by Max Gilbert
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "And that is I've completely lost my ruddy sanity."
"You've come up with an idea?"
"Yes. I've come up with an idea. But it is utterly insane. Come on, I'll explain."
Chris and Ruth followed. Tony, carrying a camping-gas light that hissed loudly, walked across to where Mark waited at the far side of the courtyard. One of the Hodgson boys was standing with his prized motorbike, its fuel tank brush-painted banana-yellow. Mark inspected the engine closely, his big fingers caressing cables and wires as he looked, his face fixed in concentration.
"Right, Mark." Tony sounded brisk. "I've told these good people I'm mad. And I've come up with a mad plan."
"Don't believe that shit. The little guy is a genius. Right, Tony. Spill the beans."
"Well. ... this is it. Mark's going for help. We have been kindly allowed use of the motorcycle. The bike is fast and the tank is more than half full. More than adequate for Mark's requirements. The immediate problem is that lately the Saf Dar have, when the tide is out, posted a guard across the causeway. This is beyond the reach of the shotguns. So. ..." Tony gently kicked one of the ancient cannon lying against the wall. "We clean two of these babies up and use them to blast the Saf Dar off the causeway. 'Course, it won't kill them. But it'll give Mark time to ride out across the causeway and onto the road."
"You are joking." Chris's hopes sagged. "Tony, those things have been used as fence-posts for the last hundred years. Look at the rust. You could no more fire those things than you could sit on them and fly rings around the bloody moon."
Ruth shot him a look. "Listen to what he has to say, Chris."
"Thanks, Ruth ... I know they're old. But I'm gambling on the fact that they've not rotted through. Look, Chris, desperate times call for desperate measures. And this isn't pie in the sky. I've thought it through. In theory it should work."
"All right. But these cannon are two hundred years old. What do we use for ammunition? How do you fire them?"
"Basically, all cannon are metal cylinders open at one end. Down through the open end you stuff explosive, then you pack wadding, cotton wool or shredded rags; after that you put in your shot, a cannonball, or any chunks of metal-nuts, bolts, nails. Pack in more wadding. Then you point the cannon at your target and light the fuse at the breech. That could be a piece of string soaked in petrol or rubbed with gun powder."
Mark rubbed his oily hands on the seat of his trousers. "We've got everything we need. Tony suggests the two long cannon. You've got piles of old bolts in the seafort. They'd make good shot."
"For the explosive we'd use shotgun shells. We'd have to cut open maybe forty or so for the explosive charge." Tony smiled grimly. "Don't forget. ..." He prodded one of the cannon with his toe. "These were formidable brutes in their day. Loaded with grapeshot they could turn men into piles of mincemeat at fifty paces."
"But how are we going to lug these things up onto the walls?"
"We're not. We'll aim them at the gates. When we're ready, we swing the gates back. Fire the cannon through the gateway. They'll blast away anything on the causeway-including the Saf Dar. When that happens Mark rides across the causeway and disappears in the direction of Munby like greased lightning."
"We open the gates?" Chris chewed his lip. "It'll take split-second timing."
"It will. We'll have to get everything right first time. Gates swinging open together, cannon firing first time, Mark riding away like the clappers, then getting the gates shut before those red monsters either come back to their senses or whistle up reinforcements."
"When do you propose to do it?"
"Tomorrow. Tide will be low enough by 8 a.m."
Chris rubbed his jaw and thought of Ruth and David. This was their chance to make it out of here. "Let's do it. What do you want me to do?"
Tony pushed up his sleeves. "You, Mark and I will clean the cannon. Ruth, we need you to cut up shotgun shells. Carefully. Get Mrs Hodgson to help. We'll need plenty of explosive." He smiled. "I want to make sure that when we fire these things someone hears the bang in paradise."
The early stages were easy enough. By lamplight they rolled the cannon across the courtyard. With help from the Hodgsons they upended the cannon, muzzle down. A dried plug of earth dropped out onto the cobbles like a massive crumbling dog turd. Then Tony, using a mop and sea water, carefully cleaned the inside of the barrel.
"Shit," he panted over one of the long cannon. "This one's fucked."
"How?" Mark leaned forward, his eyes burning intensely.
"The barrel's split. If we fired the thing it would kill anyone standing within ten feet of it. The barrel would explode like a bomb. We'll use the other."
The third cannon was a short, squat thing with a massive bore that would have taken a cannonball the size of a football.
"Chris, nip over and tell Ruth to cut the charges out of another thirty shotgun shells." Tony rubbed his jaw. "I'd hate to be stood at the wrong side of this when it goes off."
Hardly speaking, they worked for another two hours, carefully cleaning the barrels of the cannon, then rolling the things, crunching heavily across the cobbles toward the gates. There they were heaved onto stacks of timber and aimed at where the opening would be when the gates were swung back. Then Tony and Chris spent a further hour sorting through piles of rusting bolts the size of a man's thumb. Fired from the mouth of a cannon at three hundred miles an hour, the shrapnel effect of these would be devastating.
As Chris worked he couldn't help but recall the villagers' pathetic attempt to barricade the pea-green village hall. Then, as an outsider, he had been able to recognize immediately that this was just a device to take people's minds off what was happening.
Now he was an insider. He was working on what might turn out to be a crackpot scheme. Maybe it was just Tony's way of taking their minds off what would happen in the next few hours.
Tony believed that the old god that once every few centuries stalked this gritty divide between dry land and ocean, demanding a blood sacrifice, was about to show.
He scooped handfuls of bolts into a plastic bowl.
The old pagan god. Ha, ha, that's a good one, Tony.
That's what Chris would force himself to say. But deep down he believed it was true.
It was coming.
Slowly.
He could feel it.
Like the old man with a beaky nose and staring eyes from your nightmares, leaning in through your bedroom window at the dead of night. He was there. Just outside. But he was beginning that strange lean forward.
Just a little more.
Then he would be inside. On this bit of earth, this beach, this crummy old building Chris dreamed of turning into a hotel.
He would be coming soon and he would expect something from the people here.
He wanted something special. Something valuable. Or the prize would go to those red man-shaped things on the sands. Then his, David's, Ruth's, the lives of everyone here would be ended in this world.
If Mark's escape failed, he knew he would have no alternative.
Sacrifice.
The word came back like an iron clapper against the body of a bell.
Sacrifice.
He would have to give up-sacrifice-what meant the most in the world to him. He wouldn't even let himself think what that might be.
Chapter Forty-four
"Eight o'clock!" shouted Tony.
It would happen at 8:15 a.m.
Mark nodded as he sat astride the 500cc Honda, motor idling with a smooth ticking sound as it warmed through. To stall the thing on the causeway would spell disaster.
Tony, shirt-sleeves rolled up his thin forearms, bustled around the two cannon now strapped to two stacks of timber.
"Chris, nearly forgot to tell you. When you light the fuse, don't be alarmed if nothing happens."
"Alarmed? I'll shit myself."
"After you've lit the fuse it'll take maybe two seconds to burn through to
the explosive charge in the cannon."
"And in a situation like this," called Mark from the bike, "two seconds can seem a hell of a long time. ..."
Once more (probably for the twentieth time that morning) Tony checked the arrangements.
The time: four minutes past eight.
On the walkway that ran around the top of the walls stood the senior Hodgsons-John and Tom, their faces looking white against their caps of ginger hair. They gripped the shotguns in their beefsteak hands.
Chris had run up earlier to watch the Saf Dar on the causeway.
Five of them sat in a loose group thirty paces from the gates. Out of range of the shotguns; but not the cannon. If what Tony had said was true, the three-hundred-mile-an-hour rush of timber bolts would sweep them away like autumn leaves before a stiff broom.
Of course, it wouldn't kill the red bastards. But it would disable them and give Mark the chance to ride the motorbike out of the sea-fort; then off this cursed bit of coast back to civilization where he could bring help.
He glanced at his watch. Five minutes past eight.
His mouth was dry and his heart began to beat like a high-powered pump.
He glanced around the courtyard. Cleared of villagers, it looked huge, empty, and slightly unreal. It was as if the laws of space and time were not laws now but only suggestions, which could be accepted or ignored. He licked his dry lips. It's the tension... it's only the tension. ...
But he couldn't help thinking of Tony's ancient god of this borderland between dry land and sea. Now approaching.
Suppressing this line of thought, he pumped new thoughts through his head. Tide out. Causeway dry. Misty; not too dense. No more Saf Dar to be seen on the beach.
Might be some in the dunes. ... No. Don't think that. Mark will do it this time. Christ, the man was so psyched up he could junk the bike and do it on will-power alone.
The time crawled over the ridge of another minute. Six minutes past eight.
The Hodgson boys paced restlessly near the gates. At
8:15 they would swing them open-as wide as they could. Like curtains opening in a theater to reveal what lay beyond. Beach, causeway, and those five red monsters that looked like pieces of raw meat forced into the shape of men.
Ruth would stand at the back with Mark's shotgun. He'd leave this place armed only with an iron bar. The shotgun, he told them, would be more use here. Anyway (he insisted) he wouldn't need the thing (big face breaking into one of those mighty grins); he added that if he made good time he might call into the Happy Eater first for bacon and eggs.
"Nearly ten past!" Tony's voice sounded high with adrenalin. "Places everyone, please. We go in five minutes."
Christ, it sounded as if he were making a TV commercial.
Chris returned to his cannon. He would fire Short & Stumpy while Tony fired Long John.
A gap of perhaps five paces separated the two cannon which lay parallel to one another. Through this gap, Mark would ride the bike after the blast of shrapnel, out through the sea-fort gates.
"Now, Chris ... the fire."
Mark lightly revved the bike.
Ruth closed up the shotgun and slipped off the safety catch.
Using Tony's lighter, Chris touched off the wood shavings and barbecue firelighters he'd piled on a tin tray. A little distance from that lay a glass bowl in which rags tied to two six-foot bamboo poles were soaking in lighter fuel. When the time came he and Tony would take a cane each, light the fuel-wet rags, then, as the Hodgson boys heaved the gates wide open, touch the fuses that protruded from the back of the cannon.
He noticed the Vicar watching like some damned ghost from the far side of the courtyard. Nothing he could do would stop this now.
Twelve past eight.
He stooped to pick up the long bamboo stick, heavy with dripping rags.
Tony called out, "Okay, boys. Open the gates."
"Wait!"
Tom Hodgson. The man leaned over the walkway, looking down into the courtyard.
"Shit. ..." Mark exploded. "What's wrong? We've got to go. We can't wait. Open the gates. Get those things open!"
"No. ..." Tony ran in front of the bike, holding up his hands. "Give me a minute." He labored up the stone steps.
Tom Hodgson talked earnestly, pointing at something over the wall. The two men talked for almost five minutes before Tony returned.
"Problems. ... We can't do it."
"Shit we can't." Mark Faust sat defiantly astride the bike, his hands on his hips.
"I don't know if the Saf Dar can ... see in here somehow. We know they stare at the sea-fort as if they can. But two more have come up from nowhere. One is this far from the gates." Tony held his hand at arm's length from his face. "And it's just standing there, staring at the gate. The other is on the beach about twenty yards from the sea-fort and a dozen yards from the causeway." Tony looked from Mark to Chris. "It's beyond the angle of fire. The cannon shot won't hit it."
"Fine," said Mark. "Blast the one on the beach with shotguns, then open the gates and blast the rest with the cannon. The one nearest the gate gets more than his fair share of hot iron-but I'm not complaining."
"Mark. ... You know as well as I do that the one on the beach is out of range of the shotguns. You might wing it, give it a bit of a slap, but that's all. And the one outside the gate is too near. Tom can't get a clean shot at it from the top of the wall. And remember what I said about the cannon. It might take a good two seconds for the fuses to burn through to the charge. In that time the thing could be inside the sea-fort. It's strong, it'll move fast. It could kill us all before we even get a shot at it."
Mark studied Tony's face, then he said: "So the odds are getting shittier by the minute. But we still go through with it. Stay here." Mark climbed off the bike, leaving it, motor still ticking, huffing soft balls of blue smoke from the exhaust; then he ran up the steps to the waiting Hodgsons.
Twenty-four minutes past eight. Time wasn't just running out, time was hemorrhaging from them. Chris knew it. There was a sense of a tremendous weight shifting somewhere beyond the fabric of the walls. Its balance was shifting in favor of the Saf Dar. If the living people here in the sea-fort did not act soon, then the Saf Dar would be masters of this place. And very soon they would be masters of much more. They wanted the world.
Twenty-five minutes past eight.
Up on the walls Mark was explaining something to the Hodgsons, pointing beyond the walls and gesturing vigorously.
Chris waited, his muscles so tense he felt as if something was holding him tight in an enormous fist. He wanted to shout, fight, run-anything. Do something. Just to get rid of this build-up of energy inside his body.
At last Mark ran down the steps.
He looked like a man with his own internal motor set in gear. Nothing would get in his way now.
"We can do it." Mark climbed astride the bike. "Chris ... Ruth ... Tony. The plan stays the same. ... more or less. Only we're going to have to do it fast." He punched a fist into his palm. "Gates open. Bang. Fire cannon." Fist into palm again. "Then I'm on my way. I've talked to John and Tom. We reckon that if that thing on the beach comes after me they can at least knock some wind out of it with the shotguns. That will give me enough space to get clear. Then I'll be traveling so fast it'll never catch up with me."