Conflict and Courage (22 page)

“Get the alarm
beacon lit,” he commanded Maximilian, “then make for the woods.
Don’t come back here. I’ll get your mum and the rest away.”

The white-faced
boy nodded and sped towards the hill.

Justin hoped
the Lind would see the beacon. There was no chance that they could
outrun these raiders, for raiders he was sure they were, not with
women and children in the party.

“How long have
we got?” asked his wife, ushering out the three little ones. She
handed him his sword. Justin noticed that she had slipped the
largest kitchen knife into her leather belt.

“They’ll be
here in half an hour. It was just chance I saw them otherwise we
would have had no warning at all. And we’re lucky there is no wind.
They’re having to row inshore.”

As they left
their cabin other families were spilling out of doorways. A
youngster was letting the animals loose. An older girl was herding
the still sleepy little ones past the newly dug well and out
through the back courtyard.

“Jim Cranston
warned us,” he shouted, “southern pirates.”

“Do we fight?”
asked Andrew, one of the two ex-convicts whom Justin had agreed to
sponsor through the remaining years of their sentence in return for
work.

“We run,”
answered Justin. He pointed to the woods ahead. “Go!” Speeding past
the toddlers he leant down and swept one into his arms and with a
grunt Andrew did the same. The other adults copied the action,
Andrew’s fellow prisoner Iain managing to scoop up two. Justin had
been surprised at their reactions to the approach of the galley.
Obviously life in the north was vastly preferable to a return
south. They appeared just as anxious as Justin to get as far and as
quickly away as possible.

Justin looked
back at the hamlet and scanned the area for the Lind. The galley
had reached the jetty and they still had not reached the safety of
the woods. All the raiders would need to do was look inland and
they could not help but see them. Beside him a pregnant woman
gasped piteously as she struggled to keep up.

The zarova herd
had stampeded away. The silly kura were still milling around the
corral.

Justin
concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as fast as
he could. His lungs felt like bursting.

Then came the
news he had been dreading.

“Larg. The
Larg. They have Larg with them!”

Justin groaned.
He caught Andrew’s eye. The man looked grim but determined, “I’m
not going back,” gasped the ex-convict, “rather die first.”

Justin drew his
sword. It came out of its sheath with a slither of metal on
well-oiled leather.

“It’s the woman
and children they are after. Margot, lead the women and little ones
away. We’re going to buy them time,” he noticed that Andrew was
holding the kitchen knife that his wife had carried. He hadn’t seen
the man filch it. He had known the man to be a thief; this was
proof positive.

Andrew saw his
gaze and shrugged, “I was a mighty fine pickpocket in my old life,”
he said with a grin, “it’s come in useful at last.”

Iain had armed
himself with a large wooden club. Justin wouldn’t have been able to
lift it above his waist but the giant did not seem to notice. The
other four had swords; they’d fought in the battle although only
Justin had been at Settlement itself.

“We both
fight,” Andrew growled and Iain nodded his agreement, “you’ve been
good to us. We will repay the debt, with our lives if need be.”

Justin accepted
the offer with a curt nod. The women and children were already out
of earshot, though many were the tearful glances back at the seven
men standing with determined bravery halfway down the slope.

“How many Larg
are there?”

“Three.”

“We should
manage to hold them off for a time.”

The seven
arranged themselves in a tight knot, swords at the ready.

The Larg were
almost at leaping distance when, to the seven’s surprise, they
veered away and sped back downhill.

“What the?”

There was a
howl from behind them. For a moment Justin thought that more Larg
had landed, had encircled them and were attacking the women but it
was the Lindar scouts, just the two, but until reinforcements
arrived they, with the seven men, would give the raiders a run for
their money, at least they could keep them away from the women and
children.

A tall,
slinkily striped Lind howled at them to stand fast and raced after
the fleeing women and children, deciding that they were in more
need.

The men stood
in formation for what seemed like a lifetime as the frustrated
raiders torched the cabins. The Larg amused themselves with the
kura who bleated pathetically as they died.

Then the ryz
arrived. There were cries of alarm from the merrily burning hamlet.
The pirates took one look at the rapidly approaching Lind, decided
that discretion was the better part of valour and fell over each
other, trying to be the first to reach the safety of the galley. It
was over. The pirates and their tawny four-pawed allies fled.

* * * * *

Robert
Lutterell, Head Councillor of Argyll was snatching a few hours
sleep when the shouts rang out. It had been a strenuous month and
he was not a young man.

His chest had
been troubling him of late and the doctors kept telling him to
rest, to take life more easily, but he knew it to be impossible.
There was too much to do.

He ran to the
watchtower, ignoring the signs and shouts of alarm around him and
climbed on to the parapet. He watched with the guards as a man
staggered up to the south gate, shouting at the top of his voice,
gasping for breath.

“Lind coming in
at the gallop and howling fit to burst.”

Robert turned
to the guard commander, “are the warning beacons alight?”

“No sir,” the
woman answered, “but the lookouts have reported a pillar of smoke
to the south.”

“Where
exactly?”

“At the
estuary, where the big fishing village is.”

With a sense of
foreboding Robert looked at her and then towards the smoke, a faint
haze, barely noticeable.

She returned
his gaze steadily. Marge McGillivery was an ex-crewmember of the
Argyll, they had been through a lot together and she was not the
panicking type.

“Do we ring the
alarm bell?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he
answered, “let’s wait until we find out exactly what has happened.
We’ll not get many thanks if we get them out of their beds for a
simple house fire.”

“Could be the
Larg.”

“I don’t think
so Marge,” he said, “It’s more likely to be a fire, the ground is
like tinder.”

The messenger
from Susa Blei of Lindar Jalkei arrived panting with the news.

Robert
Lutterell was all decisiveness once he knew what had happened. He
sent out armed parties to investigate and others to protect the
nearby villages, hamlets and single homesteads that could be
reached easily. The Susa of Lindar Jalkei sent messages to the rest
of his Lind. By evening the entire southern and southeastern
coastline was on the alert and stirred up to a froth.

“The village
has been stripped of everything and burned to the ground. Who could
do such a thing?” said one of the men who had investigated the
smoking ruins, sitting in front of Robert in the guardhouse.

“Did you see
any bodies?” asked Robert.

“Just one, a
man but I couldn’t identify him, too badly burned.”

“Justin Wright
suffered an attack as well,” mentioned one of the Councillors.

“And we all
laughed at him when he insisted on accepting the Lind offer of a
roving patrol,” said another.

“Some of his
cabins are damaged but it is as nothing compared to the village. He
was lucky that the ryz was close by and galloped to the
rescue.”

“Does Jim
Cranston know?”

“He knew almost
as soon as we did if not before,” answered Robert, “have you
forgotten that our friends are telepathic? A Vada patrol is on the
way, also the Lindar of pack Malkei but they’ll take more than a
week to get here.”

“So, we’re on
our own?”

“’Fraid
so.”

“We don’t have
enough people to guard the entire coastline.”

“I am well
aware of that and so is Jim Cranston. The Vada have agreed to
contribute their time and expertise in our defence on a more or
less permanent basis but their numbers are still too few to be
really effective.”

He stared at
the map on the wall.

“I wish our
people hadn’t been quite so eager to get away from the immediate
area. I fear that this attack is just the beginning.”

“What are we to
do? Pull everyone back from the coasts?”

“Definitely
not,” Robert said, thumping the table hard with his fist, “we fight
them off!”

“With our bare
hands?”

“Station
guardsmen and women at each settlement.”

“There are not
enough of them.”

“Everyone who
can hold a weapon fights. I will not be intimidated by these scum.”
He frowned, “I wonder why they took the men as well as the women
and children and what they are up to now.”

* * * * *

The men, women
and children, captured by the pirates, could have told him.

The successful
galleys rowed back into the main current, met up with the
disappointed men and Larg who had fled from pack Jalkei’s ryz and
proceeded eastwards, letting the current take them. They used their
oars to navigate through one of the two deep passages through the
island chain and then raised their sails.

The galleys
proceeded rapidly northwards along the coast but out of sight of
land. There they attacked again, the colonists too few to make more
than a token resistance. In another lightning raid, they carried
off a full forty of the men, women and children, fighting off the
two Lind that were patrolling the area with aptitude and ferocity.
Both Lind were badly injured and could only watch helplessly as the
forty were ferried out to the waiting galleys.

But they now
knew the reason behind the raids. One pirate had been captured,
badly hurt but able to tell why Brentwood had sent them. The
Councillors realised to their cost that guarding the island chain
would not be enough.

In Justin
Wright’s hamlet, the celebrations were quiet, the original joy at
their salvation muted when they learned of the disappearance of the
others.

“We will move
the cabins away from the shoreline, rebuild them up the hill,”
Justin decided once they had settled in a temporary shelter
provided by the one remaining building that still had a roof. He
pointed to the hill, “right on the top with a defensive palisade
around us and a very large ditch.”

“Water?” asked
Iain.

“Pump it up or
dig another well. This area has abundant water. We’ll manage. If
these attackers return we’ll be ready for them.”

“Perhaps we
should return to Settlement?”

“No! I will not
flee. If anyone does want to go though,” he added, “I won’t hold it
against him.”

It was a sure
sign of the indomitable spirit of the colonists that none took him
up on his offer.

* * * * *

Lord Bryan
Brentwood watched his ships dock with satisfaction, a satisfaction
that grew ever greater as his men began to unload their unfortunate
booty.

The man
Brentwood had appointed overseer, in charge of their disposition,
stood beside him, an unpleasant smile on his handsome face.

“A fair haul,”
Arthur Borsley said, “I’ll get them sorted out and then you can
decide what we are going to do with them.”

“I already know
what we are going to do with most of them,” Brentwood answered.

He turned a
cold eye on the ex-officer, “and no spoiling. Get the men separated
from the women and children.”

“I understand
my Lord.”

An impassive
Brentwood watched as the men and boys over twelve were herded away
from the women and children and pushed, shoved and even whipped if
they proved reluctant, into a dank cavern-like structure at the
pier’s edge. These thirty-one would become slaves, condemned to
live out their lives rowing the galleys as he continued his
campaign to plunder the north.

He wandered
over to the knot of terrified women and children and looked them
over.

Brentwood’s
nose crinkled with distaste, “they stink. Get them washed and
tidied up as we arranged earlier then load them on to the barges.
No point waiting.”

“All of
them?”

“Keep the
oldest women and mothers with children under four and these smaller
ones. They can be sold later. We must keep the men happy.”

Arthur Borsley
consulted the lists.

“There are
three women over forty, two pregnant and another two with
toddlers.”

“Right. Give me
the final list by nightfall.”

Brentwood
strode away.

News of the
imminent slave market spread rapidly amongst the male population of
Murdoch. Many a man was sick and tired of having to queue at the
whorehouses for the use of a woman for an hour. The barge carrying
the forty-three unfortunates selected for sale berthed at Fort’s
dock-facility in front of a large crowd of interested
sightseers.

Lords van Buren
and Cocteau were amongst them, the former, keen to purchase more
women for his lucrative brothels, the latter, eager to acquire the
boys for enlistment into the boys’ battalion where they would be
trained and indoctrinated.

When the lists
went up that evening he was quick to lay claim to the six boys aged
between seven and thirteen and, after some thought, marked the four
younger ones as his as well.