“Raise the alarm,” I said softly, swallowing hard to keep anything else in my stomach firmly in place. One of the militia turned to obey before another voice rang out with more authority.
“No,” Dan said, “arrêtez.” The shape kept moving towards the radio set.
“Detener. Espere,” Lucien added in Spanish telling him to stop and wait. The shape froze and retreated back to their original position.
“There’s no point in causing panic,” Dan said, “and waking everyone up at daybreak with this kind of news is a bad idea; panic spreads like a virus and we need to control it.” He stepped away from us, closer to the sea wall, and flicked the cigarette away into the wind.
“People will see this when they wake up and be frightened, there’s nothing we can do about that, but we can reassure them by not panicking ourselves.”
Lucien muttered along in Spanish as Dan spoke, somehow recognising the militia members and knowing that the two French among them spoke enough English to not require a translation but that their Spaniard had to be caught up with events.
“Send someone to fetch Mitch,” he asked Lucien, “and another for Neil.” Two of the militia were dispatched to bring the men Dan wanted as he stepped into the covered guard post and picked up each of the three radios in turn. One led to the watchtower, another to the front gate and the last to the sky fort high above the road approach to Sanctuary. He spoke softly and slowly, alerting the other positions to the unexpected arrival. Only the people of the fort were unaware by the time he called them, as their main focus was on keeping watch inland.
“We were about to raise the alarm,” the voice from the watchtower said. Dan looked up at the far cliff on the opposite side of the bay as he spoke. None of us could see the watchtower in the early morning gloom but that didn’t stop him from trying to make the physical connection as he spoke.
“Don’t do that,” he said, “a flare would only cause panic and show whoever that is out there how long it took for us to notice them.” He gave his instructions to them and signed off just as Mitch jogged up to our position.
“What’s all the hullabaloo-ohmyfuckingchristonabike!” he said, the comedic curse rolling into one single expletive to accompany his open-mouthed stare at the big boat anchored off our shore. The sun crept higher in the far east with every second, and if I stared at something for long enough I could actually see the world growing lighter as though someone was slowly dialling up the picture with a manual control.
“Mitch,” Dan greeted him solemnly, “could I trouble you to take over here for me?” Mitch nodded his assent, still staring out at the vast intruder with his mouth hanging open. He seemed to snap out of it quickly and looked round for a subordinate to command.
“Alejandro?” he said to the Spanish boy of the militia. His grasp of Spanish and his natural Scottish sound made the language seem infinitely more guttural. “Los demás,” he said. The others.
Alejandro, what seemed like all fifteen years old of him, scampered off down the pier to where the team of people kept on standby were asleep.
“What do you want us to do?” Mitch asked Dan.
“Nothing,” he said as he pointed to his dog to stay on the ancient stone of the sea wall’s walkway. “Keep their eyes open and their guns ready.” With that he waked a short distance and hopped down into the belly of a small boat, little more than a large canoe really, and started the tiny outboard motor.
“Whoa, where the hell are you going?” I asked him.
“You mean where the hell are we going,” he replied, gesturing to the tiny bench seat opposite him.
“Oh no,” I said warningly, “for one, you’re – we’re – not going out there. For two, I need to do some stuff before you drag me out there.”
“Go do your stuff then,” Dan told me.
I went to the nearest building that could accommodate my needs to save climbing back up to the castle and my own rooms. I did what I needed to do, finishing with a mouth rinse of bottled water and a squeeze of precious toothpaste that didn’t belong to me. As I tried to gargle it, the third wave of dizzy nausea swept over me and threatened to undo all of the repair work I’d just undertaken. I managed to keep that one down by breathing slowly and staying very still with my eyes closed until it passed. When I walked back to the boat Dan had occupied I found it empty and saw Marie storming down the slope towards the docks with a tired little boy on one hip and a look of biblical fury on her face.
I sped up, despite not wanting to at all, because I felt some sense of protection over Dan and didn’t want to have him torn to shreds by Marie. I needn’t have worried, because all of her anger and frustration was directed at the now clearly visible tanker ship anchored a mile or two out to our immediate front. Others began emerging with the dawn as they did most days. Fishermen prepared to go out to work, militia members woke to take their turn at the guard posts and allow those who had been up all night to get a few precious minutes of sleep ahead of their official finish times. One by one, all of them saw the overnight arrival and all of them froze in uncertainty.
The standby force had arrived in a collectively groggy group spurred into immediate action by the shrill arrival of Alejandro having woken them only minutes before, and Mitch set them to work, spreading out his forces in preparation for any eventuality.
“Change of plan,” Dan said quietly from behind my shoulder like a bad ventriloquist. “We’re not going out to meet them.”
“You mean not now Marie’s watching?” I asked. He ignored my question, electing not to give the obvious answer.
“We’ll watch them for today,” he told me, “see what they’re up to. But make no mistake, kid,” he said in a dark tone, “this isn’t going to end well for somebody.”
Writer’s Cramp
Leah stopped writing, putting down the pen to massage some life back into her right hand. She had lost track of time, having spent a few hours so deep in thought that she had neglected to break after midday and eat. By early afternoon her absence had been noticed and her daughter came looking for her.
“There you are!” Adalene beamed as she burst through the old wooden door and startled the sleeping Ares into jumping up and yapping a flurry of shrill barks at the sudden intrusion. The puppy stopped barking, sneezed for no discernible reason, and sat to scratch an oversized ear with an even more oversized paw.
“I’m here, chérie,” Leah said as she leaned back to the sound of her clicking back and rubbed her hand.
“What are you doing?” she asked as she did that curious thing so many children did and stood far too close to her mother so that she couldn’t even see her clearly. Easing back the chair and standing, Leah kissed her on the forehead on the way up, letting out a squeak of a groan.
“I’m being silly and sitting still for too long,” Leah told her, “you know what happens when you sit still for too long?”
“You turn into stone,” Adalene said with confidence.
“No,” Leah corrected her gently, “you get cramp. Who told you you’ll turn to stone?”
“Papa,” she replied, allowing a touch of uncertainty to creep into her voice.
“Ah,” Leah said, trying and failing to be annoyed at Lucien for filling their daughter’s head with so many untruths, “he turns to stone if he stays still, but normal people like you and me just get cramp.”
“But why Papa and not us?” she asked seriously.
“Because he’s a goblin,” Leah replied with the same confidence and seriousness, then broke into a smile as the young girl stared at her to find the truth in her words. She erupted into giggles when Leah’s face cracked.
“He’s not a goblin,” the girl said, laughing.
“No,” Leah replied, “but he is a silly man for filling your head with nonsense. Come on, I’m hungry.”
“But you missed the midday meal,” Adalene said with concern as they walked out of the room where Leah had set up her writing studio.
“Then we’ll have to s
neak into the kitchens,” she told her daughter conspiratorially. The girl matched her mischievous expression and giggled again. They took a route via the outside of the castle walls, still inside the town, and went the long way to the kitchens that had evolved much over the eighteen years since Leah had first walked up to the gates and begged for help. She was only a few years older than her own daughter was then, and the two girls could not have been more worlds apart if they came from different planets.
Adalene was a young girl, prone towards daydreams and make-believe, but she had been raised as a resourceful member of their society and her education had been focused on the real-life things she needed to know. She had learned the basics of reading and writing both French and English, and was adept at picking up a lot of Spanish verbally. She had learned mathematics and science, much as she would have done in school, but she had learned what she needed to learn for a reason.
She could send and receive messages in multiple languages, should the need arise. She could translate between members of their wider group who had yet to learn a second language. She could calculate distances between places on maps, and work out the equations to tell her how long it would take to walk, or ride, or even drive between them. As for the science she learned, she hadn’t even known she was being educated. She was taught how to purify water using the power of the sun. She learned engineering from studying how the water wheel worked in the bubbling stream falling from the cliffs and how that in turn moved the grindstone inside the barn beside it. She learned electrical engineering by building her own wind-powered battery bank using parts of long-dead cars.
She learned domestic skills and could gut and clean a fish before she turned five years old, as well as being able to safely cook and start a fire to stay warm and dry. She understood how to work a dog as support and protection, she kept a wary eye on the horizon out of ingrained habit, and even if she hadn’t realised she was being taught the skills of survival she had learned from the best.
Leah led them into the kitchens via the small side door where the scraps were taken out to travel the quickest route to the pig pens. Feeling very much like they were sneaking around where they shouldn’t be, Leah told Ares to sit and stay in a patch of shade under the low-hanging branches of a fruit tree. The dog did as he was told, grumbling comically as he flopped down to rest his chin on both front paws in an obvious sulk. Slipping inside, and despite having the complete freedom to roam anywhere inside the walls, including the private rooms of the residents if she had justification, Leah looked around for a friendly face. She found every face looking back at her to be friendly, but one was even more so than the others.
Pip, then in her late thirties, was still the diminutive lovely who had ventured across half of Europe with them, even though her adventurous nature was strictly limited to having tried a different kind of hot chocolate before bed once. She was still every bit as loving and selfless as the day they had rescued her from the hell she had been cast into straight after those early days of fear and shock, and her face lit up to see the woman she had first met as a young girl. They went over to her in the busy kitchen, past the women peeling and chopping vegetables for the evening meal to where Pip was in the group tidying away the remains of lunch.
When Leah had first met her she had been terribly unwell and very weak to the point that Kate had kept a tight hold on her until she was stronger. She had suffered with a miscarriage soon after her capture and imprisonment in what the legends now called ‘Slaver’s bay’, which made it sound far more grand than the harsh truth; she had been thrown into a dirty ring of shipping containers and had to survive for months without even the basic medical or nutritional requirements being met.
Regardless of her shaky start in the new world, she had prospered in Sanctuary and had two children of her own. Both boys, who she raised with their father – a Frenchman working on the fishing docks –doted on their mother for many reasons, one of which being her ability to sneak them treats from the big kitchens.
“Pip,” Leah said warmly as she reached an arm out to swamp the tiny woman’s shoulders and hug her. “How are the boys?”
“Oh, they’re wonderful,” she said with a genuine smile. “Little shits sometimes, just like their father, but wonderful all the same.” She turned to Adalene and crouched slightly to bring their faces level. “And how are you my little lovely?” she said, embarrassing the girl. She smiled back at the small woman saying nothing until Leah saved her by changing the subject.
“I got caught up doing something and completely missed lunch,” she explained, “and the little general here came to find out why.” Leah leaned closer and made a show of checking over both shoulders for sign of anyone watching or listening. “Any chance of, err, you know…” Her eyebrows asked the rest of the question making Pip laugh and cover her mouth self-consciously as she always did. She needn’t have. She was still an attractive woman even after seventeen years of living in a kind of hybrid medieval state of technology mixed with the odd electrical item thrown in for good measure.
“Oh,” Pip said as she played along in character and shot furtive glances around the big kitchen, “I think I can sneak you a sandwich… Adalene? Keep watch for me?” The girl grinned at what she thought was a charade but was beginning to suspect was real-life danger. It didn’t occur to her that the highest power in the entire region other than her grandparents was her mother, so any consequences were likely to be irrelevant. Adalene kept watch as Leah and Pip went to work putting slices of cold meat and broad leaves of salad between two slices of bread large enough to be used as cover should the world erupt into a gun battle without warning. Thick wedges of homemade butter, churned in the town for over fifteen years, adorned the bread before the contents were squashed together and wrapped in a linen cloth. Leah thanked Pip and retrieved her lookout as she made a big show of holding the wrapped sandwich down low and walking fast to make it obvious she had something to hide. Adalene ran along beside her, unable to contain her giggles as they burst from the side door and broke into a panicked run.
“Ares, heel,” Leah yelled as they ran laughing towards the direction of the sea. The ungainly dog, sparked into consciousness so rudely after his sulk had become a genuine afternoon nap in the warm shade, followed and yapped excitedly as he tried to keep up and not fall over in a tangle of oversized paws and long legs.
They stopped running, their laughter taking their breath away more than the sudden exercise, and dropped onto the rocks at the very beginning of the long sea wall to stare out over the waves. Little things like that, not that Leah did them intentionally, made her a very fun mother to have. Adalene adored her, and that adoration was returned tenfold. In that specific case, it was returned by half of a huge sandwich which Leah pulled the thick crusts from as her daughter was at that awkward age when her molars began to fall out to be replaced by her adult teeth.
The crusts sailed through the air one after another, thrown expertly to the dog, who needed only to open his mouth and accept the tasty treats as reward for keeping up. Instead of casually snatching them from the air, Ares allowed his excitement to rule him and leapt frantically to overextend himself and flip in mid-air. Landing with an ugly thud, the dog regained his feet and desperately searched the ground for the crusts until he located them and swallowed them whole.
The two women, one very young and one feeling much older than she truly was, looked out over the sea and lapsed into silence as they ate.
“Tell me what you are writing down, Mama?” Adalene asked sweetly. Leah said nothing for a moment, just sucked air in through her nose noisily before letting it out after a while. She didn’t have the heart to tell her. Couldn’t bring herself to describe the fear and the doubt she experienced when she first found out she was pregnant with the girl sitting beside her. She thought about telling her parts of the rest of that particular tale, but the atrocities the pirates visited on innocent people was a story not for the ears of a ten year old.
“Just so
mething that happened before you were born, chérie,” Leah told her. “Something not very nice, and that meant I had to do things that weren’t nice either, you know, to keep everyone here safe like I always try to.” Adalene didn’t press her for more, just sat and enjoyed the time in the sun when she had managed to steal her mother away from the town and everyone else for a few minutes all of her own.
Atrocities
I’d heard the word enough times, but I’d never experienced it. Not truly. Not until that point in my life. On the rare occasions I’d managed to get Dan and Mitch to open up about the experiences of their past I had learned how seeing what other humans could do to one another, for whatever reason, left a permanent mark on the souls of those bearing witness to it.
Mitch had told me about his experiences in East Africa, about how he had to reconcile fighting child soldiers and had actually been okay with being put in the position of returning fire and killing them. He had reconciled that as a simple matter of survival, and while he hated the situation he reserved his real anger for the manipulative bastards who indoctrinated young boys and girls and put the weapons in their hands.
He had told me about a time in Afghanistan, when a man occupying one of the machine gun positions on the lonely, dusty hilltop they had been ordered to defend took a bullet high in the thigh. He looked at his empty hands as he told me the tale, his mind conjuring the blood he described as it ran into the endless dust and turned into a dark brown paste that stuck to every part of him until the young man stopped screaming and went still. His ghostly pale face told Mitch what had happened, and the bullet which had splintered his thigh bone had sent sharp fragments up into his groin to transform the blood vessels into a ruined mess. He told me how looking into the eyes of the soldier, not much more than a boy, had brought home all of the cruel brutality of humankind.
He shook off the spell of memory and smiled as he said how they had returned that violence on their enemy with all the discipline and force of the British Army, but I knew his smile was as false as his bravado.
Piracy: The Leah Chronicles (After it Happened Book 8) Page 11
