Silo and the Rebel Raiders

by Veronica Peyton

  With that he kicked his horse into a canter, on into the meadow where the buttercups grew.

  What happened next was gratifying for Silo’s reputation but must have been terrifying for the inspector and his horse. Silo’s eyes darted to a clump of bushes just in time to see them stir, and then shake, and then explode in a flurry of crackling twigs as a huge brown animal burst snarling from their depths.

  “Bear!” cried Ruddle.

  It was a clumsy-looking creature, but still it managed to move at an astonishing speed as it bore down on the inspector in a series of great loping bounds. The horse gave a scream that sounded almost human and reared, twisting sideways and up, sending the inspector sprawling to the ground. The bear aimed a vicious swipe at its rump, but its claws caught empty air when the horse bounded forward to gallop wild-eyed across the meadow with its ears flattened to its skull and its tail streaming. The bear chased it for a little distance but, finding it too fast for him, spun around and headed back to the fallen man. But the inspector had leaped to his feet as though on springs and was up and running, his mouth open in a silent scream and his eyes popping with terror as he sprinted back toward the trees, leaving a trail of trampled buttercups and a whirlwind of petals swirling in his wake.

  Ruddle spurred his little horse and rode bravely forward. “Shoo!” he cried as he fumbled for his bow. “Shoo!”

  Distracted, the bear slowed its headlong charge, giving the inspector just time enough to reach the edge of the wood where, with an astonishing burst of athleticism, he scaled the nearest tree with the agility of a squirrel. And finally the bear lumbered to a halt. It glowered at them, growling low in its throat, and then reared up on its hind legs, massive and terrifying, taller than a man, and roared—and roared and roared and roared, revealing foam-flecked jaws and a vicious set of teeth. Then it dropped back to the ground and, with a final malevolent glance, loped off into the woods. So that was a zoo animal. Silo was awestruck. Surely no one, not even an Ancient, would keep one of those as a pet. He glanced up at the inspector, clinging white-knuckled and trembling to a branch. Wisdom decreed that he remain silent, but the alternative was irresistible.

  “I told you so,” he said.

  —

  Silo’s seeing raised him mightily in Ruddle’s estimation. At the earliest opportunity he bought him a thank-you present—a black shirt and jacket and breeches. They were secondhand and patched in places, but Silo was grateful for the gift as he’d noticed that Uplanders sneered at his sack. Now he dressed himself as they did and, more reluctantly, took to wearing his boots. He found them a painful encumbrance at first, but Ruddle was insistent.

  “It’s not right, Silo, to go barefoot—not with you being a seer. It’s a high calling, that, and a little dignity’s required.”

  And now he introduced him to company as “Silo Zyco, a genuine seer from the Eastern Marshes.” Then he would launch into a long version of the bear story. It always went down well, especially Ruddle’s impersonation of the inspector running screaming through the meadow, but Silo noticed that not everybody believed it.

  One night someone commented, “Well, it’s a fine story, but Maximillian Crow’s the only genuine seer I’ve ever heard of.”

  Silo asked a rare question: “Who’s Maximillian Crow?”

  He regretted it immediately, for Maximillian Crow was, it seemed, the greatest seer on all Mainland, perhaps even the greatest seer of all time. He was only eight years old, but already he had predicted remarkable things. He said that the Unicorn Tower would burn down last autumn, and it did. He had predicted that Ingall the Unclean would attack the Southern Shires, and he had. He had known that Upland United would beat Capital City 5–0 at a goatball match. And so on and on and on. Apparently he could have as many as three seeings in a single day, all of them unerringly accurate, and his powers grew greater by the year. Recently he had predicted that the lookout tower at Herringhaven would fall down, and it duly did. Unfortunately his parents had been standing underneath it at the time, but the Government had requested that he come to the Capital this year, despite his young age. Silo listened with growing depression. He had hoped to become the greatest seer on all Mainland himself, and so this was very bad news. He began to suspect that he would dislike Maximillian Crow if he met him, and was about to ask why he hadn’t warned his parents that a tower was about to fall on them, but then he thought of his own family and remained silent. He probably didn’t have time, and besides, they may not have been the sort to listen.

  But it did seem as if the mention of Maximillian Crow had put some sort of curse on their journey, because not only was Silo miserable now but so was the weather. It grew cold and wet, and they left the lush countryside behind them and traveled on over bleak hills. Here the work of the Ancients was everywhere in evidence and often they passed the ruins of their towns, but the tracks they followed gave these a wide berth, presumably lest their ghosts still lingered about their old haunts. The succession of miserable days and nights led to depressing thoughts, and during their long damp rides Silo found his mind turning more and more to Aquinus the Accursed.

  His father had always been a mystery, but now that Silo knew his name he seemed an even greater one. His mother had left him only three things in this life: Eel Rights, webbed feet, and a wanted poster for a dangerous criminal. The first two he could live with, but the third was a problem. The question Silo asked himself was an unanswerable one: could his mother read? It could be that Aquinus the Accursed had given her the poster telling her it was his medical diploma, or a certificate thanking him for his noble work among the poor. She’d have to have been pretty dim to believe him, but it would mean that she was just a trusting girl deceived by an unscrupulous man. But what if she could read? Did she really want Silo to steal dogs and set fire to things? He hoped she had just been a bit thick, but he wasn’t counting on it. She had, after all, been a Zyco. He burned the poster secretly one night, gloomily watching as it curled into ash. He knew it by heart now and it seemed a risky thing to carry around. As far as the world was concerned his father was a mystery, and it seemed better that he remained so.

  The next morning they were toiling up a hillside, Silo and Blossom bringing up the rear as usual. Blossom had her own pace and wasn’t to be hurried, but the view was well worth the wait. They were looking out over a forest that stretched as far as the eye could see, a carpet of rippling green that spread from horizon to horizon. Far in the hazy distance, just as Ryker had described long ago, Silo saw the great towers of the Ancients rising out of the trees. They were crumbling now, and their sharp outlines were blurred by the creeping vegetation that veiled their walls and hung from their many windows, but what windows they must have been once! Gigantic windows in neat, regular rows—Silo counted the ones in the highest tower—over twenty floors. The towers had stood neglected and silent in the woods for hundreds of years now, but even in ruin they were awe-inspiring. How could the Ancients build so high, wondered Silo, and why?

  “There you are, son—civilization at last,” said Ruddle. He pointed to the Fort-Before-the-Forest, which lay sprawled at the foot of the hill beneath them. It was by far the largest outpost they had yet seen, with high walls and a lookout tower on each of its corners. Within, Silo could make out a packed mass of buildings, and threads of smoke rose from dozens of chimneys.

  “Looks like there’s a goatball game this afternoon.” Ruddle nodded to an enclosed rectangular space to the south of the fort with flags fluttering from its corners. He let out a great whoop and sent his little hairy brown horse downhill at a gallop.

  Silo and the inspector caught up with Ruddle at the gate of the fort.

  “There’s a colleague of yours here, sir,” he said brightly to the inspector. “Chief Inspector Hardacre’s just arriving from the Southern Shires. That’s his party coming up now.”

  Silo scanned the group of riders critically for potential seers. Chief Inspector Hardacre was followed by an armed escort, but there were
two blond children riding behind, both a year or so older than Silo. The first was a tall, good-looking boy with flowing blond curls, dressed in a blue shirt and breeches and a purple cloak. A rich boy, thought Silo, eyeing his dapple-gray pony, for it was a magnificent beast and currently prancing on two legs. Blossom, perhaps sensing Silo’s appraising eye, chose this moment to let off a great ripping fart, and the two of them turned in his direction. Studying their shocked faces, Silo got the impression that they thought it was he who was responsible. It didn’t seem the right moment for introductions, so he stared at them coolly.

  Chief Inspector Hardacre was obviously an important man, for Ruddle’s inspector greeted him with extreme politeness and even managed to smile, something Silo hadn’t thought him capable of. Ruddle, finding himself next to the blond boy, said, “You don’t happen to be a seer, do you, son? Because Silo here has the gift.”

  Ruddle was determined to find Silo some little friends.

  “Yes, I am. And so is Daisy here.” He indicated the fair girl. Two of them. Silo’s heart sank. The blond boy turned around and looked at him with clear gray eyes, a look that Silo thought lingered a little too long on his scruffy clothes and oversized boots. But perhaps that was just his imagination.

  “I’m Elgarth Early. Pleased to meet you.”

  He didn’t sound as though he was at all, but Blossom was towering over him by now and slobbering into his curls, which may have had something to do with it.

  “I’m Silo Zyco.” They were riding through the gate of the fort.

  “Why don’t you drop in on us this evening?” said Elgarth. “At six. We’re staying at the Red Hand.”

  “All right, I will. Thanks.”

  They had arrived at a big inn and the inspector was dismounting. Ruddle, finding himself dismissed, rode off with Silo down a narrow street with tall buildings on either side, bright with painted inn signs: the Owl, the Bear and Bowman, the Forest Oak. Ruddle whistled cheerfully as they turned into the stable yard of the Running Dog.

  “We’ll get the horses settled, and then you’re in for a treat,” he said. He produced two crumpled bits of paper from his pocket. “I got us a couple of tickets for the goatball.”

  —

  Three o’clock found them seated at the goatball stadium in the middle of an excited crowd, many of them waving flags and placing last-minute bets. Long ago on the marsh Ryker had told Silo about goatball, and he was greatly looking forward to the match. Goatball had been the most popular sport in the time of the Ancients; twenty years ago the Government had decided to revive it so that the modern generation could learn the skills of their forefathers. It had been difficult because the exact rules had been lost, but they knew that there was a net at each end of the field, two eleven-man teams, and that the winners were the ones who got the most goats. With this to go on they had been able to reconstruct the game very much as it must have been played in the time of the Ancients, and Silo could see before him a rectangle of smooth green grass with a goat pen at each end. The teams were coming onto the field now, Wildwood Rangers in brown shirts and Wildwood Wanderers in green. The goatkeepers, traditionally the tallest men on the pitch, picked up their nets and made their way down to their positions in front of the goat pens. Then the referee blew his whistle and the linesman let loose the first goat.

  The game that followed was extremely exciting. The goat was an experienced one and very fast on its feet. The players had to catch it and then pass it down to their own pen, where the goatkeeper threw his net over it so it couldn’t escape, but the game was much harder than it seemed as the goats were specially bred for their speed and agility and put up a spirited fight. Often it seemed that the goat was cornered and it would go down beneath a mass of brown and green shirts, only to squirm out of the scrum and race around the stadium with twenty men in pursuit. Even when a player succeeded in catching it, it kicked and butted him as he raced down the pitch to his pen, tackled as he went by members of the opposing team. The stadium echoed to the cheers of the crowd, the grunts and cries of the players, and the thunder of cloven hooves. After fifteen minutes of play the referee blew his whistle and the first goat was sent off and a fresh one substituted. It had got the game off to a scorching start and went out to a big round of applause. The game was played in two forty-five-minute halves and with a minimum of six goats, and the Wildwood Wanderers managed to put a goat away just seconds before halftime. Their supporters cheered as the Wanderers players ran around the field, punching the air in triumph, and the goat began to graze.

  With one goat up, the Wanderers made a confident start to the second half, but their defenders had their work cut out for them, for now the game was being played on two fronts. They wanted another goat, but they also had to protect the one they already had, for the Rangers wingers came streaking down the field and tried to release it from its pen. The Rangers supporters roared their approval and chanted defiantly:

  We are the Rangers!

  We don’t like strangers!

  We’ll get your goat,

  And then we’ll gloat!

  But the Wanderers goatkeeper knew his job. He stood firm, a mighty oak of a man. His teammates rushed to his support, and soon the area before the pen was a mass of struggling bodies, whirling fists, and uncouth cries. And it was then that the Rangers caught the Wanderers on the break. The goat in play, feeling that its services were not needed for the moment, had let its guard down and began to graze. And a Rangers forward saw his chance. He burst from the struggling throng and streaked up the pitch, scooped up the unsuspecting creature, and headed for the goal, pursued by the Wanderers defense, a chorus of boos and a hail of dung thrown by the home support. But it was all in vain. The goatkeeper threw his net, the Rangers had tied, and the game settled into its final phase—a hard-fought battle between two stalwart teams and a speedy ruminant. Some games ended badly, with a pile of unconscious forwards or multiple goats loose on the pitch, but not this one, for, in the closing minutes of play, Wanderers star player Ron Alonzo made a sensational run. He was a powerfully built man and, with the goat clasped firmly in his arms, he simply ran at the Rangers defense, trampling them down like weeds. The last man stood firm and might have prevailed had not a turnip, hurled by a Wanderers supporter, struck him full in the face at the crucial moment. Alonzo seized his chance, the net was thrown, and the game was won. And the Wanderers supporters went wild, for it was three long years since they had beaten the Rangers at home.

  —

  “So, Silo,” said Ruddle as they shuffled out of the stadium in the heart of a buzzing crowd, “what do you think of goatball?”

  “Really good. Thanks for taking me.”

  They pushed out of the gate and the crush began to thin a little. Silo hated crowds. He was too small and tended to get trodden on, so now he and Ruddle leaned against the trunk of a tree and waited for the press to go by. But there were shouts from the direction of the highway and the crowd wavered, some heading on and others turning back to the source of the commotion. There was an excited stir and Silo heard someone speak the name of Maximillian Crow; in a moment it was on everyone’s lips: “Maximillian Crow…Yes, he’s coming….Maximillian Crow…He’s here….That’s him there, on the black pony….It’s Maximillian Crow….Maximillian Crow’s arrived.”

  There was cheering from the highway and a group of excited girls started climbing the tree to get a glimpse of the greatest seer on all Mainland. Silo could see nothing from his low vantage point, and found he didn’t much care.

  “Want to go and get a look at him?” asked Ruddle. “He’s bound to want to meet you, you both being seers and all.”

  “No,” said Silo shortly. “It can wait.”

  When Silo set out that evening to keep his appointment with Elgarth Early, there was a raging thunderstorm in progress and the streets of the Fort-Before-the-Forest were flooded. He waded through the torrent with his cloak pulled over his head, but he was very wet about the legs and feet by the time he a
rrived at the Red Hand. There was a fat lady counting coins at a desk, and he asked her where he could find Elgarth Early.

  She gave him a happy smile. “So you’re another of Master Elgarth’s little friends! You’ve a treat in store tonight—he’s got Maximillian Crow with him. Yes, the famous Maximillian Crow, so you’ll get to meet him. Lucky old you! Up the stairs, first landing and second door on the left.”

  Silo sighed and supposed he might as well get it over with.

  Elgarth opened the door to his knock and Silo found himself looking into a handsomely furnished room. The fair girl and an unknown boy were seated in front of the fire.

  “Silo, I’m so glad you could come.”

  Studying Elgarth’s face, Silo was not convinced.

  “I’m sorry, but do you mind…?” Elgarth pointed at his dripping boots and Silo reluctantly took them off and set them beside the door. He had no socks and was self-conscious about his webbed feet, but they weren’t very obvious and he hoped no one would notice. “Thank you so much. Normally I wouldn’t bother, but as you can see this is a rather expensive carpet.”

  Elgarth waved Silo to a chair and said, “Silo, meet Daisy. I’m sure Maximillian here needs no introduction.”

  Silo examined the great Maximillian closely. He wasn’t what he had expected. He was a sturdy brown boy with a healthy, outdoors look about him, eyes so dark they were almost black, and a tangle of jet-black curls. And he was big, Silo noticed with dismay. He was acutely aware that he was small for his age, and it was depressing to discover that not only was Maximillian a great seer but also the tallest eight-year-old he’d ever laid eyes on. He nodded gravely to Silo.

  “Silo is a fellow seer and comes from the Eastern Swamps,” said Elgarth.