In The Wreckage: A Tale of Two Brothers (23 page)

But ‘Bones’ Bagatt held out a hand, warning him to keep back.
 

“What are you doing here, Conall Hawkins? You left us in Hammerfest, now you’re here. Where’s Jonah?”
 

“He’s on Spitsbergen. We have to go. Join the fight.”
 

“That so? Who are we fighting?”
 

“The slavers.”
 

The men looked at each other. They didn’t trust him. Why not? He hadn’t been away that long.
 

From across the camp came the sound of fighting, screams and shouts followed by an explosion.
 

“We have to get the fences down. There are thousands of wildmen out there. We can win, but we have to take out the generators.”

Olan shouted to Conall, urging him to bring his men.
 

“Guess we’ll take our chances on our own, if it’s all the same to you, Mr Hawkins,” Bagatt said.
 

Conall’s eyes darted from face to face. What was wrong with them? “The slavers are the enemy. You have to help.”

Bagatt glared at him. “And which side are you on? Hard to know who to trust and what’s a trick. Leave us be.”
 

The men stood behind as one Bagatt, their faces stern, shoulders turned towards Conall. No smiles, not even of grimace of recognition.
 

“Where are the women? Where’s Heather? Where’s Faro?” He wasn’t here. Why wasn’t he here? Bagatt glared at him, his fist clenched and twisting as if he meant to smash Conall in the face, but for some reason was afraid to do it.

Olan shouted at him again. The Oduma were moving on. He had to go, or stay here and risk being captured. “If you escape, we’re camped in the mountains, five miles to the south-east. The captain will be there.” Conall turned and ran from the hut, the long knife given him by Tugon tucked into his belt. He drew it, held the blade close to his chest and stood among the ranks of the Oduma as Olan gave his orders.
 

The slavers had searchlights along the line of their defences, lighting up the port, the quayside and the beaches. And the electrified fences were still working.
 

Conall looked back towards the slave huts. The engineer was in there, and there was no better man to take out those generators. But they didn’t trust him and he couldn’t work out why.
 

And where was Faro? He wasn’t among them. Where was he?

Olan led his men towards a brick warehouse but as they crossed open ground, searchlights from the rooftops picked them out. Guns opened up, cutting them down. The Oduma warriors scattered, leaving bodies strewn across the compound.
 

Conall kept running, even as bullets bounced around him, men falling, groaning in pain. He hurdled a fallen tribesman and kept going, heading for the doors to the generator building. He slammed into the wooden panels, shook them but knew there was no getting them open. He looked back the way he’d come. The searchlights scanned the grounds, showing dozens of dead bodies. He heard Olan screaming to his men, telling them to retreat.
 

They had to take out the fences and the searchlights and do it before dawn. But there was no way through these doors. Conall shook the door handle, but even if he got it open, there would be armed men inside. They’d cut him down.
 

Sounds of battle ricocheted off the walls of the slaver outpost, but who was winning, what was happening? The fences had held, that was for sure, and Tugon and his men were stuck outside.
 

Olan’s men broke cover and headed as a group toward the main gates. More of the slaver guns opened fire. Wildmen yelled in pain as they were mown down. This was a massacre. Tugon must have planned it better than this. Conall pressed himself against the brick wall of the warehouse, in the darkness, alone now. He could hide, but for how long? The beach, there was no other way.
 

He ran past the slave huts where groups of men loitered near the doors. They seemed unsure what to do, whether to run or fight or go back to their beds. Conall kept going, running for the shore.
 

He unlaced his shoes, threw them up the beach, and moved into the water, taking care not to splash or make a noise. The cold of the water made him gasp for breath but he struck out away from shore, his strokes steady and assured. After twenty minutes of swimming, making for the far headland, he’d begun to hope he might make it. But the noise of the patrol boat grew louder as it gained on him. The searchlight scanned the waters. It lit him up, moved on. The boat changed direction and the light returned. They’d seen him. Men on the boat shouted. A light shone directly on him, the swell of the boat washing against him. He kicked out, turning in the water, desperate to lose them, but hands grasped him, pulled him onto the deck. A knee to his chest, another to his belly, and he was thrown to the floor. Exhausted from his swim, he tried to break free but they tied his hands and feet, and he was left wriggling and helpless in the bow of the boat.
 

≈≈≈≈

For more than an hour Conall lay in the bow of the boat, tied up, soaked and shivering as the slavers patrolled the bay. It was light by the time they finally made shore. The men dragged him onto the quayside, punching him in the stomach for good measure. They behaved like the Russian slavers, but they spoke English. Most had strange accents, Americans or Canadians he guessed, but some were British. They talked of break-outs in other camps, of a mine being over-run, reports of attacks along the coast, some of them successful. But the assault on the centre of their power, where the majority of the slaves were held, had failed. The wildmen had been beaten back.
 

He was pushed towards the slave huts and saw dead bodies littering the compound. The Oduma had been cut down by the guns of the slavers. He was handed over to a group of armed men. One of them stared at him, examining his clothes. The slaves all wore the same, grey trousers, rough cotton shirts and black woollen jackets. They knew he was one of the attackers. But he wasn’t dressed like a wildman.

“Over there,” the slaver said, pushing Conall towards a brick building. “Take him to the holding cell. Put him with the other savages.”
 

≈≈≈≈

Conall was taken to a brick and stone building, a warehouse with a store of wood at one end, and bags of soil and fertiliser at the other. In the centre sat a group of fifty tribesmen guarded by armed slavers. The wildmen looked dejected, staring at the ground. Their battle plan had failed. Their shaman, the one they had waited for all these years, had let them down. Tugon’s plan had left them as prisoners, and their lives would be spent in slavery.
 

Conall was summoned before a man sitting behind a desk. He had a large book in front of him and was busy taking notes. “Name,” the man said.

Conall hesitated. Should he lie?
 

“Name?” the man barked.
 

He told them, and he saw the man glance up at the guard who stood behind him. “Hawkins?”
 

“That’s right.”
 

“Over there.”
 

Conall sat among the wildmen, but none of them spoke to him, deep in their own thoughts.
 

After an hour, one of the slavers approached the circle. “Hawkins.” Conall stood. The man hooked his finger, ordering him to follow. Conall glanced down at the wildmen, but they didn’t react. The man led him out of the warehouse, across the compound towards the main building where the Hudsons had been held.
 

At the doorway, the slaver handed him over to the guards. “Take him to the resource manager.” The guard grunted and shoved Conall in the back. He was marched up a flight of steps and along a corridor. They stopped outside a black door. “Wait,” the guard barked. He knocked, politely, opened the door and peered round. “Got the Hawkins boy,” the guard said.
 

“Show him in.”

The door swung open, the guard pushed him forward. He stepped into the well-lit room, the sun shining through wide windows. A group of men in neat clothes, shirts and jackets and ties, sat around a table. “Conall,” Faro said, getting to his feet. “Little brother. You survived. Well done.”

Faro put his arm around Conall’s shoulder, crushing it. “What you doing with the smelly wildmen? Picked the wrong side again?” He turned to the other men in the room, all of them older, some grey-haired and balding. “Give me a moment? Have to sort out a family misunderstanding.”
 

The men laughed, happy to wait for him. They deferred to him, as if he were in charge.
 

Faro guided Conall back to the door, along the corridor and into another room. Faro pressed Conall against the wall. “What are you doing? You want to ruin everything?”
 

“Good to see you too.” Conall glared at his brother, rage in his eyes, lips pulled back, a dog ready to fight.
 

“What happened to you? Where’ve you been?”
 

“Slavers took us in Hammerfest. The ship sailed without us.”
 

Faro waved his arms, made a tutting noise, as if he’d half expected the news. “That’s Hudson for you. Never trusted him. He doesn’t care about anyone. So what happened?”
 

Conall told him of being taken to the mine in Russia, escaping with Jonah, but he didn’t mention Tugon. He told his brother of the boat they took, sailing the Barents Sea, the storm and being shipwrecked. But he changed his story, didn’t say how he found Jonah, how they saved
The Arkady
and beached her in a bay far to the north. “Wildmen took me. They said the crew of the ship were being held as slaves. You too. But you’re no slave.”
 

“I’ve got a good thing here,” Faro said. “You won’t believe what happened.”
 

“No?”
 

“After Hammerfest, Hudson told me you were missing, said they couldn’t wait. But a new man came on board to act as a guide. Better than Hudson and his crew. This man, Jenkins, he came and found out why I was in the brig, said he’d help. And he did. He freed me. And then his people came. We helped them on board, captured the crew, took the ship.”
 

“It was you?”
 

“They deserved it. They shut me in for weeks. And you were gone. Didn’t know what they were going to do to me. Jenkins offered a way out. I knew the ship, the crew, who could be slipped some rum so they’d fall asleep on watch.”

“You sold the crew to slavers?”
 

“The ship’s anchored at one of our trading posts.”
 

Conall said nothing.
 

“We couldn’t find the treasure map. Jonah might have been lying, Hudson says there’s no map. Maybe Jonah took it.”
 

“You work for them now? The slavers?”
 

“Jenkins is one of their head men. He got me in, said I had management potential. They put me through their tests and stuff. Not many can read and write, do maths for accounts. So they fast-tracked me, let me join the company as a trainee. Lot of responsibility, straight off.”

“Company? What company?”
 

“Arctic Endeavours.” Faro’s voice hummed with pride. “I’m their youngest manager in history.” He puffed out his chest.
 

Was this his brother? Conall’s mouth twitched with anger. “They’re slavers.They kill, steal. How can you work for them?”
 

“What else do I have? What chances? It’s is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Lucky for you, too. You’d be a slave, or executed for what you did, taking part in that raid. There are laws here now, it’s not a wild land anymore.”

“Whose laws? Yours? This company?”
 

“They’re rebuilding,” Faro said. “The old world is coming back. They have plans. Mines for coal and iron. Make steel. Find oil, it’s out there.”
 

“That’s what made the world sick.”
 

“They’re planting forests.”
 

“So they can cut them down.”
 

“And farming. We’re turning this rock into a fertile island. Bringing soil from the south, fertiliser from Russia. That’s where you worked, that quarry.”
 

“We dug rocks.”
 

“Apatite. We use it in the greenhouses, miles of them. We grow year round, even in the winter, with artificial light and heating.”
 

“It’s madness.”
 

“You should see what the company can do. Organised, chain of command. Getting stuff done. I’m part of that now.”
 

“People like this killed the world.”
 

“We’re putting it back together. We won’t be stopped. Wake up. I can take you out of the slave camp, get you a place with the company. Not like me, further down, but it’s a start and it’d suit you. I’ll talk to Jenkins. He’s all right. I’ll tell him what Hudson did, leaving you in Norway, we’ll say the wildmen took you prisoner, forced you to help them. But you’ve got to get your story straight. Don’t let me down. This is my chance, I won’t have it messed up.”
 

Conall’s fist clenched and unclenched. He could barely believing what he heard. “Slaves, Faro. They use slaves. The crew. People we know. They found us as stowaways but let us stay on board. And the wildmen, they’re good people.” Conall thought of his mother, back in camp, worrying. Should he tell Faro she was alive? No, wait. Say nothing for now.
 

Faro’s face twisted in a snarl. “You want to side with them, live like a savage? That’s your problem. Nothing’s going to stop the company. We need this land, the resources, and we won’t be stopped. I’m part of it, part of the future.”
 

“I’d rather be a savage than a slaver, using people as property.”