‘Fresh or wilted, tarny roots all taste like horse feed to me,’ another voice grumbled. ‘Didn’t you get any salted meat from Nanny’s Pride, Four-Eyes?’
‘Very little,’ sighed Four-Eyes. ‘They’re struggling to produce anything but tarny roots since so many of their people were taken for the Diggings.’
Rye crawled to the doorway beside the driver’s seat, pushed the goat hide flap a little aside and cautiously peeped out.
The area between the hut and the Soak was crowded with the people from the mounds, and torches now burned in several places. The trader was still sitting opposite Cap with his back to the wagon. But he had removed the velvet beret from his head, and gleaming in the back of his hairless skull were two staring eyes.
Rye’s stomach turned over. ‘The trader has eyes in the back of his head!’ he hissed.
‘What?’ demanded Dirk from the back of the wagon. ‘Do you mean—?’
‘I mean what I say!’ hissed Rye. ‘The trader has an extra pair of eyes—I can see them!’
Sonia squeaked in horror.
‘Rye, get away from there!’ Dirk snapped, sounding very rattled. ‘You are not wearing the hood, remember!’
‘Yes, Rye, come on!’ Sonia whispered, beginning to edge between the towering stacks of goods.
As Rye turned from the doorway there was a high, chittering sound right beside him. He jumped, then sighed with relief as a small pink nose poked inquisitively from beneath the driver’s seat.
‘A clink!’ he exclaimed.
‘Keep your voice down!’ Dirk growled. ‘And leave the clink alone! Four-Eyes keeps it to catch mice, I daresay.’
As they did in Fleet, Rye thought, remembering the little creature he had seen in the fireplace of the Fleet guest house.
Olt’s men had killed that clink—killed it for no reason except pure, bullying spite. Wincing at the memory, Rye dug into his pocket and pulled out a handful of hoji nuts left over from the uncomfortable meal in the Saltings. The pink nose twitched and the clink chattered excitedly.
‘Do not feed it, Rye,’ Dirk warned, alerted by the sound. ‘If you do, it will come after you, begging for more, and give us away. Clinks are never satisfied.’
Rye hurriedly pushed the nuts back into his pocket. With a disappointed snuffle, the clink vanished beneath the seat again.
‘Oh!’ Sonia exclaimed. ‘Look at this!’
Wondering what she had found, Rye sidled through the piles of goods till he reached the back of the wagon.
He found Dirk and Sonia crouching by the rear wall on a tangle of empty sacks. They were peering into a large box that had been wedged into a corner. The box had wire mesh at the top, and inside were a pair of fine ducks and six downy ducklings, snugly nestled in a bed of straw.
‘We will put the cage by the bridge, where it will be quickly seen,’ Dirk was saying excitedly. ‘It will seem that it has appeared by magic!’
‘Yes!’ Sonia hissed gleefully. ‘And Four-Eyes can hardly claim the ducks are his. He swore he had nothing of value to trade.’
Dirk grinned up at Rye, his eyes sparkling. ‘By the Wall, just think what this will mean to Cap’s people, Rye! If they tend these birds well, in time they will have a whole flock! They will have fresh eggs every day, as we did at home.’
Rye gazed down at the family of ducks sleeping with their heads under their wings. How long ago it seemed since he, Dirk, Sholto and their mother had sat around the table in the little house in Southwall, talking in low voices and eating the cold food that was all they could risk at night in skimmer season.
He remembered Sholto peeling the shell from a hardboiled duck egg and saying the words that had haunted him ever since.
For skimmers, Weld may be nothing but a giant feeding bowl in which tender prey are conveniently trapped.
Life is very hard for the poor souls of the Den, Rye thought. But the night skies at least are safe. If there are skimmers in this place, they go to Weld to feed.
And that is why you are here. Remember why you are here!
Rye stiffened. It was as if Sholto had whispered in his ear.
‘If we do as you say, we can forget travelling to the Master’s headquarters quickly and in secrecy,’ he said in a level voice. ‘Four-Eyes will know someone has been in his wagon. He will search it from end to end. Nothing is more certain.’
Dirk hesitated, the excitement slowly fading from his face.
‘But Rye, do you not want to help Bones and his people?’ Sonia demanded passionately.
‘Yes,’ Rye said. ‘But we are here to find the source of the skimmers. We should not lose sight of that goal. We should not—’
‘Not allow ourselves to be drawn into struggles that do not concern us,’ Dirk finished flatly. ‘As I did, beyond the golden Door.’
‘Dirk, I did not say that!’ Rye felt his face grow hot.
Dirk regarded him quizzically. ‘Perhaps not, little brother, but it is true. And I was about to do the same thing again. Of course you are right. Cap and his tribe will have to do without our help for now.’
Sonia was frowning and biting her lip. Rye wondered if she knew how hard it had been for him to say what he had—if she knew how it would have thrilled him to put the ducks into the hands of Bones and the other people of the Den.
Whether she did or not, she did not argue. Casting a last, regretful look at the cage, she seized a few of the empty sacks and began to drag them to the other back corner of the wagon, wrinkling her nose at the smells of onions, salted fish and goat that rose from the coarse fabric as it was moved.
‘Ho, Cap!’ Rye heard Bones shout. ‘Where be the magic ones? They be a match for cheating ol’ Four-Eyes, them three!’
‘They’ve gone, you buffoon!’ a high jeering voice shrieked. ‘As soon as they got rid of you they—’
‘Needle, hold your tongue!’ Cap thundered. But the damage was done.
‘Why, Cap!’ cried Four-Eyes with obvious relish. ‘I thought you said—’
‘Gone?’ roared Bones at the same moment. ‘Gone an’ left us?’ And he began to howl like a beast.
The piteous sound pierced Rye’s heart. He covered his ears, but he could not escape it.
The howling still had not stopped when Four-Eyes strode back to the wagon in triumph. Scourers trailed behind him, carrying the jell and the bloodhog skull he had traded for a sack of tarny roots, some salted goat meat, a bunch of traveller’s weed and a promise to keep silent about the Den’s vanished visitors.
It went on while Rye, Sonia and Dirk, huddled in hiding, heard the hiss of steam and felt the wagon floor shuddering beneath them as the monstrous vehicle began to move.
And it was still ringing in their ears as the wagon puffed away from the Den and turned onto the track to the Diggings, carrying them with it.
15 - On the Road
The trader roared with laughter. ‘So what do you say to all that?’ he boomed over the chugging roar of the wagon. ‘Suspicious strangers in the Den, and Cap willing to do anything to keep the story quiet! On the very day that old Bones drags home the finest bloodhog skull I’ve ever seen! What a piece of luck!’
Rye, Sonia and Dirk tensed in their dark corner. Who was the man talking to?
Rye felt for the crystal in the bag around his neck. Masking the crystal’s light carefully with his fingers, he pressed it against the pile of sacks rising in front of him.
A window appeared around the crystal and there was Four-Eyes sitting in his throne-like seat. He was quite alone. His shoulders were shaking. The eyes in the back of his head streamed with tears of laughter.
A shiver ran down Rye’s spine.
‘A smoked whine, my dear?’ the man chortled at last, mopping his face with a purple silk handkerchief, then reaching round to dab at the second pair of eyes as well. ‘Why not? We’re celebrating!’