Knightfall - Book 1 of The Chronicle of Benjamin Knight

by Robert Jackson-Lawrence

  “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 straight. 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.”