In The Wreckage: A Tale of Two Brothers Read online

  Jonah told him he’d spent the day on the edge of the quarry, wielding a sledgehammer and breaking rocks.

  “What are they digging for? These rocks don’t look special.”

  “Not precious, no gems or stones in ‘em,” Jonah said. “I asked around, no one knows. They crush ‘em, some say, then take the remains off somewhere. Makes no sense, all this work, for rock dust.”

  Conall handed half his extra food to Argent. “What about getting out?”

  “Not that hard, fences are rusted, rotten in places. Where to go though, that’s the thing. One road out of here, they say. Everything else is mountains and forest. Either they catch you, or you die out there.”

  “Better than staying.”

  “Aye, maybe it is, but we wait, like I said. No rushing things. We might get one chance. If it was easy, none of these slaves would be here. They’ve all got someplace else to be, sure of that.”

  So they waited. Day after day, carrying rocks, sorting and breaking them, working ten hour shifts in the quarry. When they weren’t working, they slept, played cards with other slaves, talked and listened, learnt what they could. Everywhere Conall went, he saw the same symbol, painted on the huts, on the wagons. On the black uniforms worn by the guards. Two white circles, one inside the other. Everyone he met, he asked them what it meant, but no one knew.

  They watched the guards, figuring out when they changed shifts, which ones were lazy, which bunked off to abuse the women. Which ones Jonah said he’d kill, if the chance ever came.

  They got in the habit of eating with the wildman, so Conall could get his extra food. They’d talk over what they’d learnt, sitting apart from the other men, making their plans. They felt safe, talking in front of him. He couldn’t understand and showed no signs of listening.

  A week passed, two weeks, and the work got easier as Conall grew stronger. But still they saw no way to escape the mine. They knew to head north, towards the sea, but nothing more.

  “We need someone who knows the place, or how to live in those woods. And how to hide from the guards. They’ve got dogs, they’ll come after us,” Jonah said.

  “Who can we trust?”

  “No telling.”

  So they kept working, as the weeks passed and the days got longer, until there was barely an hour of darkness. They plotted and planned, comparing what they learnt as they sat apart from the others with only the wildman for company, brooding and silent.

  One day, Conall found himself standing with a group of other slaves, waiting for the buckets to be weighed. “You work good with the wildman,” the foreman said. “Not many can.”

  “Where’s he from? Why does no one talk to him?”

  “They call him wildman for a reason,” the foreman said. “Brought here from Svalbard. One of the savage tribes. Dangerous people. Barely human. Don’t think they can talk, live like animals.”

  “You’re sure? From Svalbard?”

  “So they say, one of the islands. Taken years ago.”

  Conall told Jonah the news that evening, watching the wildman the whole time. Did his face flicker, when Conall mention the name of his homeland? He must have imagined it. “We should take him with us. He could help us find The Arkady.”

  “I know the way to Spitsbergen, I can sail us there,” Jonah said.

  “He knows the island though. Where the boat might land. Where’s safe to go. He might help you find the treasure, even without the map.” He looked at Jonah, to see how he’d take it. He’d never mentioned the map before now.

  “What treasure would that be?” Jonah said.

  “We heard you, in the hold, talking, you and the engineer.”

  “People with big ears and big mouths get themselves in trouble. Your brother, he was looking for the map then?”

  Conall said nothing.

  “I guessed as much.”

  “What’s the treasure?”

  “Never you mind.”

  “Do you even know?”

  “Like I said, it’s none of your business young Hawkins.”

  “We should ask him.” Conall nodded towards the wildman. “He might know.”

  “He don’t seem the type to talk,” Jonah said gruffly.

  “All the same, he could help us.”

  “I don’t see it,” Jonah said. “Not sure I’d trust him. He might cut our throats. Or eat us.”

  Still not a flicker on the wildman’s face. He kept eating, chewing his bread slowly.

  Conall finished his food and staggered off to the dorm room, muscles aching, leaving Jonah to play poker with the Americans, gambling for worthless stones. He fell into his bed and slept, dreamless, never waking when the guards came round to check on them, or when the doors were locked for the night.

  He woke in pitch darkness, with a hand over his mouth. “Say nothing.” A strange voice. “We go, tonight, you, me, your friend. We go to Svalbard.”

  It was the wildman. So he could talk. He’d been listening, all this time. He spoke English with an accent, but fluent, like he’d used it all his life. Grown up with it.

  “We go now,” the wildman whispered. “I’ll get you out. You take me to Svalbard. You trust me. I trust you. Yes?”

  The man still held one hand over Conall’s mouth, the other poised near his throat. Conall heard Jonah sit up, whisper his name, ask if he was all right.

  Finally, the wildman removed his hand from Conall’s face. “My name Tugon,” he said. “We go tonight. We go now.”

  Chapter Ten

  TAIGA

  They crept across the wooden hut, weaving through rows of beds. Boards creaked underfoot. Behind him Jonah barged into a wooden bed-frame. The man in it cursed, muttering for a moment before rolling over. Conall stood silent, motionless, waiting to see if guards came, if other men woke. It seemed an age before Conall could breathe freely.

  “Go on,” Jonah whispered.

  Conall kept moving. Tugon was ahead of them in the darkness, somewhere, though for such a big man he seemed able to move without making a sound, like cat stalking, ready to kill.

  They reached the door. It was unlocked. An oil lamp flickered on the wall outside the hut, and by its light Conall made out Tugon standing over the body of a guard, his neck twisted at a sickening angle.

  Tugon gestured for them to follow. They rounded the huts and passed a wood pile. Beyond the fences stood the buildings where the guards lived, and the offices where the managers worked, overseeing the activity of the mine. Tugon strode out, head held high, heading for rough ground, cleared of trees. They walked around the bottom of an immense pyramid of discarded rock, feet slipping on loose stones. Too much noise. Conall glanced over his shoulder. No sign of pursuit. No shouts of alarm.

  In front of them stood the fence, too high to climb, made of metal they had no tools to cut. Old though. Ancient steel from the old days, rusted and weak. Where the mound of stones met the fence, tumbling rocks had created a hole big enough to slide through. How long had it been here? How long had Tugon known he could escape?

  The wildman led the way, sliding on his backside over the stones, lying flat as went through the hole, barely big enough for Tugon and Jonah, but easy for Conall. The rocks slipped under him, rattling, in the still night air. Conall winced at every sound, sure he would hear shouts of pursuit, dogs and gunfire.

  Tugon picked him off the stones as he slid through, dragged him to his feet. They stood on open ground, half a mile from a line of trees that would give them cover, but they had to make it before dawn. Already, there was light in the sky to the east. The camp would be waking.

  They set off towards the tree-line, no word spoken, saving breath and energy for the escape. Tugon ran ahead, scouring the ground. He waved them on, stopping to look back. They heard shouts from among the guards, a bell ringing frantically. The guard’s body had been found. They’d know slaves had escaped, and would send out dogs to find them. Conall cursed. If only they’d had longer. Keep going, he told himself, don’t worry, just mo
ve.

  When they reached the trees they stopped to get their breath back. There was no clear view of the camp, it was above them now, and all Conall could make out was the line of the fence and the mountain of stone on the other side. But he heard the barking of dogs.

  “Shouldn’t have killed that guard,” Jonah said. “Now they’ll never rest ’til they find us. It’s personal, not just a runaway slave.”

  “No choice,” Tugon said. He produced a key from a pocket. “Killing him meant I got this.” He unlocked Conall’s collar, threw it to the ground, then did the same for Jonah. Conall took the key from him and unleashed Tugon from his yoke. He took the collar and threw it to the ground in fury.

  Conall longed to ask a thousand questions of Tugon. How could he speak English? Why had he hidden it? Who was he? But this wasn’t the time. Tugon plunged into the darkness of the trees and they had no choice but to follow.

  Conall ran behind Tugon, hoping the wildman knew tricks about surviving in these forests, such as how to find food and evade a pack of dogs. He got his answer soon enough. Tugon paused to take a gun out of a pocket, checked it was loaded. Stolen from the guard, for sure, but had the wildman had ever fired a gun? Conall had never seen one before setting foot on The Arkady.

  “You know what you’re doing with that?” Jonah held out a hand. “I’ve used guns, give it to me. Guess we don’t have many bullets.”

  Tugon stared at Jonah for a moment, thought about it, shook his head and set off again through the trees.

  The woods were mostly conifer, growing straight but close together, with little undergrowth. Above them the canopy was dense and dark, too thick for much light to get through, or for plants or grasses to grow. That meant no animal tracks, no clearings. Instead, the ground was littered with brown fir and larch needles.

  As they moved down the mountainside the conifers thinned out and the woods became a patchwork of fir and broad-leafed trees. Grass grew in open patches of ground. They came to a stream and the three men knelt by the water to drink. As Conall brought the first handful to his mouth, he heard the dogs, closer now, on their trail for sure.

  “They’ll keep them leashed,” Jonah said. “Dog’s no use if it runs miles ahead. And they must know we’ve got a gun.”

  They splashed through the stream, hoping it might hide their scent. But they stank. They hadn’t washed properly in weeks. Conall kicked at the water. “Reckon the men could smell us, never mind the dogs.”

  “You want to stop for a hot bath?” Jonah said as he scrambled out of the stream.

  After another hour of flight, they came to a break in the trees. The sound of dogs was far behind them, half a mile or more, the barking drifting on the breeze. In front of them stood open marshland, exposed countryside where they would be clearly visible. But there was no other way to go, except back, or up into high mountains, or down, towards the road.

  Tugon pointed across the open land to a hillock. Once beyond it, they would be invisible from the line of trees. “He thinks like a tracker, I’ll give him that,” Jonah said.

  As they crossed the marsh they splashed in pools of standing water to hide their scent. The wind had picked up, at their backs now, and that would confuse the dogs too. “Things are looking up,” Jonah said as they reached the hillock and passed around and below it, out of sight from any pursuers. “All we need now is food and shelter. Be a shame to die out here.”

  “There must be villages.”

  “Too risky,” said Jonah, frowning.

  “No villages,” Tugon said. “Trees for shelter. We find food later.”

  “All right for him, been on double rations. I’m skin and bone already,” Jonah said.

  By mid-day they had reached more woodland and finally stopped to rest. They crept behind huge rocks, green with moss and lichens in a damp hollow where a stream gushed from the earth. Conall drank the pure, clean water and stripped off to wash himself, glad to get rid of the sweat and dust from the quarry.

  “Your English is coming along fast,” Jonah said, winking at Conall.

  Tugon said nothing.

  “You played us smart,” Jonah said, “letting us talk, listening in all that time. Never telling us the truth.”

  “You did not ask,” Tugon said.

  Conall slumped back against a rock, glad to rest his legs at last. “How long were you in that place? You never spoke? No one there knew. The guards, the foreman, none of them.”

  Tugon sat with his arms folded across his chest. “I had nothing to say.”

  “Man of few words, eh. Known a few of them in my time,” Jonah said. “Not sure I trust many of ‘em though.”

  Tugon looked at him, shrugged. He didn’t care if Jonah trusted him or not. He didn’t have to care. He had the gun.

  “Is it true? Are you from Svalbard?” Conall pulled his shirt over his head, the cotton sticking to his wet skin. “They said you were part of a wild tribe.”

  “I live on Spitsbergen, as your people call it.”

  “What do you call it?” Jonah’s tone was barbed, and Conall glared at him.

  “We call it home,” Tugon said. “We lived there, long before the outsiders came.”

  “Now that ain’t true,” Jonah said, “no one lived there in the old days, it was ice and glaciers and not much else. No one living wild, that’s for sure. No tribes, not on Svalbard.”

  “We’ve been there longest,” he said. “My people lived there, for generations. I was born there. My father before me. And his, too.”

  Conall dried his hair with his shirt. “Where did you learn English?”

  “My people speak it, and other languages.”

  “Now, you see,” Jonah said, “not a tribe at all, not speaking English. You’re no more wild than the rest of us.”

  Tugon spat on the ground. “You find food?”

  “Out here, no,” Jonah said. “Haven’t seen you find any yet.”

  He needed to keep some kind of peace between these two. Conall pulled his shirt back over his head. “No use arguing. It won’t help us survive.”

  “Little chance of staying alive, not out here, unprepared,” Jonah said, “should have waited, like I said, until we were ready, not rushing off on his say so.”

  “Time to go,” Tugon said, and stood up. “You want to eat? We get to the river.”

  “What river?”

  “That one.” Tugon pointed north with one hand, and put the other to his ear.

  Conall listened. Nothing.

  Tugon didn’t care. He set off walking, and they had no choice but to follow.

  “There must be fruit,” Jonah yelled. “Berries. Find them, if you’re so smart.”

  Tugon stopped, pointed at the sun. “Spring, no fruit, no berries,” his voice scornful, and he went on walking.

  By the time they caught up with the wildman he was perched on a rock, staring downstream, eyes intent on the water. He’d found his river, led them true. He held a stick in one hand, sharpened somehow. Then Conall saw a chisel, the kind Tugon used at the quarry, lying on the rocks. He’d brought it with him, all this way, for just this reason. Conall and Jonah sat on a fallen tree and watched. They waited, Tugon barely moving, for ten minutes, twenty.

  All the time, Conall listened for the sound of dogs, or pursuit. “We lost them, you think?”

  “Maybe,” Jonah said. “Feels too easy, like they might know the land around here. Might be waiting for us, up ahead.”

  Tugon pounced, his arm sending his makeshift spear flying into the water. He leapt in after it and emerged with a salmon, skewered on the sharpened branch of a larch tree.

  “Guess we eat,” Jonah said, rubbing his hands together.

  Tugon made them wait until dusk before he’d light a fire. Hidden by trees, the firelight couldn’t be seen more than a few hundreds yards off, but smoke would be visible for miles in daylight. By the time the meat was cooked Conall was starved and he gulped it down, tearing at the cooked flesh with his teeth. They slept for
a few hours close to the river in a hollow covered with branches and moss, and rose with the sun already high in the sky, to walk once more.

  They followed the river. “Must lead to the sea, they all do,” Jonah said, but he was wrong. It led to a lake which it took them half a day to walk around, and no river flowed from it. But there was still no sign of pursuit.

  Conall gazed across the lake, listening for sound carried on the wind. “The dogs must have lost the scent.”

  “Or the guards got tired and gave up,” Jonah said. “Perhaps they expect us to die out here. They might be right.”

  They might, if it wasn’t for Tugon. The wildman knew how to light a fire without a flint or match. He could catch fish without a hook and line, and set traps for hares.

  Three days they walked, heading north, before they came to another river, wider, one they’d never cross safely without a boat. “We follow this river, then,” Jonah said. “One of them’s got to lead to the sea. Stands to reason.”

  They journeyed downstream until the river plunged into a narrow gorge. There was no way around without heading into high mountains, a journey that would take days or weeks. They had no choice but to stick to the course of the river, scrambling over rocks and making slow progress. Jonah kept muttering about this being a good place for an ambush. Tugon was alert, constantly scanning the rocks above them, scouting ahead and urging them to be quiet. After an hour of walking through the gorge, with no way ahead but a single narrow path, they heard in the distance the barking of dogs. It could mean only one thing: a slaver ambush.

  “They know the terrain,” Jonah said. “Knew where we’d end up. Took a good guess at least.”

  Tugon told to them to wait while he went ahead to scout. He scampered like a mountain goat rushing across rocks, sure of his footing and moving soundlessly.