Silo and the Rebel Raiders

by Veronica Peyton

  “Morons! Do I have to do everything myself?”

  And to Silo’s horror he unslung a bow. He stood braced against the mast as he reached for an arrow; his eyes, alive with malice, were intent on Silo—who saw death staring him in the face, for it seemed impossible that Elgarth could miss from such close range. But then, suddenly and mysteriously, the knowledge worked a fierce change in him. His fear was gone and in its place came a raging tide of fury, for was he not Silo Zyco, son of Zenda, son of Aquinus the Accursed? And he had been unjustly accused; he had been hunted and threatened and persecuted, and he would stand for it no more. His fists clenched and his blood boiled within him. He fixed Elgarth with his most powerful stare, and with his rage came a brain wave, one of glorious, fiendish, malevolent brilliance.

  “Stay here, Maximillian,” he said. “And hang on tight—really, really tight.”

  Silo seized the ax that Rankly had left embedded in the timbers. His rage seemed to fill him with a superhuman strength, and he wrenched it free and tucked it under his belt. He sprang from the shelter of the crow’s nest and then he was scrambling down the rigging, barely conscious of the nauseating drop beneath him, blind to the arrows that whistled past his head, intent only on reaching his goal—the grappling hook that lay lodged in the mast. He arrived, then grabbed at a length of dangling rigging, looping it through his belt and knotting it tight. And thus secured, he turned his attention to the rope attached to the grappling hook—the straining rope that held the two ships bound together.

  And Elgarth, busy fitting his next arrow, suddenly realized what he was about to do. “No!” he cried. “Don’t! I won’t shoot again, I promise!”

  Too late. Silo was swinging the ax with all the strength at his command, and the blade bit deep. The rope parted, and as it did so the two ships sprang apart with the force of a coiled spring, dislodging a shower of Bucket Heads from the rigging. And Elgarth, who had climbed the highest, traveled the farthest. As the masts whipped apart he was hurled from the rigging as though from a catapult: high, high into the air, revolving as he went, startling seagulls with his passing. Elgarth was flying. He was soaring up into a blue sky beneath the arch of the rainbow—and there he seemed to hang for a second, a tiny figure spread eagle against the sky. Beneath him lay the city, bigger than any he had ever seen or imagined, surrounded by its glittering network of canals—and then suddenly it was hurtling toward him at terrifying speed. Elgarth was screaming, and his howls of terror were abruptly cut short as he plummeted into the waters of Ludgate Hill with an almighty splash.

  Silo had no time to enjoy the spectacle; he too had been jerked from his foothold, and for a few terrible seconds he found himself falling headfirst, but then there was a wrench around his midriff that knocked all the wind out of him, and he found himself swinging above the deck of the Sea Pig like a pendulum. The rope tied to his belt had held, and he was looking down onto a mass of struggling, upended bodies—for as the two ships righted themselves everyone aboard had been sent reeling and tumbling about the decks. Cries of pain and astonishment could be heard, together with some very bad language. And into this scene of pandemonium came enemy reinforcements. The Unsinkable, next in the line of battle, was bearing down on them at a spanking pace, and her captain steered her dead at the Sea Pig.

  “Brace yourselves!” cried Black Tom as he staggered to his feet. “Arms at the ready!”

  The Sea Pig shook from end to end as the Unsinkable crashed into her stern, smashing the steering wheel and a barrel of booze Black Tom kept beside it for emergencies. And he had one on his hands now, for the collectors aboard the Unsinkable were massing for attack, donning their helmets and shouldering their clubs, readying themselves for battle. Already their leader, a towering giant of a man, was poised in the bows, preparing to leap down onto the quarterdeck of the stricken Sea Pig.

  But Old Elijah stood there, upright and unafraid, with one hand upraised in admonishment. “Stop this madness!” he cried. “ ’Tis not the living we should be fighting, but the undead!”

  “You smell fit to wake them! Bath time, Granddad!”

  The collector stooped, seized Old Elijah by the throat, and tossed him neatly over the side. And as he did so there was another crash. The crew of the Unbeatable had finished their makeshift gangplank, and now they dropped it down onto the Sea Pig’s deck, shattering her guardrails and sending her listing and lurching under the impact. And for the Sea Pig this was the final blow. She had been worm-eaten and unseaworthy at the start of their voyage, but now, after the sequence of shocks she had suffered, she was mortally wounded.

  Silo looked down into her open hatches and saw that all was chaos down below. The sea was gushing in, sweeping her from stem to stern, and carrying with it a tangled mass of ship’s stores, the furnishings of Black Tom’s cabin, and a flotilla of empty booze bottles. And above decks things were no better, for now the combined forces from the Unbeatable and the Unsinkable were storming aboard. Black Tom and his crew were retreating and Silo, swinging helplessly above the deck at a rope’s end, had a ringside view of their desperate last stand. The first mate was dueling with a toasting fork, the ship’s cook was laying about him with his frying pan, and Black Tom wielded his club with the strength of ten men, roaring words of encouragement to his crew. But no man, however powerful, could withstand the overwhelming odds pitted against him, and as Silo watched, the gallant band of defenders was beaten back, and back, and back, until finally they stood at bay in the Sea Pig’s bows and Mrs. Morgan’s voice, shrill and exultant, rose over the clamor of battle.

  “Kill them!” she cried. “Kill them all!”

  And then Silo heard the sound of laughter from high above him. Mystified, he stared up at the soaring frontage of St. Paul’s—and to his astonishment he saw a great bearded figure staring back down at him. It was the statue of the man who stood atop the portico, but now he was tilted out at an impossible angle. He had a chain around his chest and seemed to hover suspended for a moment, his stone beard rippling in an invisible wind, and then a woman’s voice rang out: “Bombs away!”

  The statue fell. Silo had a confused impression of its stern features glowering at him as it plummeted past, and then it crashed headfirst onto the bows of the Unsinkable. It must have been massively heavy, for its progress was unchecked and it vanished, with a flash of almighty stone feet and a rending of timbers, into the gaping hole it had torn there. The ships rocked under the impact, the fighting stopped dead, and there was a moment of stunned silence. A crowd of collectors gathered around the hole and stared into it in amazement, as though barely able to credit its existence. And then, with a delightful and surprising suddenness, the Unsinkable began to sink.

  A chorus of cheers rang out overhead and Silo looked up to see a head peering over the parapet of St. Paul’s, and then another, and then a whole row of them. And then a multitude of hands were casting ropes over the edge, a great mass of them snaking down from the skies and splashing into the water all around. A woman in a purple coat sprang onto the pediment where the statue had once stood. She raised a sword aloft and cried out in a mighty voice: “Death to the Division! Long live the Raiders!”

  Fearlessly she leaped out into space and slid down the centermost rope, her belt stuffed with weapons and her dreadlocks flying in the wind.

  Orlando, watching from the balcony, fairly swelled with pride. “That’s my sister!” he cried. “It’s Val!”

  It was Valeria the Violent, and behind her followed her Raider band. Suddenly the air around and above them was full of flying figures. The façade of St. Paul’s was alive with Raiders, score upon score of them, all rappelling down with their weapons at the ready and the light of battle in their eyes. The collectors on the decks of the Sea Pig, the Unsinkable, and the Unbeatable stared up in amazement, and many took a boot full in the face as the Raiders hurtled down from the skies. And then the fight was on again—but now the odds had changed drastically, for astonishingly the deserted city of the An
cients was populated, and populated with friends.

  Silo saw figures appearing in the windows of the buildings all around them, and there was a rattling and a clanking as they hoisted heavy lengths of dripping chain from beneath the waves, blocking off the streets on either side of St. Paul’s. Now there could be no escape. The fleet had sailed into the very heart of the Raiders’ secret base, and into an inescapable trap. The tables had been turned with astonishing speed, and now the enemy found themselves hopelessly outnumbered. There were, Silo saw, figures climbing on the rooftops, their dark silhouettes forming a long line along Ludgate Hill: hundreds of Raiders wearing horned helmets or bright bandanas. And they were hurling missiles down on the enemy ships. The collectors aboard the Undefeatable and the Unavoidable were cowering under showers of roof tiles. The Unwelcome was under bombardment from bits of balustrade, the Unstoppable was struck by a flying chimney, and the Unvanquished, bringing up the rear, was particularly unlucky. A group of Raiders had dislodged a tall spire, and when they tipped it over the parapet it flew through the air like a javelin, impaling the vessel neatly amidships.

  In a matter of moments the once-proud fleet was reduced to a state of chaos, and the unwilling seamen who had been press-ganged at Parris Port were abandoning their posts. They leaped over the sides and swam to safety and the ships of the fleet were left adrift, colliding with buildings and each other. And now yet more Raiders rained down from the rooftops, rappelling from buildings the length of Ludgate Hill, leaping from windows and swinging from ropes, whooping and cheering as they boarded the Division’s fleet and fell upon the hapless collectors.

  Dizzy with relief, Silo pulled himself back into the rigging and enjoyed a panoramic view of the battle as it unfolded before him. Valeria the Violent and Black Tom were fighting side by side, sending the enemy reeling before their combined assault. Growler, wild with excitement, leaped from the balcony to aid his master. The valiant dog dropped like a little hairy bomb and sank his teeth deep into the neck of an astonished collector. Ruby and Drusilla followed him into the fray, shinning down a rope onto the deck of the Sea Pig. Old Elijah climbed back aboard, only to be felled by a flying marlinspike. Mrs. Morgan, almost beside herself with fury, was screaming orders from the Unbeatable’s quarterdeck until a flying frying pan struck her neatly between the shoulder blades and knocked her clean over the side. And she had company, for scores of panic-stricken collectors were jumping overboard and the waters of Ludgate Hill were thick with bobbing Bucket Heads. Raider reinforcements were launching dinghies out of the windows of Ancient buildings and rowing to board the enemy ships, cheered as they went by the Parris Port seamen. The tide of the battle had turned, and Silo suddenly remembered Maximillian. He set off back up to the crow’s nest. The confused sounds of battle drifted up from below: the clash of steel on steel and club on head, the howls of the collectors, the cheers of the Raiders, bangs and splashes, the crash of falling spars, the triumphant barking of Growler and, faint but unmistakable, “Huurugh! Huurugh! Huuur-ugh!”

  And in the blue sky overhead, Daisy’s rainbow faded and vanished as the sun shone forth, flooding the sparkling waters of Ludgate Hill with a golden late-afternoon light.

  Silo experienced a rare glow of satisfaction, for it was his gift of the seeing that had set this tangled chain of events into motion. In seeking to warn the Islanders of their impending doom, he had brought about the destruction of the very expedition that had threatened them, and now the Island would remain festering quietly amid the marshes as the wide world passed it by, its inhabitants free to pursue their lives untroubled by the madness of Mrs. Morgan. The battle was won and he had changed the course of history: a small and muddy corner of history admittedly, but he thought—no, he knew, and knew for certain—that greater glories lay ahead. For was he not a seer? Suddenly he saw his gift in a new light: as a blessing conferred on a lucky few. He and Maximillian were members of an elite brotherhood. They were young yet and on the small side, but they possessed the power to influence events as yet undreamed of, and Silo vowed that their gift should be used to further the cause of freedom and justice in the Kingdom Isles. He was eager to share his revelation, but when he arrived at the crow’s nest he thought better of it, for Maximillian looked very small and woebegone as he crouched in its shattered remains.

  “Is it safe now, Silo?” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Silo. “Everything’s fine. And by the way—nice work with the vomit.”

  The stretch of water in front of St. Paul’s was a mass of wreckage, and ships’ boats plied to and fro among it. The enemy had surrendered, and what remained of their fleet was scattered the length of Ludgate Hill—or Ludgate Canal, as the Raiders more accurately called it. The Parris Port seamen were watching from the windows of the surrounding buildings as the Raiders rowed hordes of defeated collectors across to the Undefeatable and the Unavoidable, there to be battened down beneath the hatches until some means could be devised of disposing of them. All now flew the flag of the Raiders, and a small raft, ingeniously constructed from barrels and a hatch cover, was weaving its way among them. It was Silo’s handiwork and he stood in the stern, paddle in hand, proudly surveying the battered ships of the enemy fleet and savoring the joys of victory.

  Maximillian sat in the bows. “Orlando’s waving to us,” he said. “I think he wants a lift.”

  Orlando was standing on the deck of the Unbeatable, and he grinned down at them as they approached. His pockets were bulging, he wore a splendid new waistcoat, and a fat gold chain was slung around his neck.

  “Just been doing a spot of looting,” he explained as Silo brought his raft skimming alongside. “The spoils of victory and all that.” He sprang aboard, rocking the raft violently, and managed to catch Maximillian neatly by the collar just before he toppled over the side. “I got you some presents.” He handed Silo a telescope and Maximillian a pot of strawberry jam, then observed the scene of chaos all around with a look of benign satisfaction. “Well, that worked out well, didn’t it? When you stop and think about it, this is the logical place to have a secret base. Weird we never thought of it really. And apparently there’s a pretty good restaurant in Paternoster Dock—it’s through that gap in the arch there. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  Silo paddled the little raft out from under the looming façade of St. Paul’s, and as he did so the Raiders’ secret base was revealed in all its glory. The surrounding streets were packed with shipping, and Valeria’s flagship, the Beast of Bedlam, loomed high over a ragtag armada of coasters and fishing boats. The Raider crews were beginning to gather in Paternoster Dock, and when Silo paddled through the broken arch it was easy to see why. It had evidently been a square in Ancient times, and the buildings that surrounded it were flooded to the depth of two or three stories. Wooden pontoons, floating at a convenient level just below the windows, were moored alongside, all bearing a cargo of tables and benches. Canvas awnings and a host of signs advertising inns and restaurants hung overhead: the Octopus, the Raiders’ Rest, the Boat and Barrel, the Plaice to Go, and the Plaice to Eat. Scores of small boats were tied up alongside and firelight glowed in the Ancient buildings. Cooks and waiters were at work there, and the hiss and sizzle of frying fish could be heard from within, together with singing, laughter, and the clink of drinking pots.

  Silo brought the raft to rest outside the Octopus, where a beautiful and imposing figure stood among a crowd of celebrating mariners. It was Valeria the Violent. She wore her coal-black hair in a magnificent set of dreadlocks, a full-skirted purple coat, and a peaked cap—and a huge smile, for she had just spotted her brother.

  “Orlando? My, you’ve grown! You were just a tiny little snotty thing when I saw you last. I see you’re still nicking stuff, though.” She prodded his new finery. “Serves me right for leaving you with that thieving scumbag of an uncle! If I’d known you were going to grow up to fight the Division, I’d have taken you with me, but you were such a lazy little slob back then. Anyw
ay”—she engulfed Orlando in a bone-crunching hug—“I’m glad I was wrong.”

  “It seems that Orlando takes after his valiant sister.”

  Black Tom and his crew came alongside on a raft. Black Tom was wearing the coat previously occupied by the admiral of the Division’s fleet, and although it strained mightily at the seams it sported an impressive quantity of gold braid. He had combed his beard and bristling monobrow and looked almost smart, although Growler, leaning lovingly against his sea boots, let him down a little.

  Valeria grinned at him. “Congratulations, Tom!” she said, and then turned to the assembled Raiders. “It looks like we owe Black Tom an apology. To think we reckoned he was too thick to join the Raiders—and then he comes up with a plan like this! How did you manage it?”

  All eyes were upon him, but Black Tom remained uncharacteristically silent.

  Silo saw that he would have to help him out. “We told him that the Division was desperate to capture Maximillian at all costs,” he said, “and straight away he saw his chance to set a trap for them. Obviously it was risky because the Sea Pig would be the bait.”

  Orlando, master of misinformation, took up the story. “But danger means nothing to Black Tom! He set sail the moment the Division’s fleet reached the Gutfleet Sound, knowing that with Maximillian aboard they were bound to give chase. He and his crew knew they were running a fearful risk but they didn’t hesitate for a minute. The Division’s ships were faster, but they trusted to their superior seamanship to stay one step ahead, and of course they knew that they were leading the enemy straight into the heart of Raider territory.”