the fire, so I curled up there, safe enough, not too close to the flames I hoped. Later, as I drifted off I felt the extra weight of blanket laid over me and felt the familiar form of Nes close to me, as she slipped down beside me and snuggled up for warmth.
Chapter 10
Though I was glad of her closeness, all in all I did not sleep well that night; my dreams were distorted echoes and pictures of that war that Dai had described. These were things that I had not known of before, things that had been hinted at, but never really understood. Now it was real to me and unwelcome. Knowledge is not always a blessing. I had not really lived in Eden, but innocence had almost made it thus.
So it was that I was dozing in the Land Rover, when we got to the Rock and Fountain staging post in the late afternoon of the next day. The weather had cleared, but the roads were still clogged with mud, so we’d made heavy going of it.
The Land Rover suddenly stopped and I woke up abruptly, seeing Cal and the Constable in the front seat, both trying hard to see why the convoy had halted. The Constable got out, cursing the mud he landed in, and went up the line to find the answer. He came back, just as Cal started the engine again and the Land Rover fell back into line, moving off slowly in the wake of the old truck in front of us. It was burning some sort of vegetable oil in its engine and Mrs. Sharma said it smelled like a chip-shop. The others laughed, even Nes, but I didn’t know what she meant.
As we inched into the compound, the Constable told us that the marshal who ran the trading post had his guards on alert. A road-train had been attacked further up the valley and everything was a chaos of preparations for imminent attack. As we chugged into the old car park, we could sense the panic and see the shock written on the faces of the people already there, the survivors of the attack.
“It’s really shaken them up,” the Constable said, talking quietly not to attract unwelcome attention, “nobody’s attacked a road train for years. Bandits will pick off stragglers or steal what they can, but this was a full-scale attack.”
As we followed the vehicles of our train through to its assigned camping place, I could see that the place was full of people. We passed the big tractors from the other road-train and saw where shot had peppered the sides of the cabs and where fire had blackened some of the wagons. The tractors formed a gathering point for those who had got through the attack and people were still attending to the wounded. I saw bodies too, covered up in old tarp, like dolls tossed aside, the living going on about their business besides them.
There were others there also. Refugees, Cal called them, fleeing down the valley. But when I asked him, he was unsure what they were fleeing from. I could see the Constable anxiously looking at them, examining them to see if any of our people were amongst them and whether we had, in the end, just been on a vain journey.
As we lit our fires and set out our camp, you could almost feel the fear and panic of the place like some beating heart underlying all those petty, little things people were doing to get their supper ready, while all the time thinking and worrying about maybes and what-ifs. You could almost taste it too, like a metallic flavour on your tongue, which may have been the acrid tang of the cooking fires or was perhaps more.
Cal and I went for water, as Mrs. Sharma was tired and her legs were playing her, as she put it, an unfair game. We had thought Nes was coming with us, she was growing more communicative by the hour it seemed, but she disappeared just before we got the cans together. As we walked to the water tanks, it was clear to me that the fear that they felt had loosened people’s tongues, as gossip and rumour seemed the order of things all through the camp. People were constantly asking you where you came from and seeking news. Cal was too taciturn to be good at this
Chapter 10
Though I was glad of her closeness, all in all I did not sleep well that night; my dreams were distorted echoes and pictures of that war that Dai had described. These were things that I had not known of before, things that had been hinted at, but never really understood. Now it was real to me and unwelcome. Knowledge is not always a blessing. I had not really lived in Eden, but innocence had almost made it thus.
So it was that I was dozing in the Land Rover, when we got to the Rock and Fountain staging post in the late afternoon of the next day. The weather had cleared, but the roads were still clogged with mud, so we’d made heavy going of it.
The Land Rover suddenly stopped and I woke up abruptly, seeing Cal and the Constable in the front seat, both trying hard to see why the convoy had halted. The Constable got out, cursing the mud he landed in, and went up the line to find the answer. He came back, just as Cal started the engine again and the Land Rover fell back into line, moving off slowly in the wake of the old truck in front of us. It was burning some sort of vegetable oil in its engine and Mrs. Sharma said it smelled like a chip-shop. The others laughed, even Nes, but I didn’t know what she meant.
As we inched into the compound, the Constable told us that the marshal who ran the trading post had his guards on alert. A road-train had been attacked further up the valley and everything was a chaos of preparations for imminent attack. As we chugged into the old car park, we could sense the panic and see the shock written on the faces of the people already there, the survivors of the attack.
“It’s really shaken them up,” the Constable said, talking quietly not to attract unwelcome attention, “nobody’s attacked a road train for years. Bandits will pick off stragglers or steal what they can, but this was a full-scale attack.”
As we followed the vehicles of our train through to its assigned camping place, I could see that the place was full of people. We passed the big tractors from the other road-train and saw where shot had peppered the sides of the cabs and where fire had blackened some of the wagons. The tractors formed a gathering point for those who had got through the attack and people were still attending to the wounded. I saw bodies too, covered up in old tarp, like dolls tossed aside, the living going on about their business besides them.
There were others there also. Refugees, Cal called them, fleeing down the valley. But when I asked him, he was unsure what they were fleeing from. I could see the Constable anxiously looking at them, examining them to see if any of our people were amongst them and whether we had, in the end, just been on a vain journey.
As we lit our fires and set out our camp, you could almost feel the fear and panic of the place like some beating heart underlying all those petty, little things people were doing to get their supper ready, while all the time thinking and worrying about maybes and what-ifs. You could almost taste it too, like a metallic flavour on your tongue, which may have been the acrid tang of the cooking fires or was perhaps more.
Cal and I went for water, as Mrs. Sharma was tired and her legs were playing her, as she put it, an unfair game. We had thought Nes was coming with us, she was growing more communicative by the hour it seemed, but she disappeared just before we got the cans together. As we walked to the water tanks, it was clear to me that the fear that they felt had loosened people’s tongues, as gossip and rumour seemed the order of things all through the camp. People were constantly asking you where you came from and seeking news. Cal was too taciturn to be good at this
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