to check the outbuildings and oast houses, I peered in through the front door.
The floorboards had been burnt through and all that remained of the crossbeams were thin charcoal sticks. The ground floor was gone and the cellar was exposed to the sunlight for the first time in two-hundred years. There was no way in here. I circled the building, looking in through the empty, warped window frames. All I could see was blackened furniture and collapsed walls. I didn't see any bodies.
Rowles reported that the oast houses were empty, but we heard Haycox yell and we hurried to the stables. When I first saw the body of the young boy lying there, half his chest blown away by a shotgun, I didn't realise the significance of it; after all, there was a lot of blood. It told me was that there'd been a fight, and the body was long cold. I reckoned he'd been dead about three or four days, which must have been when the farm was atacked. But then my stomach lurched as I saw that his hair was matted with blood. It wasn't his own.
Matron and the girls had been taken by the Blood Hunters.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
We had ridden to the farm at a gentle canter, but we left galloping as fast as our horses could carry us. I felt the stitches in my side split. I ignored it.
Rowles rode back to the school to let Norton know what was happening. Haycox and I made straight for Ightham. The farm had been attacked three days ago, which meant the Blood Hunters had taken Matron and the girls captive before we'd stormed their HQ. My imagination started finding new ways to torture me. Perhaps they'd been held prisoner in a different part of the building and they'd burnt to death as a result of our attack.
I remembered the screams of the morning sacrifice. I'd been so grateful for the respite that had offered us. But maybe it had been Matron hanging from those battlements bleeding out in the moat. Maybe I'd swum to safety through her diluted blood.
I kicked the horse hard. Faster. Must go faster.
It took about an hour to reach Ightham. My horse and I were exhausted by that point. Haycox looked like he'd enjoyed the ride. We couldn't just go storming in; the surviving Blood Hunters could still be here. We tethered the horses in the woods and approached through the trees, weapons drawn, on the lookout for sentries or stragglers. There was nobody around.
The building was still on fire. All the wooden parts of the house had collapsed into the stone ground floor, where they were burning up all the remaining fuel. The house was a shell, completely abandoned, but there were about twenty bodies in the moat. I really didn't want to do this, but I had to be sure, so I found the wheel that controlled the level of water and turned it all the way. The water slowly began to drain away through the sluice gate. When it was down to knee height we jumped in and began to work our way around the building, turning over the bodies. Most were badly burnt. It was a tiring and grisly task, one of the most distressing things I've ever had to do. None of the dead were Mac or David, but the final body I turned over was Unwin's little sister.
So they'd been here all the time we were rescuing the people from Hildenborough. I looked up at the burning building. They might still be inside, charred and lifeless. I could be directly responsible for their deaths. There was no way of knowing.
Haycox and I climbed out of the moat and searched the grounds for evidence of escape. The canvas-covered trucks I'd seen them driving at Hildenborough were nowhere to be found, but there were fresh tyre tracks in the gravel of the car park. At least some of them had escaped the fire and moved on.
They could be miles away by now.
But had they retired to lick their wounds and start again somewhere else, or were they planning their revenge?
When we got back to the school we were met by guards at the gate. Norton had beefed up security upon Rowles' return. I left Haycox to tend to our exhausted steeds and I went straight to the store cupboard and flung open the door. Our captured Blood Hunter was curled up into a little ball, rocking back and forth muttering in the dark. I grabbed him and hauled him out.
'The other prisoners,' I yelled. 'Why didn't you tell us about the other prisoners?' I shook him and kicked him, slapped him round the head and yelled into his face but I could get no reaction. He was oblivious.
An hour later, after we'd given him some food and something to drink, he started to talk.
'But you only asked about the prisoners from Hildenborough,' he said. And there was that urge again, the one I was trying to resist. The urge to shoot someone in the head.
When the girls and Matron had been captured the crypt had been full so they'd been imprisoned in the library, on the south side of the house. As far as he knew they were still there when we attacked. There was nothing more he could tell us, so we escorted him to the main gate and turned him loose.
Then I went to find Unwin. I had to tell him that his sister was dead.
In the months that followed we searched far and wide. We collected six more horses, Haycox trained all the boys in riding, and we sent out three-man search parties every day. After a month we'd searched everywhere within a day's ride and we had to start sending out teams that slept under canvas. Two-day searches gradually evolved into three-day searches, and still no sign of the Blood Hunters.
Eventually we had to abandon the hunt. It was likely that Matron and the girls were dead, that David died in the explosion, and that the trucks were taken by the remnants of a leaderless cult which had now scattered far and wide. We were probably searching for a group that no longer even existed. It was a hard reality to accept but eventually we had to move on.
As spring turned into summer the school slowly started to become what it should always have been. We cultivated a huge vegetable garden, and erected a couple of polytunnels for fruit and salad. The herds of sheep, pigs and cows grew steadily, and all the boys helped when it was time for lambing and calfing. Heathcote's careful husbandry made sure we never went without meat, milk, butter or cheese. The river gave us plenty of fish, and the re-established Hildenborough market grew to the point where we could trade for sauces, jams and cakes.
Hildenborough elected Bob as their new leader. We developed close ties with them, and even played them at cricket once a month. A few of their adults came to live with us, mostly those with surviving children. I made it clear to the parents that I was in charge and any adults were here strictly by the permission of the children.
One market day Mrs Atkins came back to school with a tubby, red faced, middle-aged man, and she moved him into her room without ceremony or hesitation. His name was Justin, and the two of them made the kitchen into the hub of the school. They were always in there cooking something up, and all the boys loved to hang out there. It felt homely, which was something none of us had felt for a long, long time.
Our searches had found no trace of the Blood Hunters, but they had allowed us to compile a very good map of the area's settlements and farms. We made contact with as many as would allow us to approach, and although it was early days I could sense the beginning of a trading network.
Once I was sure that the school was secure and running smoothly, we began to look for new recruits. There were plenty of orphaned kids in the area, running in packs, or living with surrogate families. Seventeen new children joined us, ten of whom were girls. A few tentative romances blossomed. Two women from Hildenborough volunteered to teach classes, and so each morning for two hours there were lessons. We didn't have a curriculum to follow, so they just taught whatever took their fancy. Both of them were naturals, so although attendance wasn't compulsory they always had a full house.
Green's theatre troupe was a roaring success, too. They abandoned Our Town in the end, and produced a revue that they took to Hildenborough and some other nearby settlements. They were our finest ambassadors.
In spite of the sunshine and goodwill we didn't neglect the military side of things. We maintained a strict defence plan, with patrols and guard posts, and every Friday we did weapons training and exercises. I devised a series of defensive postures for possible attacks, and we drilled the boys thoroughly in all the permutations; if someone came looking for a fight they'd find us ready and waiting.
Every now and then we'd catch a whiff of something happening in the wider world, rumours of television broadcasts and an Abbot performing miracles, but our fuel was long gone so we couldn't tune in. Whatever was brewing in the cities couldn't reach us out here in the countryside. Not yet, anyway. So we carried on building our little haven and prepared for the day when either madness or order would come knocking on our door again.
I flatter myself that I was a pretty good leader. The boys would come and talk to me when things were
