Fantom chapter 4, part 2.

   It was a long, dark night.  Ruth and Patrick sat in the back of the van, shivering, and waiting for dawn.  They seemed to have been driving all night, although with the darkness and the constant changes of speed and direction she had no idea how far they had come.  She had long lost track of any direction and lay in the dark, unable to do anything but wait.
   And then they stopped.  For a few minutes nothing happened, although she could hear the adjudicator talking to someone.  She wondered if it was just a temporary stop somewhere.  Then the voices got louder, and the back doors of the van were opened.
   “Out,” the adjudicator said, indicating Ruth.  “And if you try anything silly, like running off, it will be the last thing you do.”  Ruth did as she was told, but clumsily unbalanced with her hands tied she slipped getting down from the truck and fell over.  The adjudicator reached out and struck her with the conducting baton, with surprising strength for an older woman.  
   “Now get up, and come with me,” the woman said.  “And keep quiet.”
   Patrick jumped down and helped her stand up, just in time or the Fantoms would have trodden on her as they stepped stiffly out of the van.  Silently and smarting, Ruth followed the adjudicator as she strode up a steep slope.  A path zig-zagged up the slope.  At the top Ruth could see the dark shape of a building  looming against the slowly paling sky, but was no closer to knowing what or where it was.  
   Soon all her energy was needed to drag herself up the slope.  In the dark she could not see how far they had come or how far there was left to go.  All she could hear was the clip-clip of the adjudicator’s shoes in front, and the heavy stony footfalls of the Fantoms behind her.     
   It was a wild night.  The wind had risen and was blowing the fog away, leaving the night cold and clammy.  Ruth shivered.  The hill was steep, and she found herself struggling for breath.  The Fantoms were just behind her, she was in fear that they would tread on her they were so close, but she could not go any faster.
   At last, at long last, they reached the summit, and Ruth realised where they were.  In the whole night’s driving round and round they had only come a few miles from Buxton.  This was Peveril Castle, near Castleton.  Ancient walls loomed around her, mostly tumbledown and robbed-out, with only the keep standing more than a few feet high.  
   The adjudicator pushed Ruth down some steps into a corner of the keep.  “Watch her,” she said to Patrick.  “Don’t let her out of your sight.”  She turned away to order the guards to spread out and keep watch.  The Fantoms were nearby, slumped down beside a wall in their usual ‘off-duty’ fashion.
   Ruth sat down.  The keep at least kept out the howling of the night wind, but it was still cold and damp, even in August.  It was dark inside the keep, but the sky above was growing paler.  Dawn would come soon.  She looked at her wrists, now red and sore from the rope that still bound them.  She wished the adjudicator could at least have untied her.  
   She looked across at Patrick.  He was sat by the steps, staring at nothing, occassionally looking at her when he thought she couldn’t see.  She was reluctant to ask, but she had no choice.
   “Patrick,” she said.  He looked at her.  “I need my inhaler- it’s in the rucksack.  Could you find it- please?”  He found it and gave it to her.
   “Thanks,” she said.  Why did she feel she should apologise when it was his fault she needed his help?   
   She thougth he looked ashamed.  “Are you ok?” he asked hesitantly.  
   “Yes,” she said shortly.  But it was evident that she was lying.  She didn’t try to disguise it but sat with her head in her hands, ashamed that Patrick would see her crying but unable to stop herself.
   “I’m sorry,” she heard him say quietly.  She looked up.
   “You could have let me go, even if you wanted to stay yourself,” she said.  “Why did you stop me?”
   “I was scared,” Patrick said.  “I didn’t think anyone would escape.  I needed to do something to show her I was still on her side.”
   “So you gave her me.”
   “I’m sorry.  I didn’t know it would be like this.  And now- there’s nothing I can do except go through with it.  Or I’ll end up as a prisoner too.”
   “It doesn’t look like it would make much difference,” Ruth said.  “Except that your hands are free you’re trapped here as much as I am, except that it’s by your own choice.”
   She retreated into silence.  How could he have done it?  He had used her to trade for his safety; that wasn’t how to treat a friend.  She looked across at him in the grey pre-dawn light, sat hunched on the steps.  She could see that he wasn’t pleased or proud of what he’d done, and was begining to see that the reward he’d hoped for was unlikely to materialise.  But he’d been scared.  She wondered if she’d have done any better in his shoes, fear on one side, temptation on the other.  She remembered the the panic and terror as the Fantoms had advanced on them in the cave- would she have pushed someone else in front of her, if she could, and sacrifed them to save herself?  Quite likely.  
   She realised why she felt so disappointed.  It was because it wasn’t how the Patrick of her stories would have acted.  He was not her Patrick, who would never have done somthing like that but would have been brave and honourable.  He was just a frightened young man.  It wasn’t fair to judge him by the creation of her imagination, and dangerous to forget that they were not the same.  
   But it didn’t make her less disappointed.

The story continues...