The only tugs capable of manoeuvring the crippled ship were too far away to intervene in time and disaster seemed inevitable. At Sparke's instructions, the rig stopped production and the crew was evacuated but the potential damage, which the ship could cause by hitting the rig, was still massive in environmental terms.

  There is a plan for such things. At the last resort, when there is no other option available, the authorities will call on the military to sink the ship. With things slowly escalating both the navy and air force were put on alert.

  A relay of helicopters belonging to Sparke's company had been filming events and the images were relayed directly to Sparke's big screen. Sparke was in the middle of a discussion with the head of his crisis management team in Stavanger when suddenly two fighter jets flashed into view, flew low past the ship, inspecting their target, then climbed quickly and disappeared into the distance.

  The crew of the drifting ship had by now been airlifted off to a nearby tender vessel, but there was a problem. The captain refused to leave the ship.

  All attempts to persuade the captain to board the rescue helicopter failed. Sparke could hear clearly the discussions with the captain as various officials tried to talk him into leaving for safety. Eventually the voice of the commanding officer of the navy frigate, which had arrived at the scene, came over the network, calmly asking the captain if he was aware that he had been ordered to leave the ship. His answer was unintelligible. The naval officer tried again but still had no clear response. Sparke was not one to rush to assumptions but either the skipper was under the influence of drink or drugs or he was in the midst of a nervous breakdown. He was speaking to the navy man in a mixture of languages, none of which seemed to be making any sense.

  Eventually Sparke could hear orders coming over the audio feed from his company's helicopter ordering it to move back, as a navy helicopter sped low across the screen from the frigate. Several figures skimmed down ropes dropped from the open doors of the aircraft before heading swiftly to the huge superstructure at the stern of the ship. A few minutes later they reappeared with the captain, his hands bound behind his back. The navy helicopter darted back into view, landing on the huge open space of the main deck. From hovering over the ship to the moment when they bundled the uncooperative captain into the helicopter had taken perhaps four minutes.

  The, now abandoned, ship had drifted so close to the rig that it seemed unlikely that anything could stop it striking. Even if the jets blew holes in the hull, it seemed to Sparke so big and so close that it would collide before it went under. It was made worse because the ship was drifting side on, creating the broadest risk imaginable. From what he learned from his own team, Sparke realised that the bow of the ship was on track to hit the rig.

  The small helicopter from the frigate reappeared and took up station some distance from the ship. All other aircraft were ordered to move out of the area. Fortunately, the helicopters filming for Sparke's company were equipped with high-resolution cameras so he could still see what was going on.

  Both jets again flashed past the ship. It occurred to Sparke that the helicopter was serving as an aiming device, probably using a laser to lock on the ship.

  Suddenly a missile was released from one of the jets and skimmed the waves, smashing into the hull of the ship within a few metres of the very end of the stern, just below the waterline. Initially Sparke, like most other observers thought that the aim had been poor, then slowly he realised that the pilot had placed the missile exactly where they had wanted it.

  The ruptured hull of the ship rapidly filled with water from the stern. The sudden extra weight pulled down the rear of the vessel acting as a brake, causing the nose of the ship to slowly swing round. As it swung it moved, with agonising slowness, far enough round to bring it on a new trajectory, which now seemed that it could miss the rig.

  The rig was equipped with cameras which were now pivoted towards the approaching hulk. The mass of the abandoned ship completely filled the screen in Sparke's office as it inched past. He could see the rust streaked steel plates moving past at less than walking pace and the gaping wound in the stern with wisps of smoke still coming from it.

  Before the ship had cleared the rig, lawyers from around the world had leapt into action and a tangle of lawsuits exploded whose complexity was only matched by the size of the claims. The navy was claiming for the cost of the missile.

  As the senior member of the company's management team to have taken part in managing the response and the person who had seen most he had now been summoned by the head of his firm's London office for the inquest.

  Sparke approached inquests with the same frame of mind that he endured flight delays. With low expectations and a lot of stamina.

  After two days of waiting, his testimony lasted less than an hour. All he was really called upon to say was that he believed the rig was in imminent danger and that a collision would have caused damage costing hundreds of millions. He calmly recounted the story, as he had witnessed it, to the inquest, answered a few questions and then was excused.

  Sitting at a borrowed desk in the London office later that day he scrolled through emails, using the time to catch up on those that always seemed to fall to the bottom of the pile. Several were entitled "Unused holiday entitlement". He had never opened any of them so he started with the most recent which he noticed had come from the company's head of Human Resources:

  Peter,

  We have tried to reach you by email several times but so far all our mails seem to have somehow lost their way. If they ever do find their way to you, you will see that you have accumulated a lot more unused leave days than are allowed.

  This is not funny, it is serious. Call me.

  Lynne.

  Sparke had a lot of time for Lynne. She was one of those people who managed to be totally professional in her job without forgetting that she was a person too. He called her.

  "Peter," she said, ”you really have to work quite hard in this firm to get into trouble but you have managed to succeed. If you do not take your leave days, it puts pressure on others to do the same. You must have had about six reminders but you never responded. Those people who sent them have a job to do and it is not ok to mess them around."

  The phrase 'not ok' was the highest form of insult in the language of his company. Sparke knew he was in trouble.

  "I'm in trouble?" he said.

  "You were in trouble, now you are passed that and into 'remedial action'. I had to speak to Karin about this; your name was flagged at the Executive Committee meeting".

  "I know that I have outstanding leave days."

  "Peter, you are in breach of guidance."

  Few things in his company's world were held in such esteem as 'guidance'. To fail to be guided meant to reject the ethos of the firm. Being beyond guidance meant beyond the team, to be 'not one of us'.

  "What do I do?"

  "Two choices," said Lynne, "one, you call personally the people whose mails you ignored and apologise for treating them not ok and then you take your outstanding leave days immediately or, two you go for counselling."

  As they would say in his firm, “counselling is not ok”.

  "So either I go on holiday right now or get counselled?"

  "Peter, if I was you I would take my seventeen outstanding days as of today and be very nice to some people. It is a reasonable question to ask that if you can't manage your leave days, then maybe you can't manage your job."

  "Lynne, I will call the people who sent those mails that I ignored to say sorry. I will arrange cover for myself and then I will turn my phone off and go on holiday as of today."

  "That's a great idea, Peter," said Lynne happily. "I think you are making good choices."

  An hour later Sparke walked the short distance from his company's London offices to the Underground station at St Pancras. He was suddenly on vacation.

  For the first time in years he had no idea where he was headed. Standing at the entry to the station he realised that since he had no reason to hurry anywhere he had no reason to take any form of transport. He looked around at the pedestrian street-signs which dot the centre of the city. The first words he saw on the signpost were, "British Library".

  Chapter 6

  Ulli stood on the north shore of the loch staring down towards the approaching boat. One of the things the Order had done immediately after their arrival was to build a solid stone pier at the northern landing point. It was the only man-made object Ulli could see and was as well made as any he had seen in a city. Locals had begun to use it when there were no Templars around and Ulli noted that the rocky pass they had flattened out near the pier had become the new route to the water's edge leaving the old path to overgrow.

  The night before, the island to the south had lit a double beacon telling him to expect an arrival at first light. There was not frequent communication with the island but the very fact that it was there was a constant comfort in this place.

  He clearly remembered his own arrival. Travelling up through the soft lowlands of this country had been easy. Farmland for the most part, good towns run by the King's law and decent roads. Then within a day's travel crossing into the wilderness of the north. It was worse by boat since the change was so sudden. In the morning he was walking on stone streets lined with well-made, tile-roofed houses. By evening he was in the most desolate landscape he had seen in Europe where people lived in low huts with turf roofs cheek-by-jowl with their animals.

  Ulli had been among mountains before, and although these were not the highest he had seen by any stretch, they had a hard, unforgiving look.

  He had arrived here at this landing point with seven men, their horses and a piece of parchment bearing the seal of their King. The document was a grant of land, worded in such a way to allow Ulli the right to take almost any land he wanted not directly claimed by one of several named Lords or Chieftains. For the king this was an easy gift. His rule extended as far as his reach and his reach was not far into the north. Robbers and raiders frequently descended from the highland wastelands to bring harm to loyal lowland subjects. Putting a group of well-armed and trained men with violence on their minds in the midst of such a plague could bring nothing but good for the King's Peace.

  Ulli and his men slowly crisscrossed the land for long months, following the poor roads where they existed, going across country when they did not. Only Ulli knew what they were looking for, but did not know why he was looking. His men saw him scan mountainsides constantly.

  Sometimes he would look at a mountainous slope bearing no visible marks or point of interests for an hour, only to move on to a new vantage point from which to stare at the same slope from a different angle. For the men there was nothing remarkable in following orders they had no understanding of. Before, when things had been normal, they took their obedience as a way of life. Now that everything was collapsed it was automatic.

  Each knight was mounted and he led a train of two further horses. Horses were not unknown in these hills, but those that were occasionally seen tended to be short and tough, bred for high wind and wet ground. The knights, with their huge mounts and spare horses, drew stares from all who saw them.

  There was no communication with the locals. The knights kept to themselves, supplied by a boat from the island every few weeks where they picked up supplies and very occasionally new orders. In any case, the people of the mountains spoke a language all of their own. One of The Masters had told Ulli that the mountain people were descendants of the lost tribe of Israel damned to live in this wet hell.

  In the southlands he could communicate with locals using pidgin French and they seemed to understand a surprising amount of his own Bavarian dialect, but here in the hills the language that was spoken was worse than Arabic. There was little need to communicate anyway as there were no inns and they rarely went near the few towns.

  Despite the apparent lawlessness of the mountains there was not much for the men to fear. Eight trained, heavily armed and armoured soldiers would be a daunting challenge to any casual robbers and their obvious status made it unlikely that a local warlord would interfere with them. Locals looked at them, but did not approach.

  Three times he thought he had found the place but each time he was told that it was not suitable and ordered to go back again, sometimes with the knight they called the Mason.

  When Ulli knew that he had found the place, in a high valley, he and his seven men sailed back to the island together with their horses.

  On arriving, he spent a full day describing the place and the neighbouring land, what habitation there was. The Mason asked a few questions then brought him over to the room's only table. He lifted a shallow wooden tray onto the table then from a jar filled the tray with fine sand and had Ulli sculpt the valley. Ulli's unpractised hand did a poor job, but the outlines of the valley, the two mountains which surrounded it and the entry points at each end quickly took shape. Then, content that it seemed to be right, the Mason quickly destroyed the diagram with his hand.

  The next morning the Mason, Ulli and his seven men went back north where they again covered miles of wet countryside around the place Ulli had found. After some hours of wandering, apparently aimlessly, along the valley floor, Ulli and the Mason left the others and climbed partway up the north-facing slope of one of the mountains that bounded the valley. The two men stopped when they reached a narrow band of rock that created a small cliff face about one third of the way up the slope. For over an hour they stood by the rock band. Then they walked slowly back down to join their men and the group headed back to the landing point on the north edge of the loch. This was the place.

  One of Ulli's men said that the two mountains that created the sides of the valley had the look of a boar and a sow standing side by side with high arching sharp-edged backs. The men began to refer the ends of the valley as the snout and tail ends

  The valley looked desolate but was not uninhabited. At its lowest point there was a tiny cluster of stone-built huts with turf roofs.

  Throughout their time in the valley they knew that people from the tiny village were watching them, but as always they stayed apart and made no attempt to talk to the strangers who showed such an interest in their valley.

  Shortly after returning to the island Ulli was brought into a meeting in the large hall with all four of the Masters and the Mason. They sat around a table while Ulli stood. The discussion lasted long into the night, interrupted only for prayers. Eventually Ulli was given his orders, and then surprisingly offered the chance to walk away if he did not feel that he could carry out his mission.

  He bowed his head towards The Masters, accepting his orders, as if there had ever been any chance that he would not have. He was a knight and his obedience was his sole value in life.

  A week later, men and horses well rested, the eight knights rode slowly back into the valley before the sun was fully up. The grey green hills seemed almost drained of colour, wrapped in a thin mist.

  The four croft houses that made up the hamlet, stood at the low, tail end of the valley where the land flattened out into a saucer shape and the small river formed a large pool.

  Two or three early risers from the houses were down at the pool collecting water. They had seen the knights before and ignored them as they had always done. Ulli and his seven men stopped by the pool, and left their horses to graze. They formed a loose line and walked slowly towards the houses, one man swinging his stiff left arm. They drew their swords and, within two minutes, slaughtered every one of the inhabitants.

  All eight had killed many times in the past and they hacked the dozen occupants to death calmly and with a practiced efficiency. They killed like woodcutters chopping back wild bushes.

  All but three died where they slept. One made a run lasting twenty yards but was brought down by a single arrow. Not a word had been spoken by any of the knights from their arrival in the valley until the death of the last villager. Ulli quickly looked around and having his gaze met by each of seven men he nodded briefly to mark that the job was complete.

  The killing done, the knights quickly inspected and cleaned their weapons. The idea of doing anything before tending to their weapons was unimaginable to them. This done they made a fire and began to prepare some food as they had been travelling since well before dawn. Within an hour, before the sun had cleared the top of the mountains, they set off again leaving the village a graveyard, the cold air already taking possession of the houses.

  Around noon the knights approached the only large building in the area. It was a tall building, perhaps three storeys high, and seemed to be a roughly fortified main hall with a cluster of houses and huts around it giving it the impression of almost a village.

  Ulli and the seven men sat on their horses nearby but made no attempt to approach. People from the hall peered cautiously out but made no move beyond the walls. Ulli and his men did not move. After more than an hour of this it was plain that the men on horseback had no intention of either moving off, or of attacking the building. Eventually a single man walked from the house towards the knights. As far as Ulli could tell he seemed to be the chief. Ulli dismounted and walked towards the man.

  When the two were only a few yards apart Ulli held up the parchment given to them by the king in the southlands in one hand, and with the other he held out a small purse containing gold coins. The chief looked at the parchment, the grant of lands, knowing nothing except that it meant something to the knight and that it came from the south, which could only mean trouble. He looked at the coins in the purse and then looked at Ulli. Coins were rarer than horses in this world but they had their uses. Good things could be exchanged for them in the lowlands, good sword blades, hard leather and soft cloth.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14