark and sunken, only half open as he sat back against the chair, looking as though he might fall asleep at any second. When his eyes closed, he was able only to steal a moment’s peace before the sight of his sister committing cold-blooded murder pulled him from his sleep once more. Arian sat beside him, pulling him close, stroking his face as he stirred once more.

  After the discussions were over, Carl took Stan aside, gave him a pistol, and advised him about how best to avoid capture. Stan stood and listened, though he thought he probably knew more about hunting and survival than Carl did anyway. Andrew had been an excellent woodsman and hunter, often providing large meals for the Road Trains members, and had taught his son everything he knew. Carl was out of practice and rusty.

  Matthew was left to himself while the rest of the group tried to make themselves busy, collecting together whatever food they could find. They would be in the forest soon, hunting for survival, and they needed to take anything with them that could help. Draxis was still so very far away.

  III

  At around lunchtime, Matthew gave up on trying to sleep and left the warmth and comfort of the room to sit on the small porch at the back of the building. Carl was already there, watching the dark clouds on the horizon as they moved closer and emptied their contents onto the land below

  “Did he get going?” Matthew asked as he sat down beside his friend, clearing away the dirt and dust before he did so.

  “Who, Stan?” Carl asked. “He left just after you finished. I gave him all the usual, you know, travelling at night as much as he can, staying hidden near the armies, but I think he’ll do okay. He’s a tough kid, that one.”

  “I hope you're right,” Matthew said.

  “And Tom left too,” Carl continued. “He couldn’t stand the tension any longer, and he said he wanted to get a good view in the daylight. With the way the weather’s going, looks like he was probably right.”

  “I guess so,” Matthew replied.

  “How are you holding up, Matthew?” Carl asked.

  “Me, I’m fine, just, fine,” Matthew lied.

  Carl threw away the small piece of stone that he had been turning over in his hands and turned to face Matthew. “Really?” he asked.

  Carl tried to offer a sympathetic look, but the days’ old stubble all over his face and head, and the purple scar running down his cheek made him look more like a psychopath than a caring and compassionate individual.

  “Really, I’m doing just fine,” Matthew insisted.

  “Then if that’s all you came here to say, I might as well go help in catching us some dinner,” Carl said as he stood. He had taken two steps across the yard before Matthew called him back.

  “No, wait, Carl,” he called after him. “Look, please, just sit for a minute, won’t you?”

  Carl did as he was asked, but said nothing more. Matthew would tell him what he wanted to tell him when he was good and ready, and no amount of badgering on Carl’s part would change that. It could only make matters worse.

  “Can I trust you, Carl, I mean, really trust you?” Matthew asked, fixing his gaze on the floor, not able to look him in the eye as he accused his lifelong friend of treason.

  “With your life,” Carl told him. “You should know that by now. I bounced you on my knee when you were no bigger than a skeever.”

  “I did, I mean, I do,” Matthew continued. “But, lately, I don't know. I’ve been thinking about this entire trip, the escape, what they did to Ben. I can’t seem to get it out of my head. I mean, it just seems a little too convenient, doesn’t it? How many guards did you see in the dungeons? Six, seven, maybe?”

  “Only six, I think,” Carl said, running through the encounters in his mind.

  “It was just too easy for us to get out.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Carl said.

  “No, it was,” Matthew insisted. “It was just too easy. Think about it. What would you have said your chances of getting into the dungeons and breaking us out were? Slim at best, wouldn’t you say? But still, you get in, meet very little resistance, and then we all get out easily. I don’t think those soldiers even followed us past the first bend in those tunnels.”

  Carl scratched his scar as he spoke. “Maybe you’re right,” he considered. “I don’t know, but look at it from another way. Maybe the Regent needed the guards for something else, something to do with the war maybe.”

  “A war he’s been planning for a while, from what we’ve seen,” Matthew reminded him.

  “Well, yes, but maybe six guards were all he could spare, I mean, maybe we were just lucky.”

  Matthew stood and started pacing as he appeared to think about what Carl had said, hands stuffed tightly into his pockets.

  “No, something’s just not right about this whole setup, Carl,” he said.

  “I don’t know, maybe,” Carl replied. “Hey, why don’t you come sit back down.”

  Matthew did before he said anything more, though he still looked uncomfortable.

  “How well do you trust this sergeant, Peter?” Matthew asked.

  “I’m not sure, I haven’t really thought about it,” Carl said honestly.

  “Well, start thinking,” Matthew replied. “You’re usually a good judge of character, Carl. I can respect that, but it’s just that he seemed to be in exactly the right place at the right time, don’t you think?”

  “It wasn’t really like that, Matthew,” Carl told him. “I went to him, threatened him. He had plenty of opportunity to turn me in, but he didn’t. I, yes, I think I trust him, at least as far as not turning us in to the Regent. You heard what he said in there; he’s not on our side or theirs, and I reckon what he said is true. He just wants to get back home and make things the way they were.”

  “But tomorrow,” Matthew continued, “he’s going into the enemy camp and I’m the one who told him to do it. Now Catrina’s going too, and there’s nothing I can do about it. What’s happening, Carl, why can’t I get it together anymore?”

  “Look at yourself,” Carl said soothingly. “You’re worn out. These past few days have taken far more out of you than they have the rest of us. How many nights has it been since you last got a good night’s sleep, eh? Even before we got to Island City, you were up half the night, planning, arranging. Like Ben said, rest is what’s needed, for him and for you.”

  “I try,” Matthew insisted. “I lie down and close my eyes, but I keep seeing the cell, our escape, and Catrina pulling that trigger. Her face, Carl, I keep seeing her face.”

  At any other time, an outward show of affection between the two men would have been almost unacceptable, but extraordinary times call for extraordinary actions. Carl put his arm around his friend and pulled him close, almost squeezing the air out of him as Matthew struggled with the thoughts and emotions running through his mind.

  “She wasn’t herself back there,” Carl began. “She didn’t know what she was doing. Edward, Daniel, Adam; she’d lost them all and she just wasn’t thinking stra
ight. It’s not your fault, Matthew. It’s not.”

  “But she’s leaving tomorrow,” Matthew pleaded. “Probably right into a trap, and there’s nothing I can do to stop her going.”

  Carl let go of his friend and instead turned to face him. “I don’t think it’s like that,” he said. “If they wanted to kill us, they could’ve done it back there, any time they wanted. Maybe you’re right, maybe they did let us go, but if they did, it’s because they want us out here, not locked up or dead with the advancing armies.

  “I trust Peter, I trust him not to turn her in. I even trust him to protect her, get her away from there if he had to, like he did with all of us. I think he’s a good man, Matthew, just trying to do what’s right when everyone else is wrong, and I think we can trust him to keep doing so.”

  “You’re a good judge of character, Carl,” Matthew said. “I only hope you’re right, for all our sakes.”

  “Me too, Matthew,” Carl agreed. “Me too.”

  They sat in silent consideration for a moment before Matthew continued. “I’ve still got this feeling, though,” he said. “I think someone’s working for the other side, and if it’s not Peter, I don't know who it is.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by Arian bursting through the door, nearly falling over them as she called out Matthew’s name. “Oh, there you are,” she said. “Come quick, it’s Ben, quickly.”

  As the two men entered the kitchen, they could hear the shouts and screams coming from the bedroom where Ben was sleeping. They helped Joe and Mike hold Ben down as he convulsed on the bed, eyes open but darting around in random directions, looking but not focussing on anything. Each man took a limb, pressing it into the bed as Ben rocked beneath them, all the time screaming at the top of his lungs sounds that may once have been words, but by the time they reached his mouth, they were indecipherable.

  Matthew was shouting, “Watch he doesn’t bite his tongue!” as the convulsions stopped as quickly as they had started, Ben’s body going limp and lifeless beneath their hands.

  In an instant, Matthew was at Ben’s head, checking that he was still breathing and for the presence of a pulse. He was surprised to find both, however weak, given Ben’s appearance. He could have easily passed for a corpse.

  “What’s going on, Matthew? I thought he was getting better.” Carl asked, breathing heavily from the sudden exertion, a concerned look on his face.

  “Me too,” Matthew replied.

  Matthew put a hand to Ben’s forehead, wiping away the sweat that was almost pouring out of him. “He’s burning up here. You can feel the heat coming off him,” Matthew said. “I don’t know if that’s the Droca weed or not, but he’s drying up fast. Arian, can you get me some water, and a cloth or something, for his head.”

  Arian turned and left, followed closely by Joe and Mike, their faces drained.

  “Why did they do this to him, Matthew?” Carl asked. “What did he do to deserve this?”

  “I’m not sure, yet,” Matthew said as he soaked the cloth that Arian had gave him and pressed the cold water onto Ben’s head. “But we’re going to find out. I think this is all part of it, why they let us go, and for reasons I can’t work out, Ben’s at the heart of it all. Whatever it is that’s in Ben’s head, what he wants to tell us, it’s more important than having the rest of us executed.”

  “Now that would be something worth hearing,” Carl replied.

  “You’re telling me.”

  “So, what,” Carl asked as he was about to leave. “You think we’re being followed?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me.” Matthew told him. “I think that whatever it is, Ben wouldn’t tell them, even with the Droca weed, so I guess, yes, they’ll have to send people after us to find out what it is they want to know.”

  “So, it might be a good idea if someone was to go back aways,” Carl suggested. “See if there’s anything to be seen?”

  “No, Carl, it’s too dangerous,” Matthew told him. “Besides, I need you here. You’re the only one I trust. I need you by my side.”

  “And we need to know what’s going on too,” Carl reminded him. “They won’t be looking for me; it’s you guys they’ll have the descriptions of. Besides,” Carl rubbed at his stubble, “I’m not looking like myself lately. You’ll still be here in the morning, and I’ll be back well before dawn.”

  Carl turned again to leave, but felt the need to say just one more thing before he left. “Just promise me,” he said, “if I don’t get back, you won’t hang around. Get whatever you can from Ben and use it to help us stop this war. Promise me.”

  Matthew said nothing, but Carl didn’t really need to hear it. He wished Matthew a good day and left the room, collected a rifle from the kitchen, and left the small farmhouse behind him.

  Their trail was nearly a day old now, but it was still easy enough to find.

  IV

  The scout had warned them of his approach and they had acted accordingly, secluding themselves in the environment, masters of their art.

  They watched him as he passed. A tall man, big and powerful-looking. He could have been a local, out hunting with the rifle that he was carrying, but the scar on his cheek made him look anything but friendly.

  No, it was more likely that he was one of them, not one of those they were warned about, but with them all the same, sneaking around, trying to make sure that they weren’t being followed.

  The fool.

  They were ghosts, so well concealed that he couldn’t see any other members of his team, though he knew exactly where they were.

  The fool.

  He could take him now, silently, efficiently, take his life and dispose of the body where no one would ever find it. But that might arouse suspicion, send more like him, back the way they came. They had orders not to engage until they reached their objective, not to make their presence known. He could cope with that. There’d be plenty of time later to punish them, make them pay.

  But he was so close, he could smell him, almost touch him, pull him down and take his life. Maybe on his return, if he spotted them, forced a confrontation. It wouldn’t be his fault. He’d have to take him out, stop the others from discovering their presence.

  Maybe, on his way back.

  The fool. Oh, how he’d enjoy killing him.

  V

  Carl scoured back and forth as he traced their path back the way they had came, though he was trying not to make it look too obvious. The problem was that they had followed a well-trodden path, used by most of the farmers and hunters in the area, as well as every creature in a ten-mile radius. He could still pick out some of their tracks every now and again, but determining if they were being followed was nearly impossible.

  Maybe if Stan had been with him, but it was too late for that now.

  He spotted the berries, and more importantly the leaves, just as the sun was setting. He recognised them immediately. His mother had used them on so many occasions when he and his brother were young. Panca berries, or something like that, he wasn’t entirely sure what his mother used to call them, but he remembered what they were for and how effective they were.

  He slung the rifle over his shoulder and gathered as many of the leaves and berries and he could carry, stuffing them into his pockets, ignoring the few that burst and stained the fabric as well as his legs.

  As the sun slipped finally over the horizon, replacing the red glow with only dim light reflected from the moon, he looked down again at the tracks around his feet. He’d be lucky if he were able to find his way home in this light, let alone find and track anyone who could be following them.

  Besides, he’d come a fair distance and seen nothing. If they were being followed, they were hanging so far back they’d be able to lose them in the Wastelands, easy.

  He had a new purpose for the moment; he needed to get the leaves and berries back to Ben where they could do some good.

  With that thought in his mind, he turned back the way he had came, back towards the
farmhouse, back along the long track that he had followed all afternoon. If they were being followed, then he had seen no evidence of it, nothing conclusive anyway, it was probably nothing to worry about.

  Carl reached the farmhouse when the slim moon was high in the sky, only dimly lighting his route through the darkness. The clouds that he had sat watching in the afternoon had reached him a little after sunset so he was happy to get into the dry. It looked as though the rainy season was finally upon them, and would probably stay with them for a month or more.

  He could live with that. If they were being followed, the constant, heavy beating rain could only hide their tracks, making it more difficult for their pursuers to find them. That could only be a good thing.

  Joe was on guard duty as he entered through the front door, pointing a gun in his face as soon as Carl was past the threshold.

  “Where you been?” Joe asked. “Matthew refused to tell us.”

  “Just out for a walk,” Carl told him. “After all that’s been going on, I needed to get out for a while, clear my head.”

  “Tell me about it,” Joe said. “This morning, you could have cut the air in here with a knife.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  Carl tried to pass him as Joe grasped his arm and held him fast. “Really Carl, where you been?” he asked quietly. “We were starting to get worried, after what Tom had to tell us.”

  “Just walking, Joe,” Carl reassured him. “Like I said. I’m a big boy now, you know.”

  Joe laughed, releasing Carl from his vice-like grip. “It’s just the way Tom told it,” Joe continued. “There could be soldiers all over here before we knew it and we wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “Why, what did he say?” Carl asked, momentarily distracted from his need to get the berries to Ben.

  “The way he tells it,” Joe said, “he got there just before sunset, as the armies were gathering at the south side of the bridge. He said there were thousands, no, tens of thousands of people, civilians and soldiers all mixed together for as far as he could see. The way he told it, it sounds like half of Island City have just up and left their homeland to start marching south.”

  “Be a great time if we were thieves, is that what you’re saying? Come on, Joe, it’s no worse than we really expected,” Carl finished.

  “I know, but it's just brought it home to me, you know. There's something else too.”

  “Go on, what is it?” Carl asked.

  “Well, it’s not only their own supplies they’re taking with them,” Joe said. “Tom said he saw four, maybe five of the Road Trains. They weren't all smashed up. He couldn’t get close enough to confirm how many, but just think what they could do with them, Carl. With them at the head of a convoy, they could drive them straight into Maleton, straight into the courtyard of the Royal palace if they wanted. The capital would fall before they even knew what was happening.”

  Carl rubbed his stubble. He was starting to get used to the feeling and could see the semi-conscious action becoming a habit. “Well, we’re just going to have to make sure that doesn’t happen then, aren’t we?” he said.

  Joe tried to look relaxed, but the tension in his neck and shoulders betrayed him. Carl hadn’t heard the account firsthand, but from the way Joe had recounted it, it must have really brought the situation home to everyone.

  Carl walked past Joe and glanced into the bedroom where Ben was sleeping. Carl could see him; eyes open, beads of sweat on his forehead. As he watched, three droplets drew together and trickled down Ben’s face to the pillow. Ben’s head may have looked warm, but the body shivering beneath two heavy brown blankets told a different story.

  “How’s he been?” Carl asked as he turned back towards Joe.

  “Matthew’s been in there with water and stuff,” Joe informed him, “but I don’t think there’s been much change.”

  “It’s just that I found some Panca berries back there in the forest,” Carl said. “Think it’s worth a shot?”

  “I didn’t think they grew this far north?” Joe remarked.

  “Me either,” Carl agreed.

  “My mom used to swear by that stuff when I was a kid. If anything can get his fever down, I guess that’s it.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Joe.”

  Joe nodded his head and returned to watching the door as Carl went to the kitchen, trying in vain to be quiet so as not to wake the multitude of people falling to sleep throughout the house.

  Ben was worse now than he had been that morning. At least then he had made some kind of sense, when he had surprised them all at breakfast, but now…

  Carl was reminded of how Ben had looked when they first discovered him, face down in the snow. He had cheated death by the slimmest of margins, but unlike then, Catrina was in no state to help to pull him through. No, this time Ben was pretty much on his own, and no amount of Panca berries would do much to change that.

  He started a small fire on the stove and set a pot of water to boil while he removed the leaves and berries from his pockets. This morning, Matthew had been worried about the supply of fresh water on their journey. As Carl looked out of the window at the driving rain that was trying to break its way in, he thought that they would probably have more than they knew what to do with. The rainy season was definitely upon them, and chances are it would be there to stay.

  As the water began to boil on the stove, Carl placed a handful of leaves into a cup and then squeezed the contents of five or six berries onto them. His mother had told him that it was something in the leaves that held the medicine, but the berries were needed to make it work. He didn’t entirely understand that, but people had been using Panca berries for hundreds of years, so who was he to argue.

  After adding some boiling water, he took the cup into Ben’s room and sat beside him on the bed. The brew would need time to cool, so Carl used his time to wipe Ben’s brow with cool water from the bowl beside the bed.

  Ben made no acknowledgement as he did this, only staring past him at the ceiling, oblivious to his presence. Carl tried desperately not to think the worse as he mopped each freshly formed bead from his brow. He almost burned his finger once, willing the Panca brew to cool faster, but after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, Carl sat Ben’s thin and lifeless body up and poured small sips of the drink down his throat.

  Carl could hear him splutter, as more and more of the liquid went down into his lungs, but only if some of it went into his stomach, maybe it could do some good. None of it came back up, but Carl wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. He had done everything he could to help him; all they could do now was wait.

  VI

  Early the following morning, as he took over guard duty, Matthew was surprised to see his sister at the kitchen table. In fact, he was more surprised that it was his sister. He had never seen her like that before.

  Her once beautiful dark curly hair was pulled back from her face, painfully tight, tied behind her head by a single piece of twine. She had managed to pull her hair so tight that it made her face look even thinner, her eyes more sunken, more like a corpse than a living human being.

  But perhaps what surprised Matthew the most was what she was doing. Catrina had stripped down one of the rifles that they had brought with them and was meticulously cleaning and checking each part before returning it to the whole. Like most of the weapons in the world, it had been made by reverse engineering weapons found with the other scrap technology. Original guns were highly prized, if they still worked, their ammo too if you happened to stumble across it.

  After about a minute of watching her, he sat down beside her at the table.

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” Matthew said as he picked up a spring and turned it over in his hands. Catrina quickly tore it from his grasp and, after checking it, placed it within the firing mechanism where it was supposed to go.

  “Dad showed me,” she said, without looking up at him. The pieces of the rifle received all of her attention even as she spoke.
/>
  “Well, I just didn’t know, that’s all,” he said.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know,” Catrina told him. “Dad showed me all sorts of things.”

  “Such as?” Matthew asked.

  “Such as how to use one of these,” Catrina replied. “How to look after myself.”

  “Well, you’ll need it, where you’re going.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Matthew tore the half-assembled rifle from her grasp and slammed it on the table, pieces of it falling from the weapon and rolling off the table to be lost in the gloom of the kitchen. “Catrina, please, talk to me?” he demanded. “Tell me what I have to do to stop this madness.”

  Matthew had never spoken to his sister, possibly not to anyone, with such emotion before, but Catrina’s heart was as cold as ice, and no amount of pain or tears on her brother’s part would melt it.

  She tried to wrestle the rifle from his grasp as she replied, her voice monotone and emotionless in contrast to her brother’s. “You don’t want to know,” she said coldly.

  Matthew released the weapon, allowing her to resume its reconstruction, though with half of the pieces scattered on the floor she began to find it difficult.

  Matthew stood and turned away from her, opening and closing his hands into fists as he struggled to find words that might dissuade his sister from the course of action she was planning. It took him almost a full minute before he spoke again.

  “For our father’s sake, Catrina,” he began, “didn’t you hear what Tom said last night. Going into the enemy camp; it's suicide. Getting yourself killed, it, well, it won’t…”

  Matthew trailed off, not wishing to complete his sentence, but he understood when he started to say it that it needed to be said, for his own sake as well as his sister’s.

  “Won’t what?” Catrina asked, finally looking up at him, the faintest sliver of emotion slowly beginning to break through into her voice.

  “It won’t bring your family back, Catrina,” he yelled down at her. “Our family. Don’t you understand? I miss them too!” Matthew shouted the last words, grief giving way to tears as he struck the table with his fist. They had not discussed their loss, either with each other or with anyone else. These were the most words they had said to each other since their escape.

  Catrina stood and moved around the table with an agility Matthew had never seen before, striking him over and over again as she shouted, “How dare you! How dare you use them against me! How dare you! How dare you!”

  Matthew didn’t fight back or attempt to restrain her. Instead, he took each blow, realising that she was not hitting out at him individually, but hitting out at the world. By releasing the anger that she had been holding in, Matthew knew that she might at long last allow herself to grieve.

  The shouting and commotion had attracted the attention of other people in the house, but a single look from Matthew told them all to stay back. The look of anguish on Arian’s face was almost more than he could bear, but as his sister’s anger gave way to tears, he pulled her close to him, sealing her fists between his chest and her own.

  At first, she resisted, but he held her tight, squeezed her, whispering over and over into her ear that it would be all right, everything would be all right, everything. Slowly she stopped fighting him and started to hug him back, but the way she kept repeating “have to pay, have to pay” told Matthew that, for Catrina, grieving alone might not be enough.

  Morning started early for the group. Catrina had locked herself in the second bedroom, her apparent silence occasionally giving way to loud sobs that stirred the hearts of everyone who could hear them.

  Under Matthew’s direction, everyone else was set to work, gathering together food and water for their journey, as well as salvaging anything they could from the house that was worth taking with them. Carl informed them that Ben’s fever had broken, but he was still sleeping and unable to be roused.

  Matthew had told himself that if Ben wasn’t awake by the morning, he would rethink his plan, consider resuming their course south towards home, but now he wasn’t sure. In fact, he wasn’t sure of anything anymore. His world had been turned upside down and he wasn’t sure where he fitted in, and as he sat there, in the kitchen, watching the sun rise, he felt the weight of that world resting firmly on his shoulders.

  Fortunately, Ben made the decision for him. Not long after the first of the morning’s light shone its way through the window, Ben surprised them all for a second time and strolled into the kitchen without a word. He still looked worse than he had done on the previous morning, but compared to how he had looked during the night, there was some improvement.

  “Ben, hey, what are you doing?” Matthew asked. “Come here, sit down.”

  Matthew rose from his chair and caught Ben as he stumbled around the room and nearly fell over, helping him to a chair before returning to his own. People had already started to crowd the kitchen to hear what he had to say.

  Ben moved his mouth and tongue, but dry as they were, no sound came from them. Matthew passed him the cup of water that he had been drinking from, but Ben didn’t seem to mind. He emptied it in one gulp and was ready to drink another as one was handed to him.

  “Where are we?” he asked, pausing mid-sentence to drink. As Matthew watched his mouth move, he could almost hear the dried out lips cracking with each syllable.

  “In the farmhouse,” Matthew reminded him. “The same place we were yesterday. You, the fever. It wasn’t safe to move you.”

  “Yesterday?” Ben asked.

  “Yes. You surprised us, just like now. Don’t you remember?” Matthew looked puzzled. Ben had appeared coherent the day before, but now he was acting as though both of them had dreamed it. The Droca weed had really messed him up and Ben was lucky he’d come out of it alive.

  “I . . . I’m not sure,” Ben clarified. “Dreams. I don’t know, I can’t remember what’s real anymore.”

  Matthew searched for the right thing to say as all of his plans appeared to be falling apart. If what Ben had said turned out to be a delusion, a hallucination brought about by the Droca weed, they’d wasted two days journey time towards their homeland.

  Carl stepped to Ben’s side and felt his forehead. The fever had definitely broken, but Ben was still far from well.

  “Ben, don’t you remember?” Matthew asked impatiently. “You told us that you had some things to tell us, things Alexander would have learned in the interrogation that could help us stop the war.”

  Ben looked worried. His memories of the last few days were patchy at best, and he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d told them. The interrogation sounded familiar, and the ache in his jaw told him that it probably wasn’t another dream. He shook his head.

  “Matthew, please,” Ben said, “you’re going too fast. Start from the beginning.”

  Reluctantly, Matthew did. He told Ben about the imprisonment and Peter’s help with the escape, and how they had found him, drugged with Droca weed that would have made him tell his captors almost anything they asked. He told Ben about the war and the huge army only a short distance to the east, planning on marching south to attack Matthew's homeland because of outdated xenophobic attitudes that Alexander had played to the fullest. And finally, he told Ben about what he had said to them, only a day before, though for most of the people around the kitchen table, it seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Ben continued to shake his head throughout the entire conversation, wishing that it were just a dream so that he could wake up.

  “Then you’re right,” Ben said at last. “Or I’m right. It doesn’t matter. I need to tell you some things.”

  Ben asked if everyone should leave the room, but Matthew shook his head. “No, Ben,” he told him. “What you have to say affects all of us.”

  “Okay,” Ben agreed. “However you want to play it. I, when I first arrived here, I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Matthew. What I told you, about arriving here, the explosion at the lab
and everything, well, it’s sort of true. It’s just that…”

  Ben was lost for words, trying hard to remember which lie he had told them and which truth. He wanted to tell them everything that had happened to him, but there was still the voice at the back of his mind questioning his trust for his new friends. The way things were, though, their enemy, now his enemy, probably knew everything anyway, so he didn’t have much left to lose.

  “I think I should start from the beginning,” he decided after a moment’s thought. “I, well, okay. What I told you, about the laboratory and the explosion, the accident, that’s all true, but. I don’t know. We were experimenting, with gravity, and that caused the explosion, brought me here somehow. I don't know how, but that's not the point.”

  “Calm down, Ben,” Matthew interrupted. “You’re losing me already. The beginning, remember?”

  Ben stopped and took another long drink from his glass of water. The memories were so jumbled in his own head he couldn’t see how he’d be able to talk to somebody else about them. Taking in a deep breath, he started again.

  “Okay,” he continued, “here goes. A few weeks ago; it is only that long ago, isn’t it? It seems like forever. Anyway. A few weeks ago, I was driven to the laboratory as usual. We were doing experiments, a device, with gravity.”

  “Which is?” Matthew butted in, already another puzzled look on his face.

  “It’s the force which . . . it doesn’t matter,” Ben said, exasperated. “But what I’m trying to say is, when we tested the device, there was an attack, an explosion, and I ended up here, in your world.”

  “That’s what you told me before, Ben,” Matthew blurted out. “We know all this. What does that have to do with Alexander, the war?” Matthew was becoming increasingly impatient as he spoke. The sensation he had had earlier, of the world crumbling all about him, was getting progressively worse.

  “I know, just, listen,” Ben continued. “What I said to you, about the lab and everything, it's, well. The lab’s here too. That’s what I’m trying to say, Matthew. The lab, and as far as I know, everything that was inside it, is here, with me, in your world.”

  “So how does that help us?” Carl asked, still bewildered by what Ben had told him. Like everyone else there, he had no idea what a gravity device was or how it could help them. The explosion might be a good idea, but from the way Ben described it, he had been attacked, nothing he'd planned, so even if there was a weapon of some kind, it’d more likely kill them than anyone else.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not making myself clear,” Ben said. “Like I said, as far as I know, everything that was in the lab is still there. There are cars, supplies, even a small armoury. Matthew, there’s even two helicopters there if we need them. A journey that might take you a week, we could do in half a day, less even. With the cars, we could warn your people, warn, no, no NO!” Ben frantically fumbled at his belt, searching for something.

  “What’s the matter, Ben? What’s going on?” Matthew asked. He was starting to think that maybe everything was going to work out.

  “We, the lab. There’s no way in,” Ben stammered. “There’s still power going to it, and so the security system's up and running. Even if it wasn’t, that place is designed to withstand a nuclear assault. There’s no way we’d be able to break our way in.”

  “So, how did you get in?” Matthew asked, the puzzled look returning to his face.

  “I had a pager,” Ben told them. “Sort of an electronic key. I had it with me when you found me, remember? Without that, there’s no way into the lab, no way on earth.”

  “Hey, don’t worry,” Carl said, happy to return some good news to the one who might turn out to save all their skins. “We got it covered. Hey, Joe, pass me that thing we found outside Ben’s cell, in the dungeon.”

  Joe left the room for a moment and returned with the pager, handing it to Ben, who had his hand held out eagerly. Ben pressed the button on the top, activating the number display. There was still power going through it, so chances were it’d still open the door when they got there, but why was it there at all?

  Found outside the cell? When Alexander interrogated him, surely he would have learned about the pager, what it was for, its importance. To leave it outside the cell, that didn’t make any sense to Ben. If Alexander really knew about the lab and what was inside it, why wasn’t he already on his way there, pager in hand, laughing all the way to the bank?

  Ben was about to say as much when he caught Matthew’s eyes, and the expression of the face around them. The puzzled look was gone, and Matthew looked as though he was about to jump down Ben’s throat at any minute, as though trying to send out telepathic messages that Ben should shut up or he may be made to shut up.

  Matthew knew how important the pager was to Ben, how he had been so reluctant to sell it, even to let it leave his side. Ben reasoned that the thoughts that had just ran through his head had already gone through Matthew's some time earlier, and now was definitely not the time to discuss it.

  Ben nodded at Matthew, acknowledging that he understood, and turned the pager over in his hand one more time before clipping it to the belt on his trousers. If now was not the time to discuss it, he would make sure that there would be an opportunity later. Their lives could all depend on it.

  “So,” Ben continued, trying to remember where he was, “any questions?”

  “Yes,” Carl asked. “What’s a helicopter?”

  Ben laughed. “It’s a machine,” he began. “A vehicle, like the Road Train if you like, but it flies through the air. Trust me.”

  “Sure, right, flying machines.” Carl laughed before feeling Ben’s head for a second time. “You sure you got all that Droca weed out your system?”

  Ben was feeling better by the minute as he set free the burden of the lies and deceit that he had woven since his arrival, trusting his new friends and, in turn, allowing them to trust him. The smile on his face and the laughter in his heart felt the most real since his arrival in his new home.

  “Matthew, you, everybody here,” Ben said, gesturing to those seated around the table, “you’ve all been good to me since my arrival. I’ve only known you for a few weeks, and already you’ve saved my life more times than I’d ever want anyone to ever have to. I'd like to call you friends, and if I’ve got anything you can use to stop this war, it’s yours. And, if it still comes down to a fight, then I’m on your side.”

  “I appreciate that, Ben,” Matthew told him. “Really, I think we all do.”

  “So, when do we leave?” Ben asked.

  “You think you’re up to it?” Carl pointed out.

  “I, yes, I guess I’m as fit as I’m going be for a while,” Ben said. “As long as we take it easy for a bit.”

  “Then we’ll leave as soon as we’re ready,” Matthew announced. “Ben, why don’t you take a walk with me, let everyone think over what you said and get everything together. Some fresh air might do you good.”

  Ben collected a coat and a piece of chicken before following Matthew outside to the rain-soaked rear of the house. Stepping from the relative warmth of the room shocked him at first and it took Ben a few minutes to get used to it.

  “Can you believe I was worried about water on our trip?” Matthew asked as they started towards the barn.

  “It's raining cats and dogs,” Ben replied.

  Matthew didn’t understand the expression, but Ben told him that it wasn’t important. “What do you want to talk to me about that we can’t say in front of everyone else, Matthew?” he asked.

  “Trust, Ben, trust,” Matthew told him.

  “What are you talking about?” Ben said, confusion showing plainly on his face. “What’s going on that you’re not telling me?”

  Ben pulled up the collar of his coat as a sliver of water ran down the back of his neck, though he wasn’t sure if it was the weather or the conversation that sent a shiver down his spine.

  “What do you remember about your time in the dungeons, Ben, really
?” Matthew asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Ben replied. “It all seems like a bad dream. I know Alexander was there, and someone else. They kept asking me questions, nonsense, about electricity, hitting me. I didn’t know what they were talking about.”

  “Electricity?” Matthew said, surprised. “Like that machine you made? What did you call it, the dynamo, that Daniel liked so much?” His voice dropped and there was a tear in his eye as Matthew spoke of his lost nephew. Ben hadn’t been formally told what had happened to the rest of the group, but the fact that they were not with them told him everything.

  “Yes,” Ben said, “I remember I didn’t know what he wanted and he kept hitting me and hitting me. What’s this all about, Matthew?”

  “Electricity?” Matthew said again. “My grandfather used to tell me stories about it, about the energy that would make all the old technology work. Most people still think of them as just stories, but then you come along. You tell me your machine can make electricity and you make light without a flame.”

  “You didn't seem too impressed at the time?” Ben asked.

  “No, but I've seen tricks like that before,” Matthew told him. “Most of us have at one time or another, and that's all they are, tricks, ways of making some fool part with their Deniras.”

  “Really, with all this technology all over the place, you really don’t have electricity, anywhere?” Ben asked.

  “No,” Matthew continued. “Like I said, it’s just a myth, a legend. My father once said to me, 'most of the junk you find won’t ever do anything, but you don’t have to let your customers know that'. That’s what it’s all about, Ben, ending up with more Deniras in your pocket than you started with, and maybe making someone’s day. I thought you understood?”

  “I do, sort of,” Ben acknowledged, “but it’s just that where I come from, electricity, well, it’s everywhere. We couldn’t live without it. It runs our lives in one way or another, and there’s nothing fantastical about it, not really. You’ve seen lightning.”

  Matthew was looking sceptical. “Yes, of course, so?”

  “Well, what do you think that is?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t know,” Matthew replied. “I suppose I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “It’s just electricity, natural electricity, in the environment,” Ben informed him.

  “You harness lightning where you come from?” Matthew asked, amazed.

  “No, not really,” Ben said, smiling. “We make electricity. Like the dynamo I showed you, only bigger, much, much bigger. Like I said back there, the reactor in the lab was still operational when I left. I’ll show you it when we get there. There’s probably enough power, well, to run this entire area if it had to.”

  “My guess is that’s what you told Alexander too,” Matthew confided, “and that’s what he’s after. Power, the power to change the world. If what you’re telling me is true, Ben.”

  “It is, honestly,” Ben promised.

  “Okay then,” Matthew agreed. “Can you imagine what someone like this new Regent could do with that kind of power. If he could show the people that he was in possession of electricity, he could command anything and everything he wanted to. The whole world would probably bow down at his feet just to get a piece of it.”

  Ben thought that over for a while, trying to get his head around the idea that in this world he could have made himself into a god. If Matthew was right, and Alexander was trying to gain control of the power source in the laboratory, why didn’t he just kill them and make his way to the laboratory as soon as he found out about it? Ben put the question to Matthew.

  “I don’t know, Ben,” Matthew told him. “Not yet, anyway. Something’s not right, with all of this. How we escaped, for example. There should have been no way out of that dungeon, no way at all, but still Carl and that sergeant, Peter, managed to break us out. And then you, finding you alive like we did.”

  “And the pager right outside, when Alexander would have known what it was from questioning me,” Ben added.

  “Can’t you see?” Matthew continued. “It just doesn’t make sense. Our escape, getting this far, it’s all been far too easy.”

  “So what do we do?” Ben asked.

  “Same thing I always do,” Matthew replied. “Follow my instincts. The fact remains, Ben, that whatever is going on, we need to get to Draxis and warn them about the army that’s about to come knocking at their door.”

  “But via the laboratory,” Ben reminded him.

  “Exactly.” Matthew stopped dead in his tracks and looked Ben in the eye. “If we stick to going south,” he said, “we don’t have a hope of reaching Draxis before the first wave of the attack, but if we go to this laboratory of yours, it might give us an edge, a chance, but I don’t know what we’ll be getting ourselves into, getting everybody into.”

  “Damned if we do and damned if we don’t?” Ben suggested.

  “That’s about the size of it,” Matthew agreed.

  “So, you figure they let us go so we could lead them to the laboratory?” Ben asked.

  “Maybe,” Matthew said. “Carl went back to see if there was anyone behind us, but what worries me the most is that the enemy isn’t somewhere out there; they’re already in here, with us.”

  Matthew continued towards the barn, but Ben found that he was rooted to the spot, unable to move forwards or back.

  Now it wasn’t only Matthew who felt like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  VII

  They left the farmhouse around midday.

  Matthew directed his team southwest, while Peter turned his team east. There were hugs and goodbyes, perhaps more than there should have been, but as they all knew but could not say, there was a very real chance that many of them would not see each other again.

  They set off in their respective directions, following Matthew’s lead as they had done so many times before. It was only Ben who looked back. He hadn't really noticed until that very moment just how much his newfound friends had changed in the short time that he had known them. They were no longer the happy-go-lucky traders that he had first met only a month or so before.

  They had all changed, some more than others, but changed nonetheless, perhaps forever.

  With that thought resounding in his head, Ben gave the others a final wave goodbye and turned to follow Matthew and his team towards whatever it was that fate held in store for them.