The Toymaster's Castle

Chapter Forty-Four - The Hiring Fair

First thing on the Wednesday morning, we sailed across to the mainland. We went straight up to the 'Traveller's Rest Inn' where we found a traveller - Sarge - resting... and busily stuffing his face with a man-sized breakfast! Daniel ordered coffee for us and then asked him what he had found out.

Sarge delivered his report in short, clipped sentences... to minimise the disruption of his face stuffing, I guess!

The group was based in Haverfordwest - it was the place that Daniel and I had gone on our major shopping expedition when we were here at Easter. They had some sort of political connections and used them to take control of all the food supplies. And, from there, they'd had no problem completely taking control of the place. If they decided that you were useful then you - and maybe a couple of dependents - got to eat. Otherwise you were left to starve.

And if you showed the slightest hint of resistance, you were brutally and publicly tortured to death.

Simple and effective, I suppose.

They were led by some mysterious Englishman. Nobody knew very much about him except that he had a taste for casual, extreme violence and he seemed to be something of an expert on classical and mediaeval torture. He also seemed to enjoy molesting pubescent girls but even they weren't safe from his temper, particularly if they resisted his disgusting attentions.

At first, he'd been happy with just occupying the town but, when the refugees started arriving from the big cities of South Wales, he'd spotted his big chance.

He had set up checkpoints on all the roads... apparently the refugees only really thought about travelling along roads... and all the new arrivals were taken along to a 'processing centre' which was on a small oil tanker, moored down in the docks.

Here, anyone who they decided might be useful was robbed of all their valuables and then they were allowed to move into one of the camps. Otherwise, they were robbed, stripped naked and thrown into the tanker's holding tanks to die. If you resisted, you had the added bonus of being clubbed until you couldn't resist anymore and then you got to watch as your entire family had their arms and legs broken... and then you were all thrown in the holding tank anyway.

The hatches on the holding tanks were kept sealed most of the time so nobody survived in there for long anyway.

"I had vaguely wondered why we weren't seeing more refugees," Daniel said. "In a way, I'm quite glad they're being blocked. We'd have had no choice but to send them away... but by the time they reached us, they'd have known that they had absolutely nowhere else to go and would be utterly desperate... things would have become extremely unpleasant."

"Their way of dealing with the problem is brutal but it works," Sarge commented.

"You managed to get in and out OK then?" Daniel asked.

"No probs. They're only really watching the roads - and even there, they're only really expecting people to come from the East. Oh... one other little thing... their lord and master over there has taken to calling himself 'The King in the West' too... except that I don't get the impression it's a joke with him."

"We shall not deign to react to the usurper pretending to our title!" Daniel said. He tried to keep his whole regal attitude thing going but then he met my eye and couldn't help giving a bit of a laugh.

"It might be quite handy if you ever want to get a reaction out of him..." I said, sort of thinking out loud. "If you really did claim to be 'The King in the West' too, then he'd pretty much have to do something about it, wouldn't he?"

The other two laughed at that idea.

"So... how do you propose that we deal with them?" Daniel asked.

"The officer types that he's got running the show for him are the key," Sarge answered. "We're talking about less than a hundred people controlling a couple of thousand. We wouldn't have to take out all that many of them before their whole setup collapsed."