Send Simon Savage #1 (8 page)

Simon and Danice froze.

‘Ho, there! Look!’ The farm boy pointed at the clothing. ‘The witches have fled this way!’

‘Advance!’ the soldier ordered.

He lumbered along the lane and the crowd followed him, yelling and waving their hoes, axes and pitchforks.

Danice stepped away from the wall. ‘Hey, these suits really work!’

‘Yeah, but let’s not stand around admiring them.’ Simon grabbed her arm. ‘Let’s move!’

Danice tugged away from him. ‘We can’t run through the village in these outfits!’

She was right. Simon selected a map of the area on his wrist pilot. ‘The bridge is on the other side of the castle. But we don’t have to go through the square to get there.’

He glanced at the wall behind them. ‘It’s only a couple of metres high,’ he said. ‘We can climb over here. The map shows an orchard on the other side that extends around the back of the castle. After that there’s a stream we can follow down to the bridge. Okay?’

‘Okay!’ Danice replied.

Simon took a step back, jumped and grabbed the top of the wall. ‘Give us a leg-up!’

Danice crouched, cupped her hands under Simon’s left foot and lifted. He straddled the wall and stretched an arm down to her. ‘Grab hold—quick!’

Danice took his hand, scrambled her feet up the wall and made it to the top.

‘Go!’ Simon said.

Danice dropped down the other side. Simon looked around for a moment to check no one was following.

Then he, too, was gone.

13

T
he feast that Damien spread on the family table was the best they had seen for a month or more. There were the usual beige, tasteless chunks of Syn-food, a processed protein from the Prison Farms. But there was also a roast chicken, two loaves of fresh bread, a bunch of celery, some potatoes, carrots, apples and a big, spiky pineapple, all from the Chieftain’s own private farm and kitchen.

‘The Chieftain was pleased with our haul,’ Damien said. ‘This is our reward.’

Alli polished an apple and passed it to her mother, Hanna.

Hanna irritably waved it away. ‘So, how much gold did you steal?’

‘Five or six hundred kilos,’ Damien replied. ‘We would’ve got more … well, if Lee hadn’t messed things up.’

‘It was his first trip,’ Alli said in Lee’s defence.

‘He was clumsy.’

‘He’ll get better.’

‘He’s your friend, so of course you’ll defend him. But he’ll have to shape up quick,’ Damien said. ‘These trips aren’t games. They’re hard work, they’re dangerous——’

‘Danice should be here to enjoy this, too,’ Hanna cut in.

‘I know Mama,’ Damien replied. ‘I said I was sorry about what happened.’ The feast couldn’t make up for his sister’s disappearance, and there was no way he could start a search for Danice himself. Nor could Damien find out where the men who had snatched his sister had come from.

He tried not to think about it, and turned his attention back to the feast. At least it showed he could still provide for his family.

‘I’m not sure how you eat this,’ Damien said, holding a knife over the pineapple, a fruit he had seen once but never tasted.

‘I’ll show you,’ Hanna said, getting up. Her crippled legs wobbled as the tree house swayed slightly in the wind.

Alli dashed to her side to support her.

‘I’m all right!’ Hanna pushed her away. ‘Wind’s a-rising, things will buckle and fold for a while. Don’t bother me.’

Damien hated seeing his mother in this surly mood, especially as there was nothing he could say to make her feel better. Talking wouldn’t bring Danice back.

He turned to the open window. Great banks of storm clouds brewed along the horizon and a rising wind ruffled the treetops. Lights flickered from the candles in the other tree houses. These days, they were inhabited mainly by women, young children and the elderly. Most of the adult men were gone, working as slaves, or as poorly paid factory workers in Old City.

‘I better go and see Bigdad,’ Damien said. ‘I can give him a share of the food. And these …’ He took a pair of scuffed leather boots from a hessian sack and showed them off proudly.

‘Where did you get those?’ Hanna asked. ‘You didn’t do some silly piece of trade, did you?’

‘The Chieftain gave them to me,’ Damien replied. ‘I think they were going to be thrown out.’

His mother grunted. ‘Trouble. Working for the Chieftain is causing us nothing but trouble.’

‘A lot of the other families here are starving, Mama,’ Damien reminded her. ‘You know that. Working for the Chieftain is risky, but it puts food in our bellies!’

‘Not unless we eat, it doesn’t!’ Hanna snapped. She reached for the pineapple. ‘Cut the leaves off the top, trim the thick skin all around till you reach the flesh. Then eat it … if you have the appetite for it.’

Damien opened his bag and packed some of the chicken, a couple of apples, a few vegetables and the boots into it. ‘I’ll eat when I get back later tonight,’ he said. He slung the bag over his shoulder. ‘I’d better go while it’s still light.’

‘Be careful, Damien,’ Alli said.

‘Those people have already taken Danice,’ Hanna added. ‘How do you know you won’t be next?’

‘I’ll be all right, Mama. I can look after myself,’ Damien replied.

‘Then watch out for the——’ Hanna began, but Damien didn’t wait to hear her out.

He stepped onto the timber landing outside. The wind in the soughing redwoods smothered his mother’s voice. Damien didn’t need reminding. He knew the dangers of the night.

‘Care for what’s left?’ the Chieftain asked, taking the last portion of grilled steak from a platter on the table.

‘No, boss, thank you,’ O’Bray replied politely, and sat back a little in his chair.

‘You prefer the synthetic stuff from the Farms?’

‘Syn-food is nutritious, it’s filling,’ O’Bray said, ‘and they say it’s non-carcinogenic.’

‘
This
is
real
food,’ the Chieftain said, cutting into the meat and lifting a juicy chunk to his mouth.

O’Bray let his master eat. If that was the sort of thing he liked, who was O’Bray to object? The Chieftain had different tastes and habits, acquired in the Far Lands. Or so he had said on the few occasions he had mentioned his origins.

O’Bray didn’t enquire too deeply. Warlords like the Chieftain came and went all the time. This one had first arrived over a year ago, along with a great deal of gold. Enough to buy a large share of whatever technology was available in this unsophisticated world. And also enough gold to buy friendship with the Tribunes who lived a few kilometres away in Old City.

Gold meant power, and O’Bray knew this better than most. He worked for whoever paid the best price. For now, that person was the Chieftain.

‘Mmm, delicious.’ The Chieftain wiped his lips with a white napkin. ‘Now, O’Bray, let’s talk business.’

O’Bray bowed his head slightly. ‘You wish to launch another gold-seeking operation?’

‘A big one,’ the Chieftain said. ‘Winter’s coming, and power from the nuclear station will cost us more. Also, the Tribunes are fond of their large and regular payments from my treasury. We need to get hold of as much gold as we can to last through the colder months, and into next year. What have you discovered?’

O’Bray had access to the library archives in Old City—access that cost them plenty of gold. ‘There are two major prospects,’ he said after a moment. ‘The United States Federal Gold Reserve in the twenty-first century. And there’s a shipwrecked Portuguese treasure ship in the sixteenth century.’

‘The Gold Reserve—what are our chances there?’ the Chieftain asked.

‘The gold there is worth a fortune, boss,’ O’Bray replied, ‘but from what I can discover, it’s kept in very strong vaults with extremely high security.’

‘Could we send a timeline into the building?’

‘It’s possible, but we would need reconnaissance,’ O’Bray said. ‘We’d need to check out the whole set-up first.’

The Chieftain frowned. ‘Risky. And I don’t want to lose another kid. Good ones are hard enough to find and train as it is.’ He thought a moment. ‘And the ship?’

‘It was wrecked off the coast of Sumatra in 1515,’ O’Bray said, ‘carrying looted treasure from Malacca. Gold bars, coins, statuettes. A couple of tonnes at least, is my estimate.’

‘The exact location?’ the Chieftain asked.

‘Washed up on a beach. There is a tiny fishing village a kilometre or two along the coast, but no other inhabitants.’

‘An easy in-and-out for our team, then?’

‘Yes,’ O’Bray agreed. ‘If we pick the right time—and the right weather.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ the Chieftain said. ‘Meanwhile, you can do something else for me.’

‘Of course, boss, anything.’

The Chieftain picked up his knife and fork. ‘Pass that mustard, will you? Steak’s nothing without the bite of extra-hot mustard.’

The tunnel reeked of sewage and chemical waste. Damien crept along a narrow path at the side of a thick stream of stinking swill that flowed out of the city. He was breathing hard and sweating and was glad to be nearing the end. With only fifty metres to go, he could see the steel grid at the tunnel mouth ahead and a glimpse of light beyond.

Damien reached the grid and took a gulp of fresh air. The well-worn nuts and bolts keeping the grid in place had been loosened many times. It took only a minute to remove them and to swing the grid inward on its hinges.

He crept cautiously out of the tunnel and crawled up a narrow embankment. The ten-metre-high stone wall that surrounded the city was now immediately behind him. The sewerage tunnel was the only way of getting into the city from the forest without being checked by guards. It was a route that no one but the poor and the desperate could bring themselves to use.

Damien crouched and waited for a few seconds at the top of the embankment. There was an open space between the wall and the first houses, and guards regularly patrolled the wall. Damien had to be watchful. To be caught here, and to give away the secret uses of the tunnel, would be a disaster. Without the tunnel, Damien would most likely never see his father again.

The way was clear, so Damien dashed across the open space and into a dirty alley between a row of unpainted wooden houses. He stopped at one of the doors, glanced up and down the street and knocked four times.

‘Trip you up!’ said a man’s voice.

‘Only if you catch me,’ Damien murmured. These were lines from a game he had once played with his sisters.

The door opened and a bear-like man appeared in the frame. ‘Out of the street—quick!’ he said.

Damien slipped inside and the door closed silently behind him. The welcoming hand of his father gripped his shoulder. ‘Damien, good to see you! How’s the family?’

‘They’re all right, Bigdad.’

‘And further news about Danice?’ Lines of worry made his face look even older than usual. The word had been brought to Bigdad earlier in the day.

‘Nothing. We still don’t know who took her,’ Damien said, and hurried through the details of the incident. ‘Then I just ran off,’ he finished. ‘I went back to the timeline and left.’ He hung his head. ‘I don’t know how to forgive myself.’

Bigdad put an arm around his son’s shoulders. ‘You reacted quickly, as best you could in the circumstances. There was nothing else you could have done.’