Mutant City (17 page)

‘Get it going!’ Rush shouted out to Brick. ‘Start turning the winch! Don’t wait for me – I’ll make it!’

The clanging sound of the winch as it drew in the chain began to fill the air. Dotty darted to the back of the ferry, shifting from paw to paw, her eyes fixed on Rush. When the noise of the winch was accompanied by his feet on the wooden jetty, she shook her head and
hurghed
as if urging him on. The boat was perhaps a body length away from the dock when he leaped. He landed in a heap on the deck next to the rogwan, who set about him with delight.

‘You set them free!’ Brick shouted. He was grinning from ear to ear, all the while whipping the handle of the winch round and round, dragging the craft through the water.

Rush watched as the men pursuing them came to the bottom of the hill, hurrying towards the quay. He wasn’t particularly surprised to see Forkhand among them. A bloody and limping Kohl was bringing up the rear. The men began shouting threats in their direction. Rush was going to give them a hand gesture he thought would leave them in no doubt about what he thought of them, when he saw Forkhand grab for the crossbow hanging around his shoulders.

‘Brick, can you make this thing go any faster?’ Rush asked. They were halfway across the river, but suddenly that didn’t seem nearly far enough.

Forkhand raised the loaded weapon, resting the front end between the upturned prongs of his trident, and took aim.

Rush hurled himself at his friend. ‘Get down, Brick! Get down!’

They hit the deck as the crossbow bolt thudded into the housing for the winch where Brick had been standing seconds before.

‘You OK?’ Rush asked.

‘Uh-huh.’

The ferry gave a little jerk. Rush looked up to see three things: Forkhand reloading the weapon, two men pulling on a rope attached to the back of the vessel, and another man pulling the cover off a wooden canoe. The craft lurched again and began, very slowly, to move back towards the islet.

Rush called out to Brick, ‘Winch again. It’s you against them. If I tell you to stop, you drop for cover. Got it?’ He scurried over to the backpack and began pulling the contents out.

Two men got into the canoe, the one in the front paddling out into the current while the other sat armed with a bow. He notched an arrow to the string, but sat with the weapon in his lap, clearly waiting until he felt he was within range. Rush could see what would happen: either they would be dragged back to shore by the men on the rope, where they would be killed by Forkhand, or the men in the canoe would get close enough to do the job.

Finding what he had been looking for in the bag, Rush peered up just as Forkhand lifted his weapon and took aim again. ‘Down!’ he shouted, and the ferry rocked alarmingly as Brick did as he was told. There was a pause, and Rush thought the shot might have flown harmlessly over their heads. When he dared to peer out over the top of the large pile of cut timber he was sheltering behind, there was a
thunk!
as
the bolt lodged into the wood inches away, sending sharp splinters into his face.

‘We’re dead,’ Brick moaned, climbing back up to continue to operate the winch.

‘Not yet, we’re not,’ Rush said as he got to his feet, allowing the sling to hang down from one hand. The stone he dropped, almost casually, out of the same hand landed perfectly in the small square of leather between the long thongs, and he twirled the entire thing about his head, the weapon making a low
whoosh
that grew louder with each revolution. On the third turn he leaned into the throw and released one of the thongs so the stone flew out at terrific speed, streaking through the air like a bullet. There was an audible
crack!
as the projectile connected with its target, followed by the sound of the crossbow clattering to the ground. For a moment Forkhand seemed unaware he’d been hit. He stood as a rivulet of blood flowed down his face from the centre of his forehead. Then his eyes rolled up towards the heavens and he collapsed.

Brick looked over at his friend. The whooshing noise had already started again, and this time it was the man paddling the canoe who took the hit, this one to the side of the head. The blow had exactly the same net effect as the previous one had on Forkhand: the man gave a cry and collapsed over to one side, unsettling the craft so both men were tipped out. There was a scream and the water appeared to boil as the eelsnakes set about their unexpected meal.

‘Let go of that,’ Rush shouted out to the men hauling on the wet rope, ‘or you’re next.’

‘Don’t you listen to him!’ It was Kohl. ‘Those shots were lucky! You keep pulling that damn ferry back in or I’ll – GARGH!’ The third stone caught him in the throat, collapsing his windpipe and shutting off both his threats and any doubts about ‘lucky shots’. The pair took one look at each other, dropped the rope and ran off.

There were no more attempts to stop the ferry leaving.

Brick winched them to the far quay, where, once ashore, the big mutant used his colossal strength to heave a thick wooden jetty post out of the ground and throw it through the deck of the ferry. The two friends watched it slowly sink beneath the surface for a few moments before turning their backs on Logtown and the mountains beyond.

They stared across the landscape before them in the direction of the vast metropolis that was City Four.

A splash made them whirl about, only to see Dotty in the shallows, her teeth clamped on to the head of one of the eelsnakes. The creature curled and twisted its body in a vain attempt to escape the rogwan’s deadly jaws, but Dotty held on, bracing her short legs in the thick mud as she made her way backwards towards the shore. Once there, she dragged the thing to Brick and Rush and deposited it at their feet, letting out a deep
hurgh.
She nudged the catch with her nose, looking up at the two of them for a moment before shaking herself off and covering the pair with muddy water droplets.

‘You’re welcome, Dotty,’ Rush said with a smile, recognising the gesture for what it was.

They were all exhausted. Brick insisted on looking at the wound on Rush’s leg where he’d been caught by a boarnog’s tusk, so they agreed to make camp where they were. Nobody was coming over the river after them – they were sure of that. Rush was worried about the ARM’s imminent return to Logtown, but if they were to stand any chance of making it to C4 ahead of them, they would have to rest tonight.

They built a fire to cook the eelsnake, the meat of which was dense, with a slight earthy flavour. Despite this, the three of them ate the entire thing.

Bellies full, they eventually lay back on the ground and stared up at the stars.

Brick started humming, and Rush smiled. The sound no longer bothered him. In fact, he rather liked it.

‘Rush?’ Brick asked after a few minutes.

‘What?’

‘How’d you hit those men? With the stones?’

The teenager sighed and looked over at his friend. ‘Want to see a trick?’

Brick nodded. He sat up and Rush did likewise.

‘Hold up your index finger.’ His grin widened when he saw Brick frown, trying to work out which of his digits was required. ‘The one you point with. Or in your case, the one you pick your nose with!’

Brick pulled a face at him, but obliged by sticking the digit straight up towards the night sky. Rush dug a round pumice-coloured stone from the earth, wiping the mud from it on his trousers. ‘Keep still,’ he said, and placed the stone on the very tip of Brick’s upraised finger. It wavered for a couple of seconds and then became completely still, as if steadied by some invisible hand.

‘Wait just a moment.’ This time Rush picked up an old dry stick, which he placed on top of the stone, holding it there. He couldn’t help but smile at the look of bewilderment on the big man’s face. ‘It gets better,’ he said. With all the flourish of a stage magician, he took his hand away and sat back, his hands on the ground behind him. The stick remained, perfectly balanced on the uppermost tip of the stone, and then began to very slowly rotate about its centre point, gradually picking up speed. If Brick had looked up at that moment he’d have seen the intense look of concentration on his friend’s face and the tiny beads of sweat that were beginning to form on his lip and forehead, but the big guy’s eyes were glued to the little propeller set-up on the tip of his finger.

‘Ha!’ Brick said. ‘It’s magic!’

Rush clapped his hands and both the stone and the twig fell to the ground.

Brick looked at his friend in amazement. ‘How’d Rush do that?’ he asked. He picked the items up, staring at them as if they might come to life again.

‘That’s rich, coming from the man who healed me with nothing but his hands!’ Rush shrugged and lay on his back again. ‘Like you say, it’s magic or something. I don’t really
know
how I do it. It’s like when I launched the stones at those men; they weren’t going to miss, because I
made
them hit their targets.’

‘You made a stone do something?’

‘Yeah. It sounds weird, I know, but . . . it’s like I’m able to
connect
with an object. I can feel the tiniest particles that make something what it is – the atoms or maybe something even more fundamental than that – and affect the way it interacts with other things around it. It’s difficult to explain.’

The big man slowly nodded his head. ‘Like the hurt. I can see it and take it out. Sometimes.’ He started to hum again.

‘Have you always been able to do that, Brick?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Me too. Although Josuf, the man who looked after me, said I shouldn’t.’ He paused, remembering his guardian. ‘I wonder how many more of us there are? How many other mutants have special gifts like you and me? When I was growing up, I imagined it had to have something to do with all the radiation and chemicals left over after the Last War – that they screwed up my DNA and gave me weird powers. If that’s true, there could be thousands of us out there.’

‘Five,’ Brick said, pausing mid-hum.

‘What?’

‘Five. There are five of us. The bad man, the
really
bad man, made us. He made others, but they died. You were all babies. ’Cept Jax. “Waaah, waaah, waaah” – that’s how you went. “Waaah, waaah, waaah.”’

‘Wh
.
.
. ? What do you mean?’

But Brick was no longer listening; he was too engrossed in trying to balance the stick on the pebble, humming tunelessly to himself.

Anya

At the girl’s signal, Tink pulled on the reins, bringing the harg and the wagon it pulled to a halt. He looked across at the teenager sitting beside him.

‘They’re just around this next bend,’ Anya said. ‘I saw three of them, but I can’t be sure there weren’t any more hiding out of sight.’

‘And they’d already captured some travellers?’

‘Uh-huh. One of the captives looked younger than me.’

Tink frowned, still not sure what their best option was now they’d arrived at this point. To his mind they were extremely limited.

‘We have two choices,’ he eventually said. ‘Either we trust in this old harg of mine to somehow find it in him to go round this bend at top speed, hoping it’s fast enough to get us past these men before they have a chance to attack us, or we get sneaky and play the ambushers at their own game.’

Anya considered this. ‘If we try to rush through, what happens to the people they’ve already captured?’

‘We’d be leaving them to their own fate.’

The teenager shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I’m happy doing that.’

‘Neither am I, but I thought it best to let you know what the alternatives are.’

‘So we get sneaky?’

‘It looks that way.’

The sound of the harg’s hoofs echoed back off the trees that lined the track on either side. It was a good place for an ambush, Tink thought to himself, looking out from beneath the brim of his hat. In fact, it was almost too good. He was wearing a long woollen poncho so only his head could be seen. Even the reins disappeared beneath the thick folds of cloth. He did his best to look weary, slumping forward on the jockey-box as if he might topple off at any moment.

Tink pulled the animal to a halt when he saw a man armed with a crossbow step out into the middle of the track. He didn’t need to look to his left or right to know the other members of the gang were taking up positions, so the wagon would be boxed in from all sides. The group had clearly done this many times before.

‘Whoa there!’ the man shouted, pointing the weapon at the wagon driver. One side of the ambusher’s face was withered, like melted candle wax.

Tink stared at the man, but sat unmoving.

‘Where you going, old-timer?’ the man asked.

‘Muteville. I’m a trader, and I have some business there.’

‘That so?’ He nodded to himself, taking this in. ‘What you trading?’

‘Oh, you know, this and that.’

‘What you got?’

‘Nothing you’d be interested in,’ Tink answered.

‘Maybe I should be the judge of that,’ the man said. Without taking his eyes off Tink, the man with the melted face called out to one of the other men, ‘Bern! Have a look and see what our mysterious friend here has in the back of his wagon.’