Wild Jack

by John Christopher

  It was a long journey, with the light draining out of the sky and the forest seeming to press continuously closer. I stumbled once and fell and got a smack across the shoulders from a cudgel to rouse me. I wondered what awaited us at the end of the trek but was too numb and exhausted to bother much. The nagging ache in my belly was almost lost in a need to lie down and forget everything. I faltered, and the cudgel hit me again.

  Then as we rounded a bend, there was a light ahead much brighter than the pale moonlight under which we had been traveling for the last hour. I saw a fire, a huge blaze crackling against the dark screen of trees. I could hear voices as well. Our savages called out and were greeted in return. They pushed us forward and we stood, blinking, in the glare.

  It was difficult to tell how many there were in this new band, but more than a score, I thought. They were all wearing trousers and shirts made from green cloth. Their faces, when they looked at us, seemed to show more contempt than curiosity. One of them said something and the others laughed, not pleasantly.

  Then a different voice called, “Bring them over here. Let me have a look at them.”

  But the voice was surprising; it had a city accent. We were taken round the campfire to where a man sat, cross-legged, on the ground. He rose to his feet, and I saw that he was very tall, well over six feet, with a curly black beard touched in places with white, and a big hooked nose. As he stared at us, unsmiling, I felt the last remnants of my strength draining out of my legs.

  “City boys,” he said. The contempt was very plain. “Which city?”

  He was looking at me and I told him, “London. But the others . . .”

  “What about them?”

  I pointed to them. “Sunyo’s from Kyoto, Kelly from Jacksonville.”

  He seemed more interested. “Explain that.”

  I told him briefly about the island and our escape. His face showed nothing. In the end he said, “So you ran away because life was hard. That may not have been very wise of you.”

  We did not answer.

  He stared at us, his face hawklike. He said, “In fact, it’s something you may well regret. The Outlands are no place for city boys. Do you know me, Clive of London?”

  I shook my head as the bearded face gazed cheerlessly into mine.

  “The other two won’t have heard my name, but you may have. They call me Wild Jack.”

  7

  WE WERE TAKEN TO ANOTHER hut and left there. In this village, as in the first, huts were built round the sides of a clearing, under the shelter of the trees, but these were much more substantial. The logs which formed the walls were thicker and more solidly bound, and the hut had a proper door. We heard the sound of an iron bolt being slammed home on the far side.

  It was pitch dark inside. I felt my way to a wall and leaned against it. Kelly said, “OK, so who is Wild Jack?”

  I scarcely knew what to think myself. I said, “It’s a story the servants tell—the nurse-women, anyway. He’s a kind of bogeyman. They talk about Wild Jack coming up from the Outlands and stealing children. It’s just a way of making kids behave themselves—at least, I thought so.”

  Sunyo said, “We have a story something like it in Japan. But he’s called Hairy Ainu. Some of the tales are very bloodthirsty.”

  “Some of the ones about Wild Jack are. There’s a song he’s supposed to sing:

  “Fee fo fi fan,

  I smell the blood of a city man.”

  “Our servants talk about Bloody Bill,” Kelly said. “I guess it’s the same legend everywhere.”

  “But this Wild Jack is real,” Sunyo said. “He seems to be the chief of this lot.”

  “He called himself Wild Jack,” Kelly said. “Talking big. He’s just a savage.”

  I said slowly, “Not just a savage. He speaks good city English.”

  “Are you telling us you believe that guff?” Kelly asked. “Stealing babies and all that? You ever hear of a baby being stolen?”

  I said with heat, “No, of course, I don’t believe it. But he’s not an ordinary savage. He could be more dangerous. Why does he call himself Wild Jack, anyway? He’s obviously some kind of renegade.”

  Kelly started to reply, but Sunyo cut across.

  “Whoever he is, he doesn’t look friendly. We should be thinking of escape instead of wasting our time in argument.”

  “Sure,” Kelly said, “but how? We can’t even see the walls.”

  “We can feel round them,” Sunyo said. “There was a weak spot in the other hut. We might be able to find one in this.”

  At least it gave us something to do. I groped my way along the wall, which seemed discouragingly substantial. At one point I stumbled across Kelly, and we exchanged a few sharp words. Sunyo was telling us to shut up when we heard the bolt being drawn.

  The door was pushed open, showing the light of the campfire and another light much nearer where a man held up a burning torch. A figure came past him and I saw, with surprise, that it was a girl.

  She was roughly our age and Sunyo’s height but, of course, much slimmer. She was dressed in green like the men, wearing a shirt open at the neck and long pants. Her hair was black and thick, shoulder length, and I could see that her face was very brown—I had never seen a girl with so brown a face. It had a hard, unfriendly look, though her features were regular enough.

  “Wild Jack sends you your supper,” she said.

  Her voice was hard also, though she, too, spoke in city English. She had very white teeth.

  “If you were expecting a feast,” she said, “you’re going to be disappointed. We don’t waste food in the Outlands. Wild Jack will decide what to do with you tomorrow.”

  She handed over a pot and a loaf of bread. I took the bread and Kelly the pot. The girl said scornfully, with a shrug of her shoulders, “Sleep as well as you can, city boys.”

  She went out. The door was slammed and the bolt driven home, leaving us once more in the dark.

  Kelly said, “It’s water in the pot. She was right about it not being a feast.”

  I divided the loaf by breaking it into pieces, doing my best to make equal shares. I gave Kelly and Sunyo their rations, and Kelly passed the pot round. He said, “Go easy on it. We don’t know when we’ll be getting any more.”

  “I’m not a fool,” I said, sipping.

  In fact I was not too sure of that. I had a distinct feeling I had given Kelly the largest share of bread and kept the smallest for myself. Then he made things worse by saying to Sunyo, “You take some of mine. It’s days since you had anything to eat.”

  Ashamed, I was about to offer some to Sunyo, too, but he said, “No. I’m all right. Listen, I had a good look at the walls in the light of the torch. I noticed a spot where it might be weaker. Eat the bread, and we’ll see what we can do about it.”

  I wolfed mine. Kelly finished his soon after, but Sunyo went on eating slowly. The sound of his chewing was maddening; I was still ravenously hungry. At last he finished, and we joined him in investigating the weakness he thought he had found. It was high up, where the wall and roof joined at a corner, and we could reach it only by taking turns for one of us to give another a back. Sunyo had first go, with Kelly supporting him, and then I helped Kelly up. When it was my turn, I felt for and found the hole and pulled at it with my fingers.

  The wood was rotten, and you could enlarge it to some extent, but beyond a certain point you were blocked by the ropes which secured the logs.

  I said, gasping, “If we had a knife . . .”

  Sunyo was underneath me. Kelly said, “How about a thermo-lance? And a helicopter standing by on the roof? No sense in going in for small fantasies.”

  I ignored him and spoke to Sunyo. “I don’t think I’m getting anywhere.”

  “Let me have another try.”

  I surrendered my place to him willingly, and he worked away
patiently for what seemed hours.

  Kelly said, “Want me to spell you?”

  “No.” Sunyo’s voice was tired and final. “We’re wasting our time. It’s too solid to get through.”

  Kelly said, “I agree. Let’s try to get some rest. Whatever’s coming to us tomorrow, there’s no sense in meeting it deadbeat. I’ll take the air-sprung four-poster bed next to the big window. You guys find your own.”

  This hut, too, had a floor of beaten earth, but I was asleep almost as soon as I settled down on it. And almost as soon as I was asleep, I was awake again and doubled up with stomach pains; the bread had been new, and I had eaten it much too fast. I lay and writhed for what seemed hours before eventually drifting into exhausted sleep. I had the impression it was a couple of minutes later that I was wakened again, by the door being pushed open. I looked up muzzily and saw daylight. I saw, too, a figure framed in the doorway and recognized the curly black beard and hooked nose of the man who called himself Wild Jack.

  I struggled painfully to my feet; Kelly and Sunyo were already standing. Wild Jack came into the hut. He looked from us to the hole we had scratched in the corner of the roof and laughed.

  “So the mice have been trying to escape from their trap! It looks as though their teeth weren’t quite sharp enough. But you wouldn’t expect much of city mice, would you?”

  Although he spoke good English, his voice had a rough edge I didn’t like, and his laugh did not have much mirth in it. He said, “Get outside.”

  We went blinking into the clearing. The sun had risen above the trees on the far side, and the sky was sharply blue against the green. We were watched by figures who looked no more friendly than their leader. From the direction of the campfire came the sizzle of frying bacon and a smell that almost made me faint with hunger.

  “We didn’t invite you,” Wild Jack said, “and you might have been wiser not to come. Since you are here, you’ve no choice but to make the best of it, though I’m not sure your best is going to be quite good enough. Still, it will pass an amusing few minutes, and as we already have another candidate for the ordeal, it won’t really waste our time.”

  He turned to a man who stood near him whom I had already noticed with some apprehension. He almost contrived to make Wild Jack look small, being inches taller and massive too, broad in both girth and shoulders.

  “Is our little traitor ready for judgment, Daniel?” Wild Jack asked.

  The big man nodded silently and snapped his fingers. Two men brought up a third. This one was as small as Daniel was huge, a wiry fellow not much more than five feet in height, with gingery hair and beard and a sharp, terrified face. His hands were roped behind him. His eyes fastened on Wild Jack in desperate appeal.

  “They told lies on me, Jack.” His voice was thin with terror. “You know I’d never let you down. I wouldn’t betray you. You know that.”

  “Well in that case,” Wild Jack said, “you have no cause to worry, do you?”

  His tone, though, was the opposite of reassuring, and the little man looked worse than ever. Some of those standing around laughed, and I heard another laugh on a higher note. I looked and saw the girl who had brought us our miserable supper. She noticed my glance and smiled in a way that made me want to murder her. Both she and the men wore expressions of looking forward to an amusing show. Amusing for them, perhaps, but certainly not for the gingery man or for us.

  When our hands were being bound again, I realized that we were not going to be given any food. It may seem strange, but, quite apart from my hunger, this was the most frightening thing of all. I remembered the girl’s words when she had given us the loaf of bread. “We don’t waste food in the Outlands.” Recalling them made me shiver; not wasting food on people who had not long to live provided a very reason­able explanation.

  Horses were brought into the clearing. These, like the pigs, were familiar to me only from pictures; unlike Kelly with his race course, we had no horses in London. Wild Jack and his followers mounted, while we three and the gingery man were tied to a rope whose end was fastened to the saddle of one of the horses. Then, on an order from Wild Jack, they moved off along a trail leading out of the camp, and we had to stumble after them.

  The trail was very rough in places, and although the horses were only walking, they set a pace uncomfortably fast for us on foot. I was second in line, directly behind the gingery man, who mumbled unhappily to himself much of the time.

  The sun, I noticed, was on our right, which meant that we were heading north. Not that it made any difference, since all this was Wild Jack’s kingdom and one place no better than another. I heard a distant hum of an engine and looked up at the narrow stretch of sky that was visible between the surrounding trees. I did not see the airship—not that that made any difference either. No one could help us.

  The trail came out at last into the open, with the next stretch of forest sixty or seventy feet farther on. In between, the ground fell into a ravine.

  Wild Jack and his companions dismounted and tethered their horses to outlying trees. I felt a fresh qualm as the four of us were prodded forward and was relieved as we got nearer to the rocky edge to see that the ravine was no more than about ten feet deep. Bushes grew thickly along the bottom. Not far away, too, there was a rope bridge connecting this side with the other.

  It consisted of a kind of ladder at the bottom, with short pieces of wood tied into a double rope at intervals of a couple of inches. Several feet above it a single rope, fastened to trees on either side, was presumably meant to serve as a hand support.

  One of the men untied our hands, and Wild Jack said, “This is where we have our little test. It’s quite a simple one. Merely a matter of crossing the bridge to get to the other side. Do you think you can ­manage that, city boys?”

  The bridge swayed slightly in a breeze. If this was what Wild Jack called an ordeal, he must have a poor opinion of city boys indeed. But the gingery man was still shivering with fear.

  “You don’t look much dismayed,” Wild Jack said. “That’s a good thing. But we mustn’t make it too easy for you, must we? Thomas!”

  A man stepped forward with a knife. It dazzled in sunlight as he slashed at the upper rope, which fell into the ravine, briefly threshing the bushes.

  “How do you fancy your chances now?” Wild Jack asked.

  I fancied them a good deal less. There remained only the narrow rope ladder; it would require quite a feat of balancing to cross without support above. But I reflected that if one did fall, it would be a distance of no more than eight or nine feet. I thought of something else, too. Wild Jack and his men were all here on top. If one were to drop and run for it . . . it was a chance that might be worth taking. I glanced at Kelly and Sunyo and wondered if the same thought had crossed their minds. The little gingery man was drawing quick, gusty breaths of what seemed like panic.

  “Just one other small thing,” Wild Jack said. He smiled. “This ravine has a name. It’s called Taipan Canyon.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about and wasn’t interested. It had occurred to me that it would not be possible for all three of us to make a break for it by dropping into the ravine, because the moment one did so, it would alert Wild Jack and his men. Unless we contrived to jump together, before we were ordered to cross? I wondered how I could get the idea over to the others.

  “The taipan,” Wild Jack said, “was not originally a native of this country. It came from Australia. But there were specimens in zoos here, and during the Breakdown some got loose. Perhaps only one female, but if so she laid eggs. And, like certain other animals, the taipan has flourished in the Outlands. In this ravine, in particular.”

  We looked down. There was nothing to be seen but the bushes, their tops rippled by the breeze. Wild Jack smiled again.

  “You won’t see any. They’re not very big, and they stay close to the ground. But they’re fast move
rs. Taipans, city boys, are snakes—in fact, the deadliest snakes in the world. There’s no antidote to their venom, and they kill within a couple of minutes. What’s more, they have a very strong objection to being disturbed.”

  We looked at him. He spoke convincingly, but it could be a tale to frighten us. I looked down again and saw nothing. Wild Jack said, “Our traitor has priority.”

  The gingery man was pushed forward toward the bridge, almost gibbering with fear. He gulped before he could speak.

  “I swear I’m no traitor, Jack! I swear it. It was all lies, lies. . . .”

  The man with the knife held its point close to his chest. Wild Jack said, “If that’s true, you’ll come through the ordeal, won’t you? An honest man won’t fall.”

  I asked myself, sickened, if such a barbarity could be believed? But these were the Outlands, not the civilized world we knew. The men were grinning, and I saw the girl grin with them. They were savages, capable of anything.

  The gingery man dropped to his knees. He cried, “Please, Jack. For old times’ sake. . . .”

  In a cold, indifferent voice, Wild Jack said, “We don’t have all day to waste. There are other candidates as well as you. Get him on the bridge, Thomas.”

  The knife was turned to his back, and when it pricked him, the gingery man took a hasty step forward and put one foot on the bridge. It swayed, and he drew back. There was an ugly shout of laughter from the men in green, and the knife pricked him again between the shoulder blades. This time he started to walk across.

  The bridge twisted as he went on, and he hesitated and began to wobble. His expression was ­agonized; I could see his mouth working furiously. The more he struggled to retain his balance, the more the bridge swayed. With a wild shriek he fell, somersaulting through the air to land among the bushes.