Raiders' Ransom (35 page)

Q. Lilly has a hardscrabble life as a poor fishergirl who has lost her parents; Zeph is a young ruffian who has grown up among marauders and thieves. Yet, in spite of their tough upbringings, each has a strong internal sense of right and wrong: Lilly wants to rescue the Prime Minister's daughter to protect her village, and

Zeph helps Lilly even after he feels she's betrayed him. How do you explain this — their “moral centers”?

A. When you put it like that, it is quite amazing! But then, I think all children have it in them to be just as amazing. You only have to look around the world, or even your own neighborhood, to see children who are dealing with really hard lives with great courage and inner strength. Lilly and Zeph are like them.

Q. Why does Zeph refer to himself as “highborn” and to his older half brother Roba as “lowborn”?

A. Really, because he's trying to make himself feel a bit better at his brother's expense. His half brother is older and more favored by their father, so Zeph holds on to the one thing he can — that his half brother's mother wasn't from such an important family as Zeph's mother. It's not a very nice thing to do, but no one is all good.

Q. Was
Peter Pan
an influence on
Raiders' Ransom?
Although the stories are very different, certain images – of Lexy, like Wendy, captive in her nightdress on a pirate ship – bring to mind J. M. Barrie's classic. Lilly and Zeph also carry on the tradition of resourceful, independent “street children” as first depicted in
Oliver Twist,
by Charles Dickens. What were your favorite childhood stories?

A. When you are writing, you can't help but show the influence of such classic stories and the books you loved as a child. I must have read the Lord of the Rings series by J. R. R. Tolkien half a dozen times, and
Silas Marner
by George Eliot had a huge impact on me. But the books I read time after time, and still do, are those in The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper. In them, one of the main characters wakes up on his eleventh birthday to find he is really a mysterious, powerful “old one.” How I longed for that to happen to me! I keep hoping; maybe next birthday …

Q. Do you and your son play video games using wireless gameboards, and did that give you the idea for PSAI?

A. My son's too young for computer games, but my husband, now
there's
a different story! The idea for PSAI came quite late, when someone suggested there ought to be a character who could link the story back to our time, and then it occurred to me that a computer could survive for two hundred years, a bit like a genie in a bottle. But poor PSAI! Waking up in a flooded future isn't much fun if you daren't get wet!

Q. What about the “trial by knife,” which is like a performance you'd see at a circus! Was that your inspiration?

A. It did end up like a circus act, but the inspiration for the trial by knife was medieval justice. There used to be a time when trials by fire or water were used to solve crimes. The person accused of a crime would have to put their hand in a fire or in boiling water, and if they weren't burned or scalded, that would “prove” they were innocent. I'm not sure how many people ever got out of those dilemmas! In
Raiders' Ransom,
the raiders give the truth-telling property to their knives, but for Lilly it's the same no-win situation as for the poor people accused of crimes in medieval times.

Q. What can you tell us about a possible sequel to
Raiders' Ransom?

A. The war between the English and the raiders carries on, and now all the raider Families are taking up the cause, joining in the fight. Lilly and Lexy try to find safety in Greater Scotland, but what they find instead is that PSAI isn't as alone as he thought. They join forces with Zeph, who's battling for his Family's survival after the death of his father, and they head back to try and stop the war. But by now, the war isn't the only thing they have to worry about …

She survived the epic battle of the raiders on the rough waters that flood England. Now poor orphaned fishergirl Lilly has promised to make a perilous journey in order to return Lexy, the Prime Minister's kidnapped daughter, to her home.

And because his father was killed in the cannonball clash, pirate boy Zeph is equally determined to claim leadership of his family's clan before more savage tribes invade the marshlands.

But will the electromagnetic pulse of a malfunctioning computer set the world aflame and wipe out all humans so that robots can take over the future?!

It's up to the ragtag trio of children — and their bossy, bad-tempered gameboard PSAI — to rage against the machines!

Cat sits bolt upright and puts a paw on my hand, like he wants to steer the tiller.

“Meow,” he says, his eyes glinting gold-green in the night.

“What is it?”

“Meow!” he says, his claws prickling into my skin. At the bow, Lexy lets out a squawk, then claps her hand over her mouth.

“Up ahead!” she whispers through her fingers. “There's a hall.”

A lump of thatch, dark against the star-twinkling night, stands above the marsh on its stilts. Only a bend of the creek away, and probably stuffed full of raiders, just like the others we've snuck past these last weeks since the battle at the Black Waters. I thought we'd get off easy after that, sail for the Last
Ten Counties. But even the next day there was raider boats pacing the coast, and there wasn't a chance of getting past them. So there was nowhere to go but farther back into the marshes, hoping we'd find a sneaky way through, somewhere we could squeak back out to sea and head for home.

But it ain't turned out that way, cos these marshes are full of raiders, too. And they're why we ended up sailing at night and hiding out in the marshes all the midge-biting days, scared stiff some raider'd come poking in the reeds and find us. They're why we ain't eaten anything 'cept the last of my biscuits, eked out in pieces, and the tiddling marsh fish and samphire we been able to find. And they're how come we've ended up sailing in circles, lost so bad I ain't even sure how to get us back to Angel Isling, waters where Zeph could help us. I get a flash of his cocky-looking face and bright blue eyes, and I wish he was with us now.

“There aren't any candles burning,” whispers Lexy.

“They must be asleep,” I say, hoping.

“I don't feel well,” comes a voice. From a head, bobbing in the air between me and Lexy, that could be a man, could be a woman, and that's glowing from inside, like a lantern.

“Shhh!” says Lexy, and I nearly laugh. Cos there she is, telling off a puter! Talking to olden-times teknology like it ain't nothing special, 'stead of screaming, or throwing it out the boat for devil's work.

“You have to keep quiet,” says Lexy, and the head huffs and looks grumpy.

I pull on the lines to trim the small jib sail, which is all I dare use in these narrow marsh channels. The reeds hush, and the water slip-slops as we glide along. I hate going so slow, but any faster we'll make too much noise or hit muddy shallows. The hall gets nearer, and my heart's thumping so hard I worry it'll wake the sleeping pirates. But we pass underneath them, looking right up at the windows, with everything stayed calm and still. Lexy's leaning out and Cat's next to me, ears pricked and eyes wide. All of us staring for any light, listening for any sound. But there's no one awake, not even a lookout. Just the saggy thatch roof, the warped deckway with scraps of rubbish laid all over, a henhouse, and some rotten-looking boats. The only thing with its eye on us is a sorry-looking cow, up to her hocks in the mud.

“I really am feeling unwell,” says the head loudly into the quiet. “I am in need of urgent technical support.”

“Shush!” I say. “Do you want to end up as raider booty?”

Tho I reckon these raiders could do with some booty. Too idle to keep things proper, that's what Granny would have said about this place. But it looks poor to me, worse than back home where everyone's always saying what hard times we're living in. Maybe that's why they come raiding, if this is all they've got for a house?

I watch the brown warped doors and the black hole windows for movement; I listen for a call of alarm. But there's nothing. I reckon we've done it! Crept our way past another hall without getting caught.

“I can't hold it!” groans the head. “I think I'm going to …
grooarghwooogle ARGLEAARGH!”

A noise like fifty hunting horns blasts out of its mouth. A tower of light explodes in the air, coloring the raider hall in reds and purples.

Panicked birds burst from the reeds, squawking into the night as the tower grows arms, then legs, then a square, bumpy head. Standing above us is a great glowing giant, twice the height of the raider hall. He's covered in shining armor, his eyes are red raging fires, and bolts of lightning shoot from his fingers, blazing at the stars.

“Attention, please!” bellows the giant, in a voice that sets the boat shivering. “I am having a spontaneous projection of an Aldarean battle-bot. From my Storm Ragers game series, which was actually rather successful in its day, though I say it myself.”

“Turn it off!” I yell. “Make it stop!” But it's too late, cos from inside the raider hall come shrieks and screams. Their marsh house flares into light as people rush onto the deckway holding burning torches. They've got open mouths and scared-looking eyes, staring at the monster in the sky.

“Demons!”

“It's the marsh ogre himself!”

“He's come to take us!”

“Please, PSAI!” cries Lexy to the puter. “You've got to stop!”

“I did try and tell you,” booms the bright-glowing giant.
“But would you listen? No. Because no one cares about me, even when I am clearly low on power and malfunctioning. Have you even taken the time to ask when I last had a full diagnostic scan? One hundred and forty-seven years ago, that's when. Perhaps you'll pay more attention next time —”

“Shut up! Shut up!” I shout at the puter. “You're going to get us killed!” And then I wish I hadn't, cos all them faces outside the hall turn to look at me and Lexy. And my white-sail boat.

“English witches!” screams a voice.

“Bringing your fiends to eat us!” shrieks another.

Thwack!
A spear hits the boat, missing my leg by the width of my hand, missing Cat by the width of his whiskers. He spins around, hissing and spitting. Back at the hall, another spear gets raised up, this time with a burning rag tied on the end.

“English scum!” screeches a woman. “You ain't munching on our kids!” The burning spear comes straight for us, flaming an arc through the darkness. It thuds into the center of the boat, the rag sliding down and flicking flames onto my fishing nets.

“Lexy!” I cry. “Put it out!”

Lexy tries to scoop water from the creek with her hands, nearly falling overboard.

“Get roasting, you demons!” calls a voice from the hall.

“Burn the English witches!” cheers another.

I grab a scrap of canvas and beat at the flames while Lexy
splashes more water. The little fire ends in black char on the nets.

“
SQUEEOOOarshkkkkkkargle …
,” moans the monster over our heads, sucking down inside itself, back into the puter's mouth, til it's back to just being a ghostly floating head. “Phew!” it says, “that was rather unpleasant. But I think I've managed to get control of the sub-routine.
Now
do you see how important it is for me to get technical assistance?”

“The fire killed the demon!” cries someone in the raider hall.