“Where are you taking us?” Fathom asked the Terra guarding them, a weasel-faced man with a scraggy moustache covering a narrow, mean mouth.
“You’re honoured; you’re going to join the greatest labour force ever,” he sneered. His clothes were soaked through and his jowls hung tired and burnt red with the cold, like a chicken’s wattle. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, leaving a snail-slick. “After we’ve caught our quota,” he added morosely. Fenn realised he was talking about Seaborns. Once the truck was packed, the Terras got their rations; food was getting so scarce that only Chilstone’s elite guards got full supplies. Fenn made sure he was by Comfort’s side so he could slip Tikki out of her arms and hide him back under his shirt. It had crossed his mind to try and drive Tikki away onto the marsh, but Tikki was too tame now and would certainly have been caught by a wolf within hours, or, judging by the hunger-hollowed eyes of the guards, they would have happily turned him into a meal too.
The only time the children saw daylight was when the Terras opened the tarpaulin to jump out, looking for more stray Seaborns taking shelter in a shipwreck or in the roof space of a submerged house. From out of the eaves of a derelict windmill they winkled out one ancient old man – so shortsighted that he had to grope his way up onto the truck – and a woman hiding with him, who seemed to be his daughter, judging from the way she fretted over him. They looked Scotian with their flame-coloured hair, but neither of them spoke English, or else they were too afraid to talk, and they stared at the children dumbfounded. When the guard wasn’t looking, Fenn managed to snatch a glimpse through a chink in the canvas to try and work out where they were, but the snow made everything look the same under the endless vaulted white skies.
The children huddled together with Comfort squished down between them. Gulper was rocking unhappily, clutching his bony knees like he always did when he was at his most scared. Fathom tried patting his back, but he was in a daze of terror.
Amber nudged Gulper roughly in the ribs. “Hey, remember that thumb thing we used to do, Gulper? How’d we do it? I want to show Comfort,” she said.
Gulper shrugged indifferently, glazed and blank.
“C’mon!” she whispered in his ear. “For Comfort’s sake. She’s really scared.”
Gulper peered at Comfort and mustered all he had to shoulder away his fear and whispered, “Ever done Thumb Wars, Comfort?”
Comfort’s lips were clamped tight together to stop herself from crying and she shook her head miserably. Gulper swapped places with Amber and gripped Comfort’s hand.
“Well, you haven’t lived! Wanna play?”
He grabbed her hand, and locked their two thumbs together, his ugly bitten stub against hers – tiny, neat and somehow immaculate despite all they’d been through.
“Be gentle!” he pleaded. He made a show of gulping hard, as if he was afraid of Comfort’s strength. “Right, let’s do it. One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war!”
They wrestled their thumbs together, each time Gulper conceding to Comfort’s superior strength, sometimes putting up more of a fight to make her triumph sweeter. The two of them played through their fears while the other Seaborns looked on, even managing to smile a few times as they watched.
It was early evening by the time the truck rattled over a wide bridge and jolted to a rough halt, making everyone fall forwards. Fenn slid his hand beneath his shirt, and gave Tikki a tickle to show him everything was all right. For the next half an hour, they waited in the freezing cold. From the other side of the canvas, the air rang with an ugly orchestra of iron on stone: the brittle clatter of rock being hammered. Occasionally there came a dull boom of explosives in the distance. There was a constant chugging sound, and the relentless grind of engines and heavy machinery under strain. Suddenly a Terra slammed down the ramp at the back of the truck.
“Welcome to your new home!” he shouted, giving Fenn a hard clap on the shoulders and pushing him and the other children out. They shuffled forwards with the others, stumbling down the ramp, blinking into a bleak, white light. Fenn immediately grabbed hold of Amber and Comfort’s hands and pulled them closer. He knew they had to stick together – their lives might depend on it.
“You two!” he hissed to Gulper and Fathom, who had fallen behind a few paces. “Get over here!”
They were in a stony, pock-marked field less than a mile from the Wall. It looked like a reflection of the ocean it flanked; vast and grey. It was the first time Fenn had seen the Wall up close and he got a crick in his neck from looking up at the top of it, while its sheer height made him feel giddy. Around them were piles of rocks and raggedy children sat cross-legged, grading the stones according to their size, while women broke up larger boulders using massive lump hammers with handles taller than themselves.
It was a pitiful sight and the children winced to see how exhausted and scrawny they looked. In the entire compound, there wasn’t one spark of joy. The Shanties had been tough and rough, but even there friendships and loyalties sprang up between people; families stuck together. Here, men silently pulled sledges laden with rocks towards a wide canal, and five huge river barges were being loaded with the heavy blocks of stone. A team of stocky-legged cobs whinnied unhappily as they were harnessed to the barges to pull them through the wetlands to the Wall, where buttresses were being built to strengthen it. Through all of this, a set of rails ran down into a trough before entering an enormous black hole. The other end of the tracks led onto the shore where they met a pontoon bridge built from huge split tree trunks suspended on thick chains. The bridge led out to sea, rising and falling with the tides.
Now the sea mists were clearing as the day warmed up the children could see the outline of two huge Hellhulks, anchored out at sea. One had listed so violently to one side that its rudder was visible above the chopping waves. This was the Hercules, one of the first Fearzeros decommissioned by the Terra Firma when she ran aground and was turned into a prison. She was the first Hellhulk to take the place of the old Terra Firma Missions; Chilstone saw no point in taking up space on the land if Seaborns could be housed at sea, where they belonged. The Hercules had never been made secure and after years of heavy rains, she had keeled over, drowning the inmates whose prison-brigs were port-side. Now deserted, hundreds of gulls screeched and flapped around the gaping holes left on her deck where her gun turrets had been ripped out, and the ship was white with their droppings.
The other ship, the Brimstone, was blackened with grime and oil, only upright with the aid of enormous props: the trunks of firs harvested from the edges of the Sargassons’ forest. The ship was practically unrecognisable as a Fearzero now. The Brimstone had been stripped of its gun turrets too, and the gaps plugged with enormous chimneys belching smoke over the sky in thick brown clots. The hull was hidden beneath dozens of shacks, scabbing the ship’s sides like a canker. The little that could be seen of its iron hull revealed splits between the huge metal sheets where the rivets had rusted away so the twinkling of lights and fires inside were visible.
Where the bridge reached the ship’s side, it broadened into a wide platform on which stood four Terras in front of a giant drawbridge hacked into the Hellhulk. As Fenn watched, they shunted back the huge metal bolts securing the drawbridge, before cranking the iron handles either side. With its rusty chains groaning, the drawbridge slowly creaked down onto the pontoon and a horde of ragtag men, women and children were driven out from the bowels of the ship, down onto the bridge and back over to the shore. The Brimstone made Fenn think of something greedy; a gaping mouth with a tongue rolled out, bursting at the seams from gorging.
“Wait here!” the Terra shouted at them as soon as the last labourers disappeared into the deep wound of the mine. A whistle sounded and the labour force that had been waiting underground appeared on their way back to the Hellhulk, pushed into line by the Terra Trusties; prisoners who got special privileges for helping the Terras keep control.
If the people going into the mine looked in a sorry stat
e, it was nothing to how those coming out looked. Shambling along the bridge, they clumped together, not bumping or jostling each other, too exhausted for even that. They looked as if they had come from a wet fire; their skin was boiled red and their clothes were drenched. As soon as the last of them had stepped onto the bridge, the Trusties pushed the children into the crowds.
“Stay tight together!” Fenn whispered. “We have to stay together!” He pulled Amber and Comfort even closer, and Fathom and Gulper bundled in behind as they began to edge towards the Brimstone.
Seawater washed over their feet as the bridge bounced under the weight of so many. Green slime coated the wood, making it hard to stand up without slipping and Fenn suddenly lost his footing. Instantly he felt his hand being grabbed as he slid away towards the choppy waves. For a brief, happy second he was reminded of Halflin; a hand reaching down to him with the same gnarled and calloused skin, the same firm grip. Fenn’s heart skipped a beat, but instead of Halflin’s face he found himself looking into the eyes of a decrepit old man, his face brown and wrinkled as a crumpled-up bag. Watery eyes stared intently into his.
“I’m Humber,” he smiled as he helped steady him.
He was bow-legged and scrawny as a rook. When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple jumped in his throat like a frog in a bag. From his heavy-lidded eyes and pepper-black hair Fenn guessed he was Venetian, but having seen how a new set of clothes had turned himself into a Sargasson in so many people’s eyes, he knew such guesses were pointless. Seaborns were all have-nots – that was their distinct mark. It had been petty differences of hair and skin colour that made them fight each other instead of Terras, and even a true Seaborn, as Fenn was supposed to be, could easily have their webbed toes cut. Even so, it was too early to know if Humber could be trusted.
Seeing the suspicion in Fenn’s eyes, Humber shrugged sadly. “You’ll have to trust someone in here to survive,” he said, staring ahead as if he was thinking aloud. “You’re all new, aren’t you?” he asked, glancing at the children. Fenn nodded hesitantly.
“Listen to me. If you don’t trust anyone, you’ve got no one to watch your back. Like him.” He looked at the man in front of him as they tramped back towards the ship. Fenn followed his gaze. The woman walking by his side was one of the newly caught Seaborns. She was pale and pinched, and probably hadn’t eaten for a week. She slipped her hand in the man’s pocket and pulled out a mouldy piece of rice bread, before tucking it back in her own.
“And she doesn’t trust anyone either,” Humber said, as the bread slipped from her pocket into the mouth of a little boy standing just waist-high. “And so it goes on. And on. Seaborn pitted against Seaborn.” He shook his head sadly, but slipped a wink at the child. “Safest place in your tummy, eh? Clever fella,” he said.
Humber leant in towards Amber and Fenn as they shuffled on up the bridge towards the Hellhulk. “Keep tight hold of each other when you get inside. They’ll try to separate you. Thick as thieves, remember.” He wagged his finger at them. “Come and find me. Deck Three.”
Fenn nodded. Some instinct in him told him Humber could be trusted, and Halflin had always told him to trust instinct above all else. He grabbed hold of Amber’s coat and pulled Comfort so she was directly between them, but Gulper and Fathom were already being pushed over to the other side of the bridge by people surging between them, struck by the force of Terras shoving up from behind. Fenn managed to grab the collar of Gulper’s jacket and yanked them both back towards him.
They had reached the end of the bridge under the shadow of the ship’s prow, soaring over them like a rusty old axe. Gulls screeched in the air and the wind rattled the loose sheets of steel, so the whole ship clanked and grumbled like a failing machine. They were far enough out at sea for the water to be getting rough, and waves slapped up in the gap between the end of the bridge and the drawbridge. Amber and Fenn jumped across, keeping hold of Comfort, but when they landed on the other side, they realised that Fathom and Gulper had got separated from them again.
They were in the bowels of the ship, a huge room, its cavernous ceiling encrusted with rusting pipework that wormed its way around the sides of the rotting hull. Odd chinks of light crept in from the splitting sheets of iron that clad the ship, and from the tiny oil lamps fixed to the bulkheads, but it was gloomy with smoke. Crumbling iron ladders led up to the higher decks, with steel-grilled walkways braced between. Wherever there were junctions or ledges – under ladders or between the bulkheads – people had made themselves tiny living areas where they had to sleep. There were at least a thousand people in this room alone, with more trudging down from the upper decks to collect their rations. Amber and Fenn held hands tightly to keep from being swept along with the crowd as the drawbridge was winched up behind them. It clunked shut and they were plunged into semi-darkness.
One of the Trusties announced over a loudspeaker that rations had arrived, and in their desire to be first, more and more prisoners surged from behind. Fenn grabbed hold of Comfort and Amber’s hands even more tightly. He looked around, searching the crowds for Humber, but like Fathom and Gulper, he too had disappeared. Ahead, there were rails, like cattle stalls, where two brutish Trusties were forcing people into separate compartments. The sudden influx meant there was a bottleneck and no one was moving properly any more.
There was a sudden commotion as a man started roaring at one of the Trusties, as he tried to drag his child away from him. The child was screaming too. He was large and burly, with fists as big as mallets, but the Trusty didn’t hesitate to pull out a truncheon and start beating him. He blew his whistle and Terra guards ran over. Within seconds they swamped the man and dragged him away. There were at least thirty prisoners to one Trusty, but no one turned to help the man and his child. The Trusties could be even more vicious than the Terras and no one wanted to make a move that could hurt them, or someone they loved. Humber suddenly reappeared by Fenn’s shoulder.
“I thought I told you lot to stick together?” he hissed angrily, herding them towards the bulkhead. “C’mon, keep close!”
They pushed through the last few people and found themselves by a rickety steel ladder that ran up one of the walls. They clambered up and saw a second stairway that led upwards again. They scrambled up that one too, scratching their shins on the jagged edges of missing rungs, but before they reached the top, Humber leant down and yanked each of them through. Fathom and Gulper were already waiting.
“Always stick together!” Humber said. “Rule number one!” Before Fenn could reply, he’d turned his back on them. “This way,” he said over his shoulder.
Humber pushed aside a rough cloth and they found themselves on the mid-deck of the Hellhulk, in a wide cabin spanning a quarter of the Hellhulk’s length.
“The kitchens – the best deck,” Humber explained. Gulper nodded in agreement. “Got a bit of air in here, but not too cold.” He gestured to a giant chimney made from old corrugated pipe, which nearly filled the opening left by the removal of the gun turret and pierced through the floor of the next deck. “Up there blows daggers for draughts.”
All around the bulkheads and off the deck beams, old sacks and nets hung like spiders’ webs in which people were already trying to sleep in them. In the centre of the deck, others huddled for warmth around the chimney, which had several holes hacked out; so there were at least three separate fireplaces in which to cook. Strips of firelight spoked out from these, as bright as sunbeams. Several women stood with their backs to them, working together to cook in large iron pots hanging from bars directly over the flames. Aged men and women bundled in old rags, squatted on two huge oak sleepers flanking the stove, like a shelf of long-forgotten washing. They were huddled together and drinking from tin mugs, making steam billow around their heads. Toddlers and young children played games with stones and chalk at their feet. Around each child’s neck dangled a spoon with a hole punched through the stem, threaded on a piece of string or leather lace.
“See them?” Humber
asked, pointing at the spoons. “Get yourselves one of those … or a mug, or you won’t get nothin’ from the pots.” He cast an eye over them. “I’ll sort something out,” he said kindly. One of the women lifted a cauldron out of the fire and called the children from their playing. They rushed over, dipping their spoons straight in, before scrapping with each other for bigger portions.
“We try to get the kids and the olds fed first,” Humber explained as he pushed them towards the fire.
The old men and women nudged and elbowed each other along irritably, grumbling at the interruption, but eventually they budged up enough for the children to squash in. Immediately their clothes began to steam as they dried. A scraggy little boy wearing a tunic, which looked as if it had been made out of stitched blankets, handed Humber a mug of soup from the pot. But instead of drinking it, Humber passed it straight to Gulper. Gulper didn’t wait to slurp it down, although before he could finish the lot, Humber prised it from his hands and passed it on to a little girl sitting by his side, looking up at them with big hungry eyes. Fenn smiled at them. Moray had got it wrong. He’d said the Seaborns were too busy fighting each other to fight the Terra Firma, but not all of them. There was still kindness if you looked for it.
“The first days will be the hardest,” Humber continued. “That’s when the Trusties get the sum of you. See how much they can push you around; see if you’ll be trouble.” He nodded surreptitiously at the Trusty that Fenn had seen beating the prisoner earlier. “But whatever you do—” he lifted a warning finger— “never, ever get on the wrong side of Lazlo. Mean as a snake with backache, that one. Once saw him kill a man with his bare hands … for a piece of bread smaller than this.” He stuck up his thumb. He pointed to a hammock halfway along the Hellhulk’s side, lying snugly in an alcove between two steel struts.
“And that’s mi’ kipper,” he said laughing. “We’re like sardines here, aren’t we?” He nudged the old man next to him in the ribs who managed a puny smile. “I’ll sort out a good pitch for you lot.”
Fenn Halflin and the Seaborn Page 12
