The Toymaster's Castle

Chapter Thirty-Seven - Protection

So, at the crack of dawn, we set off for Highfield dairy farm. This time, as well as George, we had Sarge with us. He was the sharpest military mind that we had and both he and George were large chaps. In their military uniforms... even without any sort of markings... they looked pretty imposing!

The little boat was a bit full... particularly as the two of them had decided to bring huge rucksacks with them. But, luckily, they both knew what they were doing when it came to sailing... I suppose Royal Marines are technically part of the Navy... so they just stuck Daniel and me out of the way, up in the bow with the rucksacks, and got on with it without us.

When we reached the little harbour, we tied up and made our way up to the farm. It wasn't all that far away.

And they must have seen that we were on our way because they had waited for us to arrive before starting breakfast.

They, too, were into the idea of porridge... but theirs was much creamier than ours because they made it with milk... we were on a dairy farm, after all!

Apparently they had sackfuls of oats because they fed them to the baby cows. I mean... I wasn't quite sure what I thought about eating animal food but it tasted alright and I guess it doesn't make that much difference, really.

Dave's wife and their two daughters joined us for breakfast. There was Gwen, who was a couple of years younger than me, and Megan, who was about two years older.

We worked out that Dave didn't want to talk about the serious stuff whilst his daughters were about so we tried to do the polite conversation thing which was pretty weird with the world being basically turned upside down.

I asked them what they did. Gwen was still at school and Megan was at agricultural college... basically learning how to be a farmer. But of course, at the moment, everything was shut down for the summer holiday. When they asked me what I did, I explained that I used to work in the office with Daniel.

"So an office romance"! Gwen said dreamily.

"Something like that," I replied, trying desperately to avoid meeting my Toymaster's eye. There was a real danger that describing what had gone on between us as a romance would have made us both just crack up with laughter and that would have been really tricky to explain!

When we had finished eating, Dave sent his two daughters away. They weren't desperately keen but they did as they were told. He then sort of wordlessly asked Daniel whether I had to go and he, equally wordlessly, said not.

"So what's up?" Daniel asked as soon as they were out of the room.

"A couple of the farms hereabouts have been hit by a gang from town. I mean... so far nobody's been seriously hurt but they've been smashing stuff up, mishandling the womenfolk and stealing stuff... mostly food. I mean... I'd give them a bit just to stay away."

"That's never going to work," Daniel told him. "As soon as they'd finished eating what you'd given them, they'd be back for more, wouldn't they?"

Dave thought about this then nodded.

"How many of them are there?" Sarge asked.

"About twenty."

"Any firearms?"

"Three or four shotguns."

Sarge looked at Daniel, silently asking a question.

And, when Daniel gave a nod, Sarge unfastened his rucksack and started extracting funny looking bits of machinery and, within a few seconds, he was holding a gun... an extremely serious looking gun. "This is the L858A2," he said.