‘Dirk!’ Rye whispered in panic, pushing back the hood so his brother could see him. ‘What are you doing?’
Dirk looked back over his shoulder. ‘What do you think?’ he muttered. ‘The trader said his next stop was the Diggings. That is on our way, and it will be far safer and faster for us to ride with him than to walk. If he does the same thing there as he has done here, we will easily be able to slip out of the wagon while he is trading.’
‘But—’
Dirk’s face was very hard. ‘If we ask that little worm to help us he will certainly refuse, or ask a price we cannot afford to pay. So we will take what we want without his knowledge. He plainly did well out of Sholto’s death, so he can help us continue Sholto’s quest. Stop shilly-shallying, Rye! Come on!’
He turned away, the goat hide falling back into place behind him.
14 - The Stowaways
Sonia sighed. ‘This is what happens when you travel with heroes,’ she murmured. ‘How they love to take risks!’ Her words were mocking, but her eyes were dark with sympathy. It was as if she knew as well as Rye did that Dirk’s need to do something—anything—to smother his grief over Sholto’s death had made him seize upon the idea of hiding in the trader’s wagon.
‘But in fact Dirk is right,’ she added, after a moment’s thought. ‘While he carries that metal hook, the hood, the shell and the speed ring will not work as well as they should. We might be taking a risk stealing a ride, but it is a smaller risk than making the journey on foot.’
‘I doubt there is any point in making the journey at all,’ Rye said through stiff lips. ‘We no longer have any reason to believe that the one they call the Master is the Enemy sending the skimmers to Weld.’
‘But Rye—’
‘We thought my dream of Sholto was proof that the skimmers were here,’ Rye went on doggedly. ‘But the dream meant nothing. Sholto was never in a red place. He was in the Saltings. Then he was in the Scour. And then he was … gone.’
He could not say ‘dead’. He could not bring himself to say the word.
‘My dreams of Dirk were true,’ he mumbled, feeling as if the words were being dragged from him one by one. ‘I thought it was the same for Sholto.’
He felt Sonia touch his arm and swallowed desperately to stop himself from breaking down. It had meant so much to him to believe that he had a special bond with both his lost brothers—a bond that could help save them.
‘I am sure the dream did not mean nothing, Rye,’ Sonia said quietly. ‘You have a gift. At times—at certain times—you can reach out to people you care for. And I have been wondering …’
She hesitated, then her hand tightened on his arm and she hurried on. ‘We know from the fragments of journal we found that Sholto had begun to—to see things that were not real. Could it be that in the dream your mind and his were linked so closely that you were sharing one of his visions?’
Understanding came to Rye on a wave of pain. Yes, that explained it all. He had been sharing a delirious vision—the vision, perhaps, that had come to Sholto as he lay dying in the abandoned jell pit. It was no more based on fact than Sholto’s ravings of enemies who drugged his drinking water.
That would account for the fact that in the dream of the red place the skimmers menaced Sholto but never reached him. The skimmers had been illusions, like the dead skimmers of his journal notes.
Rye leaned against the wagon and closed his eyes. The rusty metal was warm against his cheek. Gradually his pain eased and a strange sort of comfort took its place. Perhaps he had been wrong about what the dream of the red place meant, but he had been with Sholto all the same.
And Sholto seemed very close to him now. Perhaps, Rye thought slowly, that was because the wagon had once held Sholto’s possessions. Or perhaps it was just because Rye knew it had, and his imagination was doing the rest.
‘We missed him by so little,’ he murmured. ‘I knew, when we left Fleet, that time was short. But I had no idea how short.’
An image of Sholto’s lantern burning on alien ground floated into his mind. And with it, quite suddenly, came the knowledge that Sholto would not have despaired at this moment. He would have put his feelings aside and turned the cool light of his reason on the situation.
Rye did his best to do the same, and the mists that had clouded his mind cleared a little. He sighed and opened his eyes to find Sonia watching him anxiously.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘Of course the Master could still be the Enemy of Weld. We have no proof that he is, but we have no proof that he is not, either. And of course we must find out one way or the other.’
The girl nodded wordlessly.
‘And of course Dirk is right about hiding in the wagon,’ Rye went on. ‘It is what Sholto would have done also, if he had had the chance.’
It was more difficult for Rye and Sonia to clamber up into the wagon than it had been for the taller Dirk, but they managed it. In moments they were crawling into steamy, strong-smelling dimness, with the hide curtain flapping down behind them.
‘At last!’ Dirk’s voice hissed from the shadows.
Rye’s elbow struck something hard and he grunted with pain. Reflecting ruefully that the armour shell protected him from attack but not from his own clumsiness, he turned to see what had hurt him.
It was a bulky metal box with a padlocked lid. The box was bolted to the floor beside the driver’s seat, and very near its base there was another of the curious little painted designs.
It had clearly been daubed by the same hand as the design on the outside of the wagon, but this time the spots and crosses were enclosed in a square instead of a circle.
‘Look at this,’ Rye whispered to Sonia, pointing at the mark. ‘There was something like it outside, too. Could it be some sort of protection charm?’
‘If it is, Four-Eyes has little faith it, since he feels he needs to protect the box with bolts and a padlock as well,’ Sonia answered dryly.
‘It is the slimy cheat’s cashbox, no doubt,’ Dirk said, overhearing. ‘Do not touch it.’
‘It is too big to be a cashbox,’ Sonia objected, but this time Dirk did not bother to reply.
Rubbing his elbow, Rye sat back on his heels and looked around.
The driver’s seat was like a throne, very large and padded with goat hides. Squarely in front of it a metal wheel sprouted like a giant daisy from a pole sticking up through the floor. A window gave a clear view of the way ahead, and below the window was a metal panel studded with levers, knobs and a large dial like a clock face with only one hand.
The shadowy storage area behind the seat was packed to the roof with barrels, lumpy sacks, yellowed bones, bundles of ragged garments, and baskets overflowing with everything from old boots to digging tools. Hunched over to avoid hitting his head on the roof, Dirk was fossicking in one of the baskets.
‘I thought some of Sholto’s things might still be here, but so far I have found nothing I recognise,’ he said. ‘Not that it is easy to find anything in this jumble.’
‘Look at all this food!’ Sonia said indignantly, prodding a bulging sack that smelled strongly of onions. ‘And Four-Eyes said his supplies were low! He is a cheat and a liar, just as Bones said.’
As if to prove her point, the trader’s voice boomed out on the other side of the trench. ‘Well, my friends, I fear your scourings don’t amount to very much this time. Two shivs of tarny roots I’ll give for the lot, and that’s generous.’
‘Generous?’ a woman cried shrilly. ‘It’s robbery!’
There was a chorus of angry jeers.
‘It’s not my fault that times are hard, my friends!’ Four-Eyes called in an injured voice. ‘I’m doing the best I can for you. Nanny’s Pride farm is the last stop before I reach here, as you know. The good folk there assured me that the tarny roots in the sacks they gave me were pulled only this morning. You won’t get fresher!’