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By Root 437 0

and he exerted every scrap of energy he had – more than he had ever used playing rugby football on the fields of Deepdene School for Boys, more than he had ever used fighting in the school boxing ring in the gymnastics hall. For a long moment his body seemed suspended between two immovable objects, and then the cart began to shift. One of its wheels caught on something – a stone, or a clump of dirt – and the cart threatened to roll back to where it had started, but Sherlock dug his feet in and pushed until his muscles screamed. The cartwheel edged over the obstruction, whatever it had been, and then began to roll more and more smoothly backwards. Sherlock shifted his left foot, taking a big step, and then his right. The dirt gave his feet grip, and he threw all his energy into moving the cart, inch by inch. Like a locomotive, it began to pick up speed as it went. Within a few seconds it had gone from a lumbering crawl to a slow walk, then a fast walk, then a trot. Sherlock felt something ping in his shoulder as a tendon caught on bone like a violin string plucked by a finger. His arm threatened to flop nervelessly down, but with sheer force of will he kept it locked on to the front of the cart and after a few moments the pins-and-needles sensation subsided. The cart kept on moving. He dared not look up to see how close the far wall was in case shifting position reduced the strength he was bringing to bear and the cart slowed again. All he could do was count footsteps: one, two, three, four, five, six – each one quicker than the one before. Surely he must be at the wall by now? Warmth blossomed on the back of his neck as the fire took hold of the doors. He could see his own shadow cast in front of him by the flames, outlined in red and flickering from side to side.

Suddenly the back end of the cart hit the far wall. The mass of the cart carried it on, the wooden slats splintering around it and the nails that held them together tearing out with painful squeals. Fresh air gusted in past Sherlock’s head, blowing the smoke back but causing the fire to spread. The cart’s rear wheels snagged on the wood, but Sherlock could see daylight shining around the blocky edges of the cart’s body. He scrambled up on to the driver’s position, then across the flat bed of the cart, and out into the glorious fresh air and sunshine.

Naively, he had expected to see crowds of people and the local fire brigade with handpumps and buckets, but the yard was deserted. Even the dog had fled, presumably following the ruffians out of the main gates. Although the barn had been perilously close to an inferno on the inside, on the outside the flames were barely distinguishable against the bright sky, and only a thin trail of smoke led upward – barely more than a kitchen fire would make. Eventually someone would notice and investigate, but not for a while.

The main gates were closed, and Sherlock assumed that Clem and his retreating ruffians would have chained and padlocked them. They had displayed similar caution in almost everything else they had done. Ignoring the gates, Sherlock looked around the walls for a suitable place to climb up and get over. The interior was bare brick, and he had no problems in scrambling up.

He paused on the wall and looked back at the barn. The fire was beginning to edge up into the roof space now, and the rafters were burning. He needed to get out of there.

Half-climbing and half-falling to the ground, Sherlock limped away. He kept going until his lungs felt like they were going to burst and the muscles of his legs were begging him to stop. Slumping to a sitting position beside a low stone wall, he gave in to exhaustion and to the panic that he had been fighting off for what seemed like forever. He sucked in great lungfuls of air and let the shaking that had been building up in him sweep over his chest, his arms and his legs. After a while he felt strong enough to raise his hands up in front of his face. The skin was scraped and bloody, and there were splinters sticking out of his palms that he hadn’t even felt. One by one