Twice in the previous month he had been captured and escaped almost immediately. But the real problem was that there was nowhere to escape to. All IdrisPukke had to do was close his eyes to hear the flapping wings of chickens coming home to roost.
SNAP!
Without thinking, IdrisPukke was on his knees and scrambling along the ditch as fast as he could go.
“Torches. Lights. He’s seen us!”
From all around the blaze of torches lit up the pitch black of the field. But what helped them helped IdrisPukke, and now he could see a cloud of trees thirty yards ahead. He scrambled on, fast as a dog, but slipping and sliding in the mud.
“There!”
He’d been seen. As he scrambled on, he could see the light of the torches moving together toward him. Anytime now-the arrow or sword and the agonizing death. Panting, afraid, he scrambled on. Still he was free and moving. He needed to break to the trees. He climbed up the bank, slipping and sliding, and just as he rose above its edge, a blow.
CRACK!
He stood for a moment. The world had stopped in a flash of lightning and pain. Then another blow and he was falling back. Before he hit the bottom of the ditch, fetching his head another terrible clout, he was already unconscious.
When he woke up, a huge, hairy gorilla had both his feet gripped firmly in one hand and was swinging his head casually into a brick wall like a housewife wearily beating a carpet. Then it stopped and the gorilla raised him up, face-to-face, and stared him in the eyes. He knew it was a gorilla because he had seen one at a circus in Arnhemland. This one was much bigger-its breath was hot and wet and smelled of month-old rotting meat, and huge streams of green snot were pouring out of its nose.
“Still alive, then,” said the gorilla. It was only then, and with some relief, that IdrisPukke realized he was still unconscious and dreaming. Then the gorilla continued lazily to bang his head against the brick wall.
When he forced his eyes open, the scene around him dissolved and became a farmer’s cart where he was bound, hand and foot, with his head banging against the wooden sidewall with every jolt as the cart moved over rutted land.
He breathed in deeply to stay conscious and moved his head away into the center of the cart. It was true, he thought: it is nice when you stop banging your head against a wall. Then the pain shrieked back and he stopped being grateful. He groaned.
“You’re awake, then, are you?”
It was a soldier and not a bounty hunter, which at least suggested that he had fallen into the hands of people who might want to go through some formalities before inflicting any unpleasantness. That meant a chance of escape. The soldier gave him a swift jab in the stomach with the butt of his short spear. “I asked you a civil question and I want a civil answer.”
“Yes, I’m awake,” groaned IdrisPukke. “Where am I going?”
“Shut your gob. They told me I wasn’t to talk to you, not on any account, but I don’t see why. You don’t look like much to me.” And with another jab to his stomach with the spear butt, the soldier sat back and did not speak again.
14
What do you want me to do with them?” asked Albin.
Vipond looked up from his desk and considered. “They interest me. But I think it’s time we squeezed them a little more. I want you to oversee their questioning about the Redeemers. We need to create a better picture of the Sanctuary and whether what the Redeemers are up to has any significance for us. In the meantime put the boys out as apprentices to the Mond.”
“Solomon Solomon won’t be happy about that.”
“Good God,” gasped Vipond. “Doesn’t anyone do as they’re told anymore? If he doesn’t like it, he can lump it.”
“The Mond are an arrogant collection, Chancellor. It won’t be easy for the three of them.”
“I realize. But I want you to keep a close eye on them. I want to know how they react to their treatment. I don’t blame them for lying to me-I’d do the same in their place-but I want to get to the bottom of this business.”
And that was how two days later Cale, Kleist, and Vague Henri found themselves in the Square of the Field of Excellence, along with forty-seven other apprentices, watching the same number of young Materazzi aristocrats warming up in front of Solomon Solomon, comptroller of martial arts at the Mond. He was a big man with a shaved head and bad-tempered eyes.
The new apprentices stood and admired the young men, fourteen-and fifteen-year-olds, as they stretched and eased their muscles on the field. In general their appearance was uniform-they were tall, astonishingly supple, blond and slim. Confidence and self-belief shimmered in the air about them as they stretched their long limbs into impossible contortions or performed one-handed push-ups as if magical engines powered their lithe arms. Forty-seven of the apprentices looked on awestruck, the sons of wealthy merchants who had paid Solomon Solomon a good deal of money to allow mere trade the opportunity to have daily contact with the Materazzi. The late substitution of the three yobs from the Scablands had cost Solomon Solomon more than a thousand dollars a year. This was why his icy heart was very much icier than usual.
Each of the apprentices had been placed under a different shield of arms, and while Cale had no idea what these were, he could see from the Materazzi warming up near him that each one had a badge on his chest and that they were the same as the coat of arms he could see behind some of the apprentices. It was a while before he could make out the owner of the badge that matched his own shield. He was like the others, only much more so: taller, blonder, more graceful, stronger. He moved with great speed as he mock-fought several opponents, pulling his blows but still putting each one on his backside. Cale took a few seconds to look back and scan the vast array of weapons for each one of the Mond-half a dozen kinds of sword, short, medium and long spears, axes, as well as several other kinds of weapons he had never seen before.
“You! YOU! STAND WHERE YOU ARE!” It was Solomon Solomon and he was staring at Cale. Solomon Solomon stepped down from the rough stage filled with combat dummies, from which he had been surveying the warm-up, and marched directly over to Cale, not taking his eyes from him for a moment, until he stood directly in front of him. On the field the warm-up came to a halt as the young Materazzi watched to see what would happen. They did not have to wait long. As soon as Solomon Solomon reached Cale, he fetched him a huge palm-open blow across the side of his head. Some of the Mond laughed in a kind of heartless sympathy, as you might on seeing an athlete take a terrible tumble in a race or a weak boxer walk into a punch that would knock him unconscious for hours.
Although Cale staggered, he did not go down as Solomon Solomon expected. Nor, as his head came back into line, did he protest or look Solomon Solomon angrily in the face-Cale had too much experience of arbitrary acts of violence and the incomprehensible bad temper of those in authority over him to make either mistake.
“Do you know what you’ve done?”
“No, sir,” said Cale.
“No, sir? You dare to tell me that you don’t know?” This was said with all the pent-up fury of a miser who had lost a thousand dollars a year without an acceptable explanation. He hit Cale again. When the third blow came, Cale realized his mistake. At the Sanctuary, falling down under a blow was only cause for another blow; here it was now clear that the opposite was true. He duly fell to the floor. “In future,” screamed Solomon Solomon, “you keep your eyes to the front, you watch your master and do not take your eyes from him. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”