Elysium. Part Two (24 page)

Chapter Thirty-Six.

Dead Calm.

George lay fast asleep under a thick duvet that smelt of Betty and dog, unaware of the figure loitering at the foot of the pub. It had moved slowly along the Esplanade, keeping to the bushes, and was now crouching in the ruins of what had once been a bus shelter.

Boen had been outside the Smuggler’s Rest for half an hour, looking up to Eryn’s bedroom window and deciding what he should do. Throw stones to get her attention? Find a branch and tap on her window? Or climb the wall behind the pub and knock on the glass himself. The latter seemed most complicated and risky, but he’d seen her do it when she was younger, yet was worried - however ridiculously - that Semilion was lying in wait for him.

With Guliven away the Waeshenbach household had not been told of the men’s departure, and Boen had slipped through the village avoiding the imaginary eyes of his neighbours, most of whom were some ten miles south.

He shivered and stepped tentatively around the back of the pub. He looked up the tall building and grimaced. He’d not intended on climbing, and didn’t know if his body would let him. He’d stretched his muscles and exercised to a gross approximation of his former health, but he was still incredibly weak.

After several inspiringly deep breaths he reached up and hauled himself on the wall. He knocked a loose brick and sent it rattling along the path, and remained quietly on the wall until he was certain no one was coming to investigate. He stood carefully, the moon low and bright in his eyes.

He hopped on to the wall of the Smuggler’s, reaching for a window ledge and holding tight, his feet flailing on the brickwork. He pulled himself up to the flat roof, wheezing. There he lay for several minutes, gaining his breath, before he picked himself up and climbed to the third storey ledge.

Only a few metres away George slumbered on the precipice of waking.

Boen crouched and lay a hand on his forehead, his chest trembling for the unexpected exertion. Next time, he swore, he would bring a brick and hurl it at her window, no matter who it hit on the other side. He stood, considering how much time had passed already. Dawn was approaching, grey and bleak. He leant against the low concrete ledge and watched the moon briefly, summoning the nerve to descend the brickwork of the opposite side of the pub to Eryn’s window. His back and shoulder ached, and he stretched them slowly until the pain subsided to a throb within his bones.

He took in the moon and it's dancing reflection. A thought returned to him of some long-forgotten summer, and then he saw the boats and froze. His mouth opened and slowly he crouched, watching the several small dinghy’s in the breaking reflection of the moon. His first thought was of his father’s return, but there were too many, and he knew instinctively that they were from Lundy, come to take back the papers that had been stolen. It was the only
thing so many boats could mean.

‘
God almighty… They’re going to kill us…’ he whispered, his back to the wall. Who he meant specifically wasn’t certain, for everyone would kill them. The Lundians, Semilion, and anyone else who found out of their theft. ‘They can’t be here!’ He spat, turning and watching the dark shapes. They didn’t seem to be moving, though that only indicated that they were still a way off; he swore and clenched his fists – his body was shaking. He felt the blood drain from his face.

He closed his eyes again and he held his hands as though he were silencing a room of people, before slipping over the side of the ledge and descending frantically to Eryn’s window.

He crouched on the ledge and looked back out to sea, though the spire of the church blocked his view. It didn't matter, they were there, that was all that was important.

He rapped on the glass tentatively.

The thought of Semilion catching him was now the last thing on his mind, replaced instead by the thought of Semilion finishing what his father had started. Maybe he would blind him in his other eye, maybe he would break all the bones that his father had missed.

Thoughts of the Borderly boy came to him. Did Semilion have it in him to kill as Carrick Tupper had? He knocked again on the glass, a little harder, yet still Eryn was nowhere to be seen. Maybe this wasn’t her room anymore.

Just my luck, he thought, if Baron appeared and pushed me to my death.

Just then Eryn’s face was behind the glass, wide eyed and frightened. They stared at each other momentarily before she rushed to open the window, whispering his name and pulling him inside. He stepped down on to her bed and stumbled on to the floor. It was a small room, and felt confined with them both standing in it.

She hugged him tightly, and pressed her cheek against his, and he resisted the urge to say nothing and simply enjoy the affection. He stepped back, knocking into a shelf, and she looked at the scars and bruises that still lingered on his face.

‘Your eye...’ She whispered, ‘What did they do to you?’

‘It doesn’t matter. that doesn’t matter at all now...’

‘You mean because the men have all gone south?’

‘What? Why?’ He said, confused, before trying to take control of the conversation. ‘No, look... There’s no time to explain... I’ve just seen boats from Lundy, they’re coming this way.’

‘What?’ She hissed, snapping a hand over her mouth. Lundians come to take back the papers they stole.

For a moment she wondered whether her fathers absence was a stroke of providence, though that thought quickly soured. He would learn of what had happened, if she was sure of anything in life she was certain of that. Her mind turned to a mess of panicked white-noise before she dragged herself back to Boen’s words. ‘What?’ She repeated.

‘Four boats, I think... Maybe five. They’re still beyond the wire but they’ll be here in half an hour or so.’

Eryn sank to the bed, clasping her hands tightly as though wishing the world to stand still and afford her time to think. Stupid girl! She thought, admonishing herself. Stupid, selfish girl.

‘What the hell are we going to do?’ He said, kneeling beside her. ‘Have you got those papers? We have to give them back... Say there’s been a misunderstanding.’

‘A misunderstanding?’ She retorted, almost laughing. ‘I took them from the room next to the one we were staying in and we ran away before the household woke. We can’t say we gathered them up with all our stuff by mistake!’

‘What are we going to do then?’

‘I don’t...’

‘Eryn?’ Baron’s sleepy voice was behind the door. ‘Who the hell are you whispering to?’

Eryn pulled a desperate face that eloquently said get the hell back out that fucking window, pronto.

Boen returned a look that expressed his confusion, hadn't she said the men of the community had gone south? Her stoic eyes convinced him to leave, and he eased himself up and stepped on to the creaking bed, ducking his head out of the window.

‘What?’ Eryn replied to her brother. ‘No one, I’m just talking to myself.’ Her face was contorted and she violently thrust it, gesturing Boen to hurry. She stood to move to the door but Baron had already opened it and was halfway through.

‘You’re talking to yourself in different voices? What are you, retar...’ He saw Boen and pushed Eryn out of the way.

‘You sodding prick! What’re you doing here?’ He stepped towards him, his fist raised above his head like a gorilla mid attack, but Boen, head first out of the window, clung to the frame and kicked Baron hard in the face before he knew what he’d done.

Baron blinked twice, and covered his nose as blood gushed between his fingers.

Eryn stood up and hurled herself at Baron. She pushed him against the wall and pressed her thumb against his throat. She braced herself, ready for him to slap her away, but adrenaline rallied her enough to press harder and get so close she could practically smell the salt in his watering eyes.

‘Baron, I know you just want to smash Boen’s face in, but you’re going to have to help us before you do.’

‘What are you talking about?’ He winced. ‘What’s he doing here?’

‘Keep your voice down, the last person we want hearing this is ma. She's worried enough as it is, what with everything that's going on.’

‘Boen climbed down from the window ledge and whispered to Baron, ‘There’s no time to explain, and I’ll be the first to let you break my nose afterwards, but you’ve got to go and get George and Riley, Seb and... Well anyone else who’s got a bit of muscle on them and hasn't been taken south.’

‘Why!’ Baron protested, slapping Eryn’s hand from his neck and snatching up her duvet to staunch his bleeding nose.

‘There are several boats coming from Lundy,’ Eryn said cautiously. ‘They’re here because a few months back we went there and stole something from them.’

‘What? You and Captain Grease-balls here? Bollocks.’

Eryn turned and flung her wardrobe open, rifling through clothes and retrieving several pages. She threw them at Baron’s feet. ‘There. Are these bollocks? Baron, I don’t know if they’re important or not, but they’ve obviously been missed. And now the Lundians are coming to get them back.’

‘You went there when you stole Guliven’s boat?’ Baron said slowly. ‘Pa doesn’t know you stole from Lundy!’

‘No he bloody doesn’t! He would have done a hell of a lot more to me if he knew what we’d done. So when he gets back he can’t find out, Baron. He really can’t... And I need you to help me keep him from finding out otherwise he’s going to go ballistic.’

Baron looked at her for a moment. He wasn’t too fussed if his father beat her for stealing, she deserved it. She deserved it for just consorting with Boen. Jesus, he thought, she’d brought shame to their family by stealing the boat with him. This was infinitely worse.

He turned to Boen. ‘When this is done I’m going to kick your face in.’

‘Sounds fair.’ Boen replied as Baron scowled and dropped the blood stained duvet and skulked from the room to retrieve George from the roof.

*

It took Baron and George a quarter of an hour to gather several of those who had been left to protect Mortehoe.

After complaining, Seb Colt, Chris Benton, and Keth North rushed down the Esplanade as a line of golden dawn began to glow on the horizon.

They had gained access to the other’s homes easily enough, no one in Mortehoe locked their doors after all, had violently roused them, told them to stop complaining and follow them to the beach. Only when they refused, and all of them had done, did they speak of the Lundians. ‘We’re being invaded!’ Boen hissed, and they suddenly flew out of their beds to join him, not considering - in their drowsy states - why they were answering an invasion so quietly... And why were there only five of them?

When George had been shaken awake to warnings of Lundian’s he saw Baron’s bleeding nose and assumed he had already been fighting. He grabbed a large rusting shovel that lay in the corner of the roof and growled enthusiastically about breaking open some Lundian skulls. The others snatched up bats, chains, spades and forks as they ran to the coast, Boen and Eryn behind them.

‘
We’ve got to keep back,’ Eryn said, pulling on Boen’s arm.

‘
Why?’ He tried to pull away but her grip was surprisingly strong. He looked after the others disappearing down the embankment toward the beach and tugged his arm again, this was his chance to prove himself to them.

‘
You’re in no state to fight...’ Eryn said, pulling him away. ‘Follow me.’

‘Where?’

‘We’re still going to help... We have to help, I’m not saying otherwise... This is our fault after all. My fault... Just come with me.’

Five
Morethoe youths intercepted twelve Lundians on the long beach on which the
Tangaroa
’s dead had been abandoned. Most of the corpses had been dragged back into the sea, though some still remained - snagged on rocks or weighed down by silt - their clothes hanging on them like webs.

The dawn, gold and blinding, lit the underbellies of the grey-gold cloud like trapped fire, and silhouetted the Lundians as they leapt from their
dinghies into the surf. They each sported bone-handled knives and thick poles, gripped at their base with leather.

‘We’ve come to…’ A blonde youth, no older than eighteen, shouted as Baron reached the shore, kicking up foam in his forward charge. Before the boy’s sentence was finished, the Morthoe boys were upon them, jabbing with their spades and bats as Baron thrust his elbow in the blonde boy’s face and dragged him down into the water. There was a unified cry as Lundians leapt from their boats and rushed to aid their friend. The Lundians hadn’t expected to be attacked, at least not so swiftly, though the sight of Baron striking their friend repeatedly spurred them to action.

A boot struck Baron in the neck, and he felt the weight of its owner push him to the side. His temple struck the dinghy and blood stung his eyes and sent blinding pain through his broken nose. He looked up and spat at his attacker, a bearded man with manic yellow eyes. In his hand he readied a knife and returned a wad of saliva in Baron’s face.

George splashed beside him, and struck the knife into the air with his shovel; it clanged as it spun end over end before plopping loudly in the water. The bearded man held his elbow aloft to protect his face, and the shovel swung round and connected with a dry whump on his shoulder. The man fell to his knees, and Baron punched him squarely in the mouth, a brown tooth plopping into the surf. The man growled like a dog, thought Baron, and lunged at him, though another swipe from the shovel sent him sprawling.