B00DW1DUQA EBOK (13 page)

Finn sat down. He looked around, searching for some means of escape. There was a rock embedded in the ground near his hand. Could he prise it out? Bash the master over the head and escape? When he was sure the master was asleep he set about working the stone free. But it was too large, buried too deep. After an hour of scraping away the skin of his fingers he gave up. It was no good. Would he ever be able to escape the Ironclads? Maybe not. But at least he still had his secret. Still had that hope. He lay down, losing himself to fantasies of seeing Engn, that vast mountain range of machinery, explode in a fireball. Later, he slept, and dreamed dreams of his old life back home.

*

‘I wanted to talk to you about Matt,’ said Finn.

His father was stripped to the waist, fixing one of the Baron’s threshing machines. To Finn they always resembled giant beasts, their raised chutes their heads. They were the largest machines they had in the valley. This one stood near a field cable-point, from which his father powered a light so he could inspect the interior workings of the machine. The cables under the fields were buried especially deep so that ploughs didn’t cut through them, and there was no line of lightning-stakes, only marker posts embedded in the hedgerows to indicate the line. In the summer, they used the cable points to power pumps to water the crops. His father had had to dig down deep to find the outlet, sealed in a waterproof metal case.

Finn peered at the blackened, oily mechanism of the thresher. His father, not looking round, snorted with amusement at Finn’s words. ‘What about him?’

‘Well, the thing is, when you work at the Switch House, you see all the communications passing through. I mean, you’re
supposed
to, to check everything is working.’

‘Aye, and so Mrs. Megrim gets to know everybody’s business. She knows our secrets before we do.’

‘Well, she’s not the only one.’

His father turned to look at him. His hands and wrists were black with oil. The spanner in his hand was black, too, so that hand and spanner looked like they were joined. Like he had a spanner for a hand. ‘If it’s something about Matt then you shouldn’t be telling me. You shouldn’t be telling anyone, should you?’

Finn sighed and looked around at the field, an expanse of mud and spiky stubble from the previous year’s harvest. ‘I think I should. There are things people need to know.’

His father looked at him, eyes narrowed beneath bushy black eyebrows. ‘Oh?’

Finn stooped down to pick up the bottle of cider his mother had given them and unscrewed the top. He handed it across to his father.

‘The thing is, he’s been sending messages to Engn.’

There was a pause while his father drank. He handed the bottle back to Finn. It was smeared, now, with black oil.

‘Messages about what?’

Finn sipped at the sweet, sharp drink. ‘About us. He tells them everything about us.’

‘Such as what?’

‘He said I was clever, quick-witted.’ He didn’t mention everything Matt had said.
Still physically weak. Might make a good master one day, if he could be trusted
.

‘He told them about you?’ asked his father.

Finn nodded. ‘He must have told them about Connor, too. And Shireen, and everybody. I mean, how else could the Ironclads know about us all? Someone must tell them.’

‘Surely he would encrypt messages like that.’

Finn set down the bottle and pulled the rolled-up tube of papers from an inside pocket. He handed them over. ‘There are still ways to read them if you know how.’ He hoped his father wouldn’t ask for details.

He father unfurled the sheets and began to read, brow creased, lips moving with each word. Finally, he looked back at Finn, his face flushed red beneath the grime and the black of his beard.

‘I’ll kill him. If I thought he was responsible for anyone being taken…’ He raised his spanner like an axe, ready to charge off and bludgeon Matt to death there and then. ‘Finn, you wait here.’

His father strode off across the fields, heading for the gate and the lane beyond it, the thresher forgotten. Turnpike Cottage wasn’t far away.

Finn raced after him. Not quite believing what he was doing, he ran around to block his father’s way.

‘No. We have to be careful.’

‘To hell with being careful! I’ll kill him.’

‘But if anything happens to him the Ironclads will suspect. They’ll come here.’

‘He’s not going to get away with this.’

Finn was nearly as tall as his father now, although still stick-thin in comparison. Their faces were close together. Finn spoke quietly, almost whispering, although there was no-one around to hear.

‘No, but I’ve been thinking. There’s a way to stop him without attracting any attention.’

His father was breathing deeply, trying to control his anger. Finn marvelled at the way his father, his own father, was listening to his advice.

‘If anything was to happen to you, Finn, I couldn’t live with it.’

‘That’s why we have to be careful.’

His father sighed. ‘You are the clever one, Finn. He got that right at least. You’re your mother’s son. Tell me.’

‘Let’s have some more cider.’

His father nodded, his chest still heaving. They returned to the threshing machine and sat with their backs against it. The metal was warm in the glow of the spring sun. They passed the drink between them. The cider soon made Finn feel light-headed and detached, as if he wasn’t really there in the field with his father, planning Matt’s fate.

‘The thing is,’ began Finn, ‘Matt’s a useless lengthsman.’ The words were slippery. He tried to concentrate. ‘You know it. Everyone knows it. Without help he couldn’t do his job properly. Without
your
help. The lanes would become rutted, the cattle would escape, the drainage channels would silt up and the electricity supply would fail.’

‘You’re suggesting I stop helping him.’

‘Exactly! You can just say you’re busy. I mean, you
are
busy. Sooner or later everything will just fall apart and the village won’t put up with it. They’ll have to find a new lengthsman. Matt will be turfed out of Turnpike Cottage and then he can’t send any more messages to Engn.’

His father was quiet for a while. Finn began to worry he’d spoken out of turn, that his father was angry. The implication of his words was clear. By helping Matt all these years, his father had allowed the lengthsman to keep his position and carry on making all his reports to Engn.

When his father finally spoke, his voice was quiet.

‘I can see the sense of it. I’ll have to be canny, cut down slowly the help I give him. It’ll take time to work, Finn, and I won’t wait forever.’

‘I’ll intercept any messages he sends from now on.’

His father nodded, frowning. ‘OK.’

They sat together there for some time, finishing the cider.
Another secret pact
, thought Finn.
How many more would there be
?

For two or three weeks, nothing happened. Finn began to think his father had changed his mind. Twice he caught his parents in hushed, earnest conversation when he came into the room. Perhaps they’d decided to do nothing after all.

But, one morning, late for the Switch House, Finn dashed out into the garden and bundled straight into Matt coming up the path, axe and shovel over his shoulder.

‘Woah, young man. Late again are we? Don’t want to get into trouble with Mrs. Megrim, eh?’

‘No.’

Finn dashed past, but when he was out of the garden he stopped and peered around the stone wall to see what happened.

His father was at the door now, talking to Matt. Finn couldn’t hear their words. His father nodded once or twice with his head, pointing up the valley. They conversed for perhaps a minute. Finally, Matt walked back down the garden path, alone.

Finn took off a boot, pretending to knock stones from it on the wall. Matt swept past him. For once, the lengthsman didn’t smile, didn’t say anything. Staring at his boot as he tied it back up, Finn grinned to himself.

Four months later, Finn stood outside the Moot Hall, leaning against the weathered, stone-like wood of one of the pillars. Muffled murmurs and the occasional raised shout came from inside. He could make out nothing of what was being said. They had been arguing for nearly an hour now.

He looked up at the wooded slopes of the valley, the trees like frozen explosions of leaves. He remembered the day he and Connor had watched the Ironclads through the telescope. They’d never seen the moving engine again. He wondered what had happened to it.

Connor’s father, the Baron, burst suddenly out of the hall, a babble of noise escaping with him. He looked furious. He saw Finn, thought about ignoring him, then stopped. They hadn’t spoken since the day Connor had been taken.

‘Says it’s all our fault if the power fails and the carts get stuck. Our fault!’

Finn didn’t know what to say. He wanted very much to tell the Baron all about the messages, about what Matt had really done. But, of course, he couldn’t.

He wanted to explain about his own guilt, too. Because the truth, the terrible truth he had admitted to no-one, was that Finn was secretly pleased Connor had been taken. Not that he didn’t miss his friend every day. But Connor being taken made it even less likely
he
would be. Engn had to leave some behind and there was really only him left now. And the truth was, Connor would be able to survive in Engn much better than Finn could. Connor was strong; he could fight; he could look after himself. People naturally did what he said; he was a leader, his father's son. Finn wasn't any of those things. Connor just might be able to destroy Engn as they’d vowed, but Finn knew
he
would never be able to. He’d always known it, even that day by the river with Diane. He would never be brave or clever or strong enough. It was better that Connor had been taken.

He wanted to say all this but could not.

‘What do you think they’ll decide about Matt?’ he asked.

‘Oh, they’ll kick him out. They just want to argue about it some more rather than getting on with it. But I’m not staying to be told I don’t know how to run an estate.’

With a scowl and a shake of his head, he turned to walk away from the Moot Hall.

‘I’m sorry about Connor,’ Finn shouted after him. ‘He was my friend,’ he added, uselessly.

The Baron stopped and half-turned. He nodded his head, then strode off toward his farm.

It was another half hour before the moot ended. Matt was the first to leave. Once again, he didn’t speak to Finn as he brushed past.

It was a glorious summer that year, warm without being too hot, rain falling at night to keep the fields green and lush. Once, the sky beyond the mountains blazed vivid scarlet, the glow remaining visible long after the sun had set. People said they’d heard muffled booms in the night, felt their walls shake and skip. Some said it was Engn, burning. People looked nervous, afraid of what it might mean. Finn, secretly, was delighted. He wondered about Connor. The glow was there the following night, too, but by the third evening it had gone. Some now said Engn had been destroyed. They got on with their lives. No more Ironclads came to the valley.

Now that the encrypted messages from Turnpike Cottage had ceased, Finn enjoyed working at the Switch House more and more. He began to take interest in the mundane messages that flashed up and down the valley, the petty gossip that had once so bored him. He and Mrs. Megrim shared many jokes about them, a raised eyebrow in the gloom enough to make them both snigger with laughter.

Best of all was Badger. His parents had given her to him a few months back.

‘Finn, we’ve got a surprise for you,’ his mother said one evening. ‘She’s still just a puppy but she’ll need lots of walks. You can take her up into the woods with you.’ She was a bouncy, black-and-white dog, all tongue and paws, her fur as soft as an owl’s feathers.

Badger ran everywhere at full-tilt. Sometimes, when they were out in the woods, he didn’t see her for minutes at a time. She was just a rustle of undergrowth off in the distance, a twitch of ferns. But she always came back to him, tongue lolling out of her mouth. Together they visited all the paths and clearings he and Connor had once known so well. It felt as though he was discovering them all afresh, as if they were different woods to those he had played in as a boy. They would walk past the place by the swing where Diane had slept, or the tree he and Connor had hidden in from the avalanche, and Finn would tell Badger all about it, about what had happened there. His words sounded like stories he was making up. It was all so long ago.

Matt was long gone and the new lengthsman, Flane from way down the valley, did his job without help from Finn’s father. The harvest, when the time came round, was a good one, and the barns and store-houses were full for the winter. Badger grew bigger each day but still raced everywhere, full of enthusiasm for everything. She made Finn laugh just to look at her.

They often went to the glade, Shireen’s glade. It was one of Badger’s favourite walks. The path through the bushes that had once been so hard to find was now well-worn.

They went that way now, Badger dashing ahead of him, knowing the way. Finn followed. She’d come back to him sooner or later. He sat down in the glade to wait. The log was old now, crumbling to the touch, orange and soft like a sponge. Diane’s blanket and the stuff wrapped in it, left there years before, were long-gone. Finn sometimes wondered who or what had taken them.

Badger came bursting through the wall of trees to stand in front of him, panting and wide-eyed. She flopped to the ground. Finn knelt down and stroked her feathery fur.

‘I told you about this place, didn’t I girl? What happened here.’ He’d told her the stories often. She looked up at him, head cocked on one side as she tried to understand his words. ‘Shireen and Connor and Diane. I told you all about them, eh?’

He stopped and looked up, suddenly cold, like a shadow had passed over him, although the circle of blue through the treetops was as bright as ever. He was only troubled because of the rumours that had been flashing up and down the line-of-sight for the past few days. Ironclads. Ironclads in the valley again. He paid them no attention. It happened. Someone misunderstood someone else and everyone started panicking.