‘Why on Earth sacrifice our own people in what must be a futile endeavour, then?’
‘Because,’ Carswell said, ‘my way is your only hope of survival. Also, I intend to employ the same strategy as the Spartans did at Thermopylae. You’ve no doubt seen the Hollywood version of this historical event? So you’ll recall the Spartans didn’t meet their enemy on open ground. They held them at a narrow pass between a cliff face and the sea where the ground was only a few yards wide. This meant the Persians couldn’t deploy their cavalry and they could send forward only a few hundred of their troops at a time – because space was so restricted. That’s why we’ll launch our attack between the cliffs and the river.’
It was Jud who raised his hand this time. ‘Just how do we know they’ll come through the pass down by the river?’
‘Oh, they will. Rolle has assured me of that. Because that’s where the time-gate that they have to use to reach this year 1865 lies.’
‘But if he’s wrong that means we will—’
‘Then we must rely on the hope that he won’t be wrong, Mr Campbell. Now, I must tell you we are wasting valuable time. We should have begun work on these vehicles an hour ago.’
‘But what gives you the right to be in charge?’ Sam asked. ‘We haven’t appointed you as our leader.’
‘No, but that’s part of the deal. This is my plan; therefore I’m in charge.’
‘But who made the deal?’
‘I did.’
Everyone turned to see the man who stood in the barn doorway. Snow speckled his hair and face white. His eyes blazed as bright as before.
‘Rolle?’
Rolle walked into the barn, looking round at the vehicles. His eyes grew wide.
‘Rolle, is it true? You brought Carswell here?’
Rolle nodded so sharply that snowflakes dropped from his beard. ‘It is true. There are no other options now. In the past I have fought the plague with penicillin. Now the Bluebeards are the plague. We must fight them with every weapon at our disposal. All I can do is beg all of you to follow Mr Carswell. Do everything he asks, and perhaps with God’s love we will come through the inferno unharmed.’
These were the most lucid words Sam had heard from Rolle. He watched as the man went to the bus and ran his fingers abstractedly over the metal sides. Already he seemed to be slipping into that interior dream-world of his. He hummed to himself while continuing to run his fingers over the metalwork as if he was drawing pictures only he could see.
Sam spoke under his breath to Jud. ‘What on Earth could Rolle give to a man like Carswell in exchange for his help?’
‘Probably what you always give when you do a deal with the devil.’
‘All right, people,’ Carswell said, clapping his hands. ‘You heard the man. My word is law. Get to work. Lee, I need you to go into town and bring the Reverend Thomas Hather to me – now. Jud, Sam. Strip the seats and the parcel shelves out of the bus. A task that will be made all the easier if you stop whispering at the back there. Oh, you’d best remove the windows from the bus first. Now, people, get busy.’
And that was how it started.
With a motley range of tools collected from the cars, Sam started slackening the nuts and bolts that held the bus seats to the floor. Jud started pulling the rubber trim from the windows until—
‘Mr Campbell, don’t waste time taking out the glass in one piece.’ Carswell’s voice came from the hayloft where he’d established a kind of combined observation platform and command post. ‘We don’t need the glass. Smash it out, man.’
‘Aye, aye, captain,’ Jud muttered under his breath. He picked up a hammer. ‘Cover your eyes.’ Then he walked along the aisle between the bus seats and smashed each window in turn. It sounded explosive in the confines of the barn. The toughened glass burst into thousands of white crystals, scattering across the floor.
Carswell called down to the schoolteacher who’d raised the objections earlier. ‘Get that broken glass swept up straight away, then find more lamps. Those men have got to be able to see what they’re doing.’
Sam returned to slackening the nuts with the wrench. They were all shiny and new, without a trace of rust, but they’d been tightened with a power tool. Each one took a hell of a lot of sweated curses to turn. Fortunately, once they had begun to turn, it was easy enough to unscrew them. After that, Sam simply heaved the whole seat out through the side of the bus where the glass had once been.
He paused to wipe the sweat from his eyes. In the cold air he noticed that his arms had actually begun to steam from the sheer body heat he was generating. All around the bus, men and women were working, each with their own special task allotted to them by Carswell. Now they knew what they were doing there was an air of determined industry. The air was full of the sounds of metal being hammered, saws cutting wood, planing, chopping, lines being tied. One of the men who Sam knew had been a garage mechanic in that faraway world of 1999 was cutting a hole right in the centre of the Range Rover’s roof. Then he pushed a hefty timber fence-post down into it until a good five feet of its length stuck straight up like the mast of a ship.
As Sam heaved yet another seat out through the glassless window he shook his head. Here they all were, busy as ants in a nest, but none of this activity made sense. He hadn’t a clue why the mechanic was fixing a timber mast onto the Range Rover and he didn’t know why Zita was running power cables from under the dashboard to what looked like stumpy timber wings that now jutted out from the car’s side.
All he did know for sure was that Carswell had told them they would transform the tour bus into some kind of battleship on wheels. But he still didn’t see how.
He glanced up at Carswell, who stood on the timber platform high above the barn floor. He was looking down, his hands on his hips, his feet apart, like some master architect overseeing the building of a great pyramid.
So the little workers who toiled below didn’t know the grand purpose behind their labour. That didn’t matter to Carswell. It didn’t matter a jot. He alone possessed the vision – the great, glorious, shining vision – of the finished machine.
Sam returned to a bolt that was more stubborn than the rest. His hands had already begun to blister despite the calluses they already bore from the ferry work; but he slipped the wrench over the securing nut, braced his foot against the seat and heaved.
As he did so he realised that he, too, had at last surrendered himself to Carswell’s authority.
The man might be a bastard. A high and mighty bastard at that, who had the conceit and arrogance of a Caesar, a Napoleon and a Mussolini all rolled into one.
But he was probably all that stood between Casterton and the barbarians.
At a little after two in the morning Sam Baker found himself walking down to the river.
It took a good 20 minutes to cross the snow-covered meadows to the water’s edge where Jud’s boat lay moored.
Sam walked with his head down against the stinging cascade of snowflakes. In one hand he carried a small lantern by its iron hoop handle. Unlike an electric torch that would have blazed a cone of white light through the blizzard, it threw little more than an orangey gleam onto the snow in front of him.
After five hours cranking that wrench to loosen off the seating bolts his hands felt hot enough to burst into flame. His knuckles bled where the wrench had slipped and his fists had rapped against the inner walls of the bus. Periodically he’d move the lantern from one hand to the other, then turn his free hand so that the palm was exposed to the falling snow. The icy cool of the flakes melting on the blistered skin was sheer bliss. There was something almost erotic in the sheer intensity of the sensation.