Fenn Halflin and the Seaborn

by Francesca Armour-Chelu

  Triumphantly he ran up the snow-speckled track that ran along the tributary the Panimengro had come into. Here, reeds gave way to clumps of furze, which provided hardly any cover. Fenn was trotting so close to the furze that he only just avoided blinding himself on a branch sticking out into his path; he dodged, snagged his foot on something and fell sprawling onto the ground. A thin, almost invisible piece of wire, glinting like spider thread, lay across the short mossy grass. He tugged the wire from the gorse; at its end was a rabbit, freshly dead, its body still limp and warm. One of Lundy’s snares. Fenn stuffed the rabbit in his pocket and unhooked the wire from the peg in the ground; a snare like that would be useful. He was just about to head on when he sensed something was wrong. It was quiet; too quiet. The rest of the marsh was full of birdsong, but here it was silent.

  He inched closer through the reeds until he was near enough to see the sward of land banked up by the Ionia. Thrushes and reed warblers should have been about, pulling fresh worms from the mossy turf as the early sun melted the snow, but no birds were on it this morning. Fenn peered at the ground. A few feet ahead, a stone had been knocked from the earth. He could clearly see the mould of the stone in the soft, damp soil from where it had been dislodged. The cobble was large – at least as big as his own fist, too hefty to have been knocked out by a muntjac, and a wolf would not tread so carelessly. The underside of the stone was still stained with damp; someone had passed here within the last hour. He peered more closely; the moss was thick and velvety, and the morning dew had covered the tiny fronds with millions of minute droplets that glittered white as diamonds.

  Fenn laid his cheek on the earth – an old trick Halflin had taught him for when you wanted to find a dropped object too small for the eye to see. There, in the sparkling white dew, was a bright green patch of emerald. A footprint. It wasn’t made by the flat deerskin boots of the Sargassons, but had hard ridges on it. A serrated imprint clearly patterned the moss. It was a soldier’s boot; a Terra’s boot.

  They’d been ahead of him all along.

  4

  Fenn had nearly made a fatal mistake. He’d underestimated his enemy and overestimated himself. He slowly crawled backwards into the reeds, taking care not to stir them.

  He slunk away, keeping as low as he could and waded down into the river, holding his rucksack carefully over his head. Once he was a good distance from the Ionia, he climbed back up to high land and ran back along the edge of the tributary, following it into the marsh.

  Fenn ran blindly, completely forgetting the landmarks he was supposed to aim for in the huge expanse of marsh, only telling himself he’d stop at the next clump of bramble, the next burst of gorse flower. At last cramp caught him, stabbing pains shooting up through his legs. Once it had subsided he looked up and realised he was in a sparse patch of bulrushes, growing by a wide, oily bank where the tributary shallowed out into a muddy beach. He was lost. Blood thunderclapped in Fenn’s head, as if he was going to faint. He put his hands on his knees and lowered his head like Halflin had once told him, to cure dizziness. Through his knees, upside down, he saw a copse of scraggy alder trees growing up through the ribs of a wrecked boat on the far bank. It had probably been washed up in one of the Risings. Thousands of empty ships still floated on the oceans, unsinkable yet unsailable; their hulls strong enough to stay afloat, but their masts and rudders ripped off in storms. He stood up and lowered the rucksack to the ground and gently lifted Tikki out. Tikki stood up on his hind legs, wrinkling his nose at the briny scent of dank kelp before sneezing so hard he knocked himself over backwards. Fenn burst out laughing, making Tikki squeak with angry embarrassment before giving himself a quick preen to show he didn’t care, and scurrying off to explore.

  While Tikki chased bulrush seeds drifting on the salty breeze, Fenn studied the map, but it didn’t tally with what he could see. Beyond this wreck there was supposed to be a church tower still standing on the edge of mudflats. Halflin had warned him not to cross the flats – they were too dangerous without the right equipment. He had drawn Fenn’s path accordingly, taking his route down and around the mudflats, then up again towards the Sargassons’ forest; a journey that could take him several days. But Fenn reckoned he might save himself a day’s walk if he tried. He also knew he needed to rest soon, or he’d make a stupid mistake and run headlong into the Terras again. But he couldn’t stop in the open like this. He’d get across to the old boat and hide; at least he’d have a decent view over the marsh. Perhaps he could even spend the night there.

  He folded away the map and stepped down onto the shore, but stopped just in time, teetering on the brink of another step. The mud was patterned with a mosaic of dozens of prints, mainly those of birds. A lone snipe had crossed paths with a heron and one had dropped a crab, before both took flight, shown by the scatter of wet grit on the mud’s surface. A few feet away, the crab was lying on its back, courageously pinching the air with its remaining claw, unaware that its enemies had fled; fled because they had caught sight of a lone wolf slinking through the thin crop of bulrushes. The wolf’s prints were light and closely paced as it stalked its prey, but its returning prints showed it had dragged something large, scuffing a track through the bubbling green algae that coated the bank. It was easier for Fenn to read what had happened on the mudflat, than read one sentence in the encyclopaedia.

  If he walked across it, he would never be able to hide his tracks, but as the Terras already knew he was on the marsh, hiding wasn’t enough. He scraped over the footprints he’d already left and took a long stride over to a small drift of shingle that ran between the rushes. Now Tikki had finished off the dying crab, Fenn clucked to him and he ran up onto his shoulders, curling affectionately around his neck. Fenn walked backwards down the bank to the boat, taking care to make his footprints clearly visible; making sure that any Terra Firma seeing it would think he’d walked upriver away from the wrecked boat, instead of down towards it.

  As he reached the boat, he realised it was an old wooden Seiner, and must have been there for at least thirty years, because the alder trees growing right through it were already twice Fenn’s height. It looked as if it had nosedived into the marsh – as it could have, if a wave had been forceful enough to thrust it there. Or it may have been wrecked out at sea, its crew drowned, then the empty ship was perhaps caught on a rogue wave and brought up the tributary to rest here in the river’s kink. Fenn had watched such waves sometimes rip up through the creeks around the Sunkyard. They were powerful enough to tip a boat to its gunwales if the crew didn’t know what they were doing. The Seiner’s stern was clear of the mud, and sea snails clustered in its shadow like tiny cobblestones. Tikki immediately jumped down and scrabbled amongst them, knocking the empty snail shells around as if he was playing a game of marbles.

  Halflin had told Fenn that hundreds of such wrecks dotted the marsh. They’d sometimes appear overnight, after a storm, and the Sargassons would strip the wood away, like crows picking carrion clean to the bone, until all that was left were a few ribs, or a mast, then – the next morning – nothing. Fenn was surprised to see a wooden boat left untouched like this. A waste; there was firewood for a half-winter at least.

  He jammed his knife into the side of the boat, wedged his foot in a porthole, and levered himself up. On seeing Fenn’s feet disappear over the edge of the boat, Tikki let out a whimper and snatched the biggest snail, before jumping up by Fenn’s side.

  On deck, the gunwales had been rubbed to nothing by the wet winds slicing off the marsh, and only a few joists were left sticking up around the sides of the deck, bleached to the colour of bones. A wet slick of lichen and browning moss coated the rotting planks, and Fenn could see a dank cabin below. Alders, with rosy catkins flushing their branches, thrust up between the wood and speckling the deck were dozens of tiny cones. Delighted by new toys to play with, Tikki dropped the snail disdainfully, nudged it towards Fenn and ran off down the deck, making the cones bounce and scatter, chasing his own tail in exci
tement.

  Fenn gingerly edged over to the hatch and looked in; the ladder was still sound and he climbed down – it’d be good to hide in while he rested. It was so cold it hurt Fenn’s lungs and his breath hung in the damp cabin before dissolving. Spokes of light stabbed in from the deck above, and he could still hear the patter of Tikki’s claws as he raced around above him. It took him a few moments before his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and when they did he realised there was a sheet of rusted corrugated iron leaning against the side of the hull and a ring of cobbles encircling some soot-blackened boards. Someone was living here.

  Just at that moment Tikki skittered down, chattering wildly as he jumped onto Fenn’s back. Fenn tried to grab him but missed, twisting as he fell and knocking over the rusting iron. As it disintegrated into flaky shards, Fenn’s eyes fell on a few bones scattered on the ground behind it. He knelt down to take a look, nudging one with a stick. There was also a blanket covering something. Fenn tentatively lifted it away with the tip of the stick before jolting back. It was a skull.

  Fenn scrabbled backwards to the other side of the cabin, as far away as possible, his back pressed to the crumbling wood of the Seiner’s hull. Tikki immediately ran back to him, licking his face to make Fenn feel better. The skull must have been lying there for a very long time. Probably a Seaborn on the run; maybe just lost on the marsh after one of the Risings. The Great Rising had seen the highest number drowned, but there had been many tidal surges since. There was nothing to say how the person died; nothing left except bones, disturbed only by the tide that still sluiced through the bottom of the boat’s hull, widening the rotten gaps in its sides. Fenn understood why the boat had been left to rot now. No Sargasson would ever rob a grave. He grabbed Tikki tightly and hurried back up the ladder onto the deck.

  Still shuddering with fright, he clambered onto the gunwale, scanning the horizon to see if he could find the church tower Halflin had drawn. Winds flattened the reeds to a rolling sea of green, but in the distance he saw a small, low speck sticking out through the green swathes. He checked the map again, jumped down from the Seiner and set off.

  By the time he reached the church tower, the icy creeks the sun had melted were now freezing over again and he was chilled to the bone. Only twenty feet of the tower still remained above ground. It was ancient; the walls were made of polished flint, encrusted with mottled lichens. On the corner of each wall, four ugly stone faces, with copper pipes sticking from their mouths, still leered over a village now far beneath the marsh. Someone had boarded up the windows to protect them from the ever-rising waters – but to no avail. Fenn pushed his way through one of the gaps and looked down into the guts of the tower where oil-black marsh water was climbing the stone steps. He twisted around to look up. The roof had long decayed so he could see the sky, but a few feet above his head the huge old bell still hung from an oak beam, its clapper rusted stiff and silent.

  Fenn lowered himself down and opened up the map again to get his bearings, looking out over the flats to find the other wrecks Halflin had marked. Cupping his hands around his eyes he could see one in the distance, sticking up starkly on the horizon. He frowned as he tried to gauge how long it would take him to reach it. Silvery mud, stretched on for miles, with no cover save for the scraggy clumps of glasswort and waxy tufts of purslane. He would be easily visible on such flat ground, unless he could think of a way to disguise himself. He remembered Lundy’s cloak of burweed and rushes.

  Around the tower grew flushes of water horsetail, speckled with its first buds. Fenn gathered an armful and some whippy stems of broom. Leaning against the tower and letting the sun-warmed stones heat his back, he set to work. He pulled the blanket out and cut the edges to make a tie. Then he made small nicks where a cape would cross his shoulders and wove a few strands of broom in between, then laced horsetail through until he’d covered the blanket completely. When he’d finished, he laid the cape on the ground to assess his work. It wasn’t as good as Lundy’s, but it’d do.

  He needed to get to the wreck before dark. In daylight, he stood half a chance of seeing where the quicksand was, but after dark he’d be done for. He walked a few, experimental steps out, just to see how wet the sands were. Within seconds his feet were being sucked in deep; it would be twice the effort to walk across if his every step was dragged down. From his viewing platform at the hut, Fenn had often spied on the Sargassons bringing their catch back from the creeks on sledges pulled by horses. To stop the horses being sucked into the mud, they fitted them with mud boots; wide pieces of wood to spread their weight. He needed something similar.

  Searching around, his eyes alighted on the loose planks over the windows. He prised them off and laid the wood flat on the ground, spiking his knife in to grind holes a few inches apart. Using strips torn from the sailcloth, he made webbing to strap them to his feet.

  Fenn picked up a few heavy stones that had fallen from the church tower and threw the grass cape over his shoulders. Then he stepped out onto the glistening mud. He didn’t sink, but nor could he move quickly. It was impossible to lift his feet high, so instead he perfected a type of skating shuffle, skimming over the wet mudflats. Each time he saw a patch of darker-coloured mud he took out one of the stones and threw it down. If it sank immediately, he knew there was quicksand and he’d slowly edge around it. If the stone remained visible, he knew he was safe. At his approach, egrets flapped up from tugging lugworms from the sand and splintered into the sky like shards of flint.

  The sea wind shivered the sands and the air dampened. Then the rain came, at first light, then so hard the mud jumped and spat, making a bank of deepening murk all around him. Fenn thought about turning back; he could at least shelter against the church tower, sleeping under the sailcloth. But there was a wet bank of mist between him and the shoreline and he wasn’t sure which way to go. He stopped and looked around, blinking as the water streamed off his cape and into his eyes and ears.

  Then he heard it. He pushed his scarf away from his ears and listened hard: a high-pitched whirr drifted over the marsh, accompanied by a thrashing sound like a giant propeller. Something was driving towards him like an enormous carving knife, slicing through the reed beds. It was a Swampscrew. The Terras had finally caught up with him.

  5

  Fenn flung himself down and spread his arms like a bat’s wings to make himself flatter. He’d never seen a Swampscrew before but Halflin had described them to him. He slowly turned his head to see how close it was. A cloud of silt was being thrown high into the air obscuring it; then suddenly it was in view, whirring and clanking, reducing the church tower to rubble, spitting stone in the air. The noise was deafening.

  The main body of the vehicle was made of polished steel and it was open-topped like a raft, with a rail enclosing the battalion of Terras it carried. At the front of the deck was a cabin and the rest of the deck was taken up by three fuel tanks. Its sides comprised huge steel plates, overlapping each other like the scales of an armadillo. Two giant cylinders, sharp as ploughshares turned like huge screws and left deep black scars in their wake as the Swampscrew was propelled forwards.

  The Swampscrew sliced down the bank towards the flats, leaving a huge spiral of peat behind it, like an enormous potato peeling. It churned relentlessly towards the spot where Fenn lay trembling on the ground, frozen in fear. The noise of ripped earth tore through his head and his teeth juddered with the vibrations. The Swampscrew was moving slowly but steadily; a hundred feet away, then eighty, now sixty. Fenn squeezed his eyes tight shut, clenching his teeth as the Swampscrew trundled on. If he moved they’d spot him immediately; if he didn’t move he’d be killed.

  Just as he could smell the fumes and the first sprays of mud spattered his cape, he heard a yell. The Swampscrew’s engine wound down and the huge cylinders spun to a standstill. Fenn took a gasp of air, terrified. They must have seen him.

  “We camp here!” the captain hollered. “Light’s going. Could be out on this bog here for
all we know. Don’t want to go miss him.”

  He signalled to the driver to cut the engine and hopped up onto the Swampscrew’s bow rail. He took out a telescope, sweeping over the flats while his men pegged a tarpaulin over the deck for the night’s shelter from the rain.

  For a brief moment Fenn couldn’t believe his luck. Forty feet more and he would have been crushed. But then it sunk in: he was too close to the Terras to slip away in daylight – he’d be spotted immediately. And moving after dark risked being sucked into the quicksand; a slow and frightening death. If any of the Terras looked hard in his direction, there was every chance they would see him; the tufts of purslane weren’t enough to cover the unnatural mound he made on the mudflats. Tikki chattered under the cloak; he could smell Fenn’s fright and balled up against him, whimpering. Fenn slowly shifted him to the warmth and dark of his jacket, hoping it might calm him. He pressed his cheek against the wet ground and cocked his ear to hear any snatches of their conversation that might give him a clue of what they planned to do.

  “The kid’s a tricky one,” he heard one of the Terras grumble.

  The captain jumped down from the deck next to the one who’d spoken, glaring hard at him. “That stunt at the Sunkyard may have caught us off guard, but there are two more of these beasts on the marsh.” He slapped the Swampscrew’s panels, like a rider satisfied with his mount. “Remember, he’s just a kid like all the others. Nothing we haven’t seen before – just another marsh rat. He’ll be lying low, probably in a wreck. Maybe even that one,” he continued as he pointed across the gleaming silver mud to the very wreck Fenn had been on his way to.

  “Can’t check them all!” one of the men complained, but the captain cuffed him on the head as he passed by. “That’s exactly what we do, then we burn them to the ground. The kid knows the marsh, but we’ve got the equipment,” he said. “We’re systematic. Organised. An army, not a straggle of Seaborns.”