The Inferior (15 page)

He woke in stifling darkness. His head pounded, and when he touched it, his hand came away sticky. He heard something beating against the metal shell that encased him. For a moment he thought it was Rockface come to carry him home. Same room, different accident. Part of him wanted to laugh. The banging came again from the outside of the craft. And he heard voices now, Bloodskin voices.

‘It is a human. I found hide across the door. And look, embers from its fire.’

‘It did not hunt well. It did not come for hunting. It was sent by others of its kind. To be absolved of a crime perhaps.’

‘Perhaps. But how can I eat it if it has buried itself under here? The flesh will rot and the spirit will never leave this place.’

‘Who can explain beasts?’

Stopmouth understood every word that was spoken. When he heard the Bloodskins leaving, he reached around in the darkness until he found the little sphere that had knocked him unconscious. The Talker, of course. He marvelled once again that a metal object could feel so alive. ‘Activate!’ he said, finding the word came easily to him now. In the emerging glow he looked around again at the inside of the Globe. He wished the sphere could give off a stronger light and, to his surprise, it did just that.

As children, he and his brother had often trapped mossbeasts under skull bowls. Wallbreaker always wanted to leave them there with no moss to see if they’d eat each other. He was surprised that they never gave in to appetite. Instead, after a few days, the creatures simply stopped moving. Like Stopmouth would now. How terrible to die here, he thought, his flesh uneaten!

Stopmouth found he could just about stand in the confines of his prison. He pushed and prodded several surfaces in the hope that something would give way. Nothing did. He sat again and his eyes wandered. Eventually they came to rest on the tiny black designs that covered many of the surfaces. Had Indrani painted them herself? What did they mean?

He jerked his head back in shock, bumping it painfully. The designs suddenly made sense to him, speaking through his eyes. The Talker, of course. It was as if somebody had found a way to draw a voice!

‘Rear Armament’ said one design. ‘Forward Armament’ said another. Although his eyes could ‘hear’ the words, they still seemed like gibberish to him. He couldn’t understand why a person would need separate weapons for front and back. Still, the drawn voice fascinated him and he followed the little symbols around the craft: ‘Ext. View, Rear. Ext. View, Int.’ ‘Home.’ ‘Emergency Rations. Press Once.’

Stopmouth pressed the little symbols several times, but nothing happened, not even when he pounded them with his fist. Then he remembered the protrusions that had dug into his foot earlier and how they’d caused the whole craft to shake when he’d stood on them. He found the button he’d accidentally pushed beside little symbols that said: ‘Thrust’. He wouldn’t be touching that one again! But there were other buttons where it said ‘Rations’ and, sure enough, when he pressed them, a panel magically slid open. He whooped. This death was turning out to be more enjoyable than he’d expected. Unfortunately he found no rations inside the magic panel, only packets of a stone-like substance that crumbled in his hands and smelled dangerously sweet: like rotting Hopper flesh. He didn’t dare consume any of it.

He looked around for more symbols, sometimes pressing buttons to no effect, until he found some words that stopped him dead: ‘Emergency Escape Hatch: Press Once’.

Was it possible? Not daring to breathe, Stopmouth pressed the nearest protrusion.
Bang!
The Globe shook and wisps of smoke puffed into the air around him. A small gap, which might have been larger had the shape of the Globe not been so badly altered, lay open at the top of the craft. He struggled through it, sweating heavily, holding the glowing Talker out in front of him. When he’d freed head, shoulders and both arms, he paused for a rest. It was then, half trapped in the opening, that he noticed the two Bloodskins standing in the doorway of the room.

‘Will I kill it now?’ asked the shorter of the two, its wispy-haired face twitching.

‘No. Can’t you see the glow? It is already a spirit.’

‘Yes,’ said Stopmouth, terrified. ‘A spirit. You should go.’

The creatures stayed in the doorway, breathing slowly through rows of tiny holes above their mouths. Their muscular legs shifted beneath them and Stopmouth was sure they were about to spring at him across the room. Finally, however, the Bloodskins looked at each other and the shorter one said: ‘We are sorry for you. I will mark this building so none will come here again.’ They turned away and loped out of the building.

When Stopmouth was sure they’d gone, he wriggled the rest of the way out of the Globe. Now, if only he could get the Talker back to Indrani without getting killed!

He had no idea how much of the night he’d spent unconscious, but when he looked out of the window, he detected the first hints of dawn in the panels of the Roof. He sprinted back the way he’d come. Four Bloodskins lounged with spears against one wall of a street. He shouldered his way through the centre of the group before they could react, running towards the house through which he’d entered the area. Already behind him he could hear the Bloodskins giving chase. Obviously these ones hadn’t heard that he was a spirit to be left alone.

He ran in through the doorway and down the hall to the back room of the house, the Talker lighting his way. Almost there, he thought, when he saw the window waiting for him. Then he put his weight on the wrong stone. It gave way under him and he fell flat on the floor. He skinned both knees, barely keeping hold of the Talker. By the time he regained his feet, the Bloodskins were already piling into the room and he knew he’d never make it through the window without a spear in the back.

Four beasts spread out. He’d left his own spear on the floor of the building where the Globe had crashed and had no idea what had happened to his knife. No doubt the Bloodskins thought this would be the easiest hunt of their lives. Stopmouth raised the glowing Talker, hoping to frighten them, but he’d spoiled the spirit trick earlier when he’d pushed through their group on the street. Now, though they hesitated, they handled their weapons as if they meant to use them. He thought of flinging the Talker at them in defiance. Then inspiration struck him: ‘Brighter!’ he commanded. ‘Brighter than the Roof!’ The sphere obeyed immediately and the Bloodskins screamed and pawed at their eyes. Unfortunately Stopmouth hadn’t known what would happen either, and he had forgotten to look away. Spots danced in his own vision, but he felt a draught from the window at his back and stumbled towards it. He fell outside, got up and set off in a limping run to where he thought the trees must be. His vision had started to clear by the time he’d reached safety.

He ordered the glow to stop and looked back towards Bloodskin. A hunting party had set out to chase him down. He laughed, for he had a good lead, and no Bloodskin could run as he did, even with skinned knees and bruised feet.

When he got back to the hide, he met Indrani on the stairs. She’d gathered his last Armourback-shell spear and a knife he’d been making from the same material. ‘Thank all the Gods, you’ve returned safely!’ she said in her child talk. He was surprised it made sense to him–not because he’d forgotten the Talker magically translated everything, but because, for the first time, it confirmed that her baby words had been a proper language all along, something he’d never found easy to believe. Humans spoke Human just like Bloodskins spoke Bloodskin. Now a new world was opening up to him where there could be many human languages, many for the Bloodskins and every other beast in the city.

‘What are you doing with my spear?’ he asked her, shaking his head. ‘Don’t tell me you were coming after me–you don’t even know where Bloodskin is!’

‘I know more about the geography of your world than you ever will, you ignorant savage.’ She grabbed the Talker out of his hand and stormed back up the stairs, stumbling slightly in her weakness.

In the days that followed they made preparations for their journey to the place where the Roof touched the land. Stopmouth was fortunate to catch an unwary Huncher by speaking to it through the Talker and luring it down an alleyway. The little sphere also helped him trade the corpse of that rare beast with the Clawfolk for a wide variety of flesh types that he and Indrani would need to keep healthy in the first twenty days of their journey.

Meanwhile Indrani rigged up a sled that would allow them to pull their supplies along with them.

‘How long will it take us to reach the Roof?’ Stopmouth asked her. He was still amazed at how the Talker filtered out his stutter completely. It filled him with such confidence that sometimes his tongue didn’t stumble in the first place.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Indrani. ‘Fifty days? First we must find the river and follow it to the sea.’ She’d already explained that a river was a quick-moving Wetlane, while the sea was a body of water too large to cross.

‘You know, Indrani,’ he said, ‘we don’t have enough food to make such a long journey. I’ll need to hunt and…I don’t like to ask this of a woman, but I’ll need you to help me.’ Indrani gazed at him with the utmost horror on her face. Stopmouth had been afraid of that: by tradition, a woman could butcher flesh, but never hunt it. He pressed on. ‘So far we’ve been lucky to eat at all, not to mention have enough to trade. Without the Talker we’d be weak from hunger already.’ He waved an arm vaguely in the direction of Flim-Ways, where they planned to start their journey. ‘Out there, we won’t know the streets or the forests or the beasts. We’ll die very quickly unless we learn to hunt as a team.’ He didn’t add that they were likely to die anyway, well before they ran out of food.

‘I can’t help you with the…the flesh,’ she said, a look of disgust on her face.

‘I appreciate that it isn’t a woman’s work,’ he said patiently, ‘but Indrani, you need to understand that—’

‘It is
you
who need to understand!’ she said, smacking her fist on the floor where she’d been sitting. ‘They see everything I do! Everything! I cannot kill just for food! They mustn’t see me kill!’

‘It’s not like I’m asking you to kill humans, Indrani!’

‘I’m not one of you, Stopmouth,’ she said with finality. ‘I am not a savage.’ That word again.

‘What about the Globe that hunted your Globe across the sky the day you came to us?’ he asked. ‘It was trying to kill you, wasn’t it? Was there a savage in that Globe?’

‘No, Stopmouth. The person who hunted me was
evil
, but I assure you he was no savage.’ She turned away from him and started fussing with a piece of rope for the sled. He stared, as he always did, at the beautiful dark skin of her shoulders, the lustre of her hair.

‘So,’ she said, unaware of his gaze, her little hands working the rope, ‘we are decided. You will do the killing and I will be the guide. We leave tomorrow.’

13.

THE QUIET WALLS

S
topmouth heard a noise on the ground floor. He crouched next to the trapdoor, spear ready, while Indrani snored softly in the background. He smelled Rockface before he saw him; a blast of rotted teeth wafting up the stairs. The young hunter sighed in relief.

His visitor waved him silent before he could utter a greeting.

‘It’s only a tenth of a night before dawn,’ the man whispered, fetid breath right up close to Stopmouth’s ear. Indrani slept on, oblivious. ‘They know where you are now. They know you have another Talker–the Clawfolk you traded with let it slip to Wallbreaker.’ Rockface tried a grin. It didn’t work too well on his sad, filthy face. ‘I can tell you, your brother was
very
surprised to hear you still lived! Trapsetter said you looked half mauled to death by those Longtongues when he saw you. He was grateful for your advice–says it saved them a few hunters, but he said you were done for.’

‘Rockface, what did…?’ He could feel himself stuttering, but the Talker smothered every mistake with its magic. ‘What did Wallbreaker say when the Clawfolk told him I lived?’

‘The chief? Ah, he just shrugged! Nothing else! But Frownbrow’s wife—’ Rockface stopped and blinked. ‘His wife said she never saw anybody look so sad and so relieved at the same time. However, now that he knows you have such a precious item…’

Stopmouth cursed. Much remained to be done before they could leave this place. Dried and salted sides of meat hung in the back rooms of the house. These would all have to be packed onto the sled. At least his equipment wouldn’t take long to store. There’d been too little time to prepare. Apart from the Armourback-shell knife and spear, Stopmouth’s only other possessions consisted of a bone dagger, some water skins and a crude new tool-belt he’d been working on to replace the one lost in Tongue-Ways.

However, it was too late to worry about these things. He shook Indrani awake and in moments they were packing as much as they could onto the sled while Rockface hopped around in excitement.

By the time they’d slung ropes over their shoulders and begun to drag their burden from the hide, the Roof was already brightening with the early light of dawn. The sled made a lot of noise in the quiet streets, scraping over bare rock, splashing through ancient drains. Rockface ran ahead every few beats to scout out a path. Once he chose to run back the way they’d come instead, and when he rejoined them, he said, ‘They’ve found your house!’

With a bit of luck the hunters wouldn’t discover the fugitives as quickly–the hard surface of the streets made it difficult to track creatures except when they passed over swathes of moss. Even then, Stopmouth hoped that the strange tracks of the sled would confuse their pursuers. Perhaps it would, but it also slowed the runaways, particularly Indrani, still weak from her bout of poisoning. She sweated heavily and Stopmouth feared she might collapse at any moment. But after the twentieth part of a day they reached the old perimeter with its empty towers. The woods waited to shelter them no more than a short walk away.

‘The trees seem closer to the walls now,’ said Rockface, eyeing the mass of red and purple branches.

‘They grow so quickly here!’ said Indrani between deep breaths. She too benefited from the power of the Talker, her strange accent replaced by a voice that never made mistakes.

Stopmouth turned to Rockface. ‘Thanks for the warning. I’m sorry I’ll never see you again.’ He meant it too, for although Rockface’s thirst for danger scared him, he owed the man his life many times over. Also, unlike Wallbreaker, the big hunter’s thoughts were never bitter or hidden. Stopmouth embraced him, but Rockface refused to hug him back.

‘You’re not dead yet, Stopmouth! You’ve survived worse than a night in the forest! I’ll come back for you tomorrow and help you find another house.’

‘Rockface…We won’t be turning back when we reach the trees. We want to follow in the footsteps of the Traveller: we want to see where the Roof touches the ground.’

Rockface stared at them, mouth agape. ‘But…how long will it take?’

‘Fifty days,’ said Indrani.

Rockface looked down at the sled, mouthing numbers under his breath. He shook his head, his face all concern. ‘We’ll need more supplies. You haven’t had time to gather up enough for the three of us, hey? And I’ll need my own tools–yours are too skinny for my fingers.’

Stopmouth tried to hide his shudder at the thought of Rockface’s company on such a journey. He still had nightmares about what the big man considered to be ‘excitement’.

‘The Tribe is short of good hunters now, Rockface. It needs every man it can get. It—’

‘Stopmouth,’ he said, in a blast of desperate bad breath, ‘you mustn’t be ashamed to ask. Of course I’m coming.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Besides…I need you as much as you need me. The thought of you two stuck out here has been the only thing keeping me going. That house of mine…’ He shook his head as if to dislodge an insect. ‘Don’t wait for me. I’ll collect what we need and catch up in a day or so. Now that I know where you entered the trees, it’ll be easy to track you.’ And with that he was gone.

‘I think that man is crying,’ Indrani said. Her skin shone with sweat and her eyes seemed too bright.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Stopmouth’s translated voice. ‘That’s Rockface you’re talking about!’ But his own eyes were stinging as they took up their hide ropes again. When they’d reached the trees, he turned once to look back at the walls and towers of Man-Ways. It seemed to him he knew every crack, every crumbling brick or clinging lump of moss.

One day, he thought, I’ll see all this again. I’ll see it from above.

Indrani’s jaw had dropped when Stopmouth first told her that the Flims had been replaced by the Longtongues.

They’d been sitting in the shade of some old Flim hide and Stopmouth had made a casual remark about the species that had provided it. He made a lot of casual remarks these days, something he hadn’t done before he found the Talker. Speech was turning from a source of terror into the sweetest of pleasures. He tried to stay near the Talker whenever possible, filling silences with useless chatter as if the magic sphere might be snatched away again at any moment. And so one day he’d wondered aloud whether the Longtongues might provide skins anywhere near as useful as those of the extinct Flims.

Indrani was still too weak to jump to her feet, but she made a brave effort. ‘The Flims have been replaced?’

Her voice rose to a screech that had Stopmouth praying no creature had heard her.

‘Why haven’t my people come for me then?’ she asked.

He didn’t know what she meant. Extinct beasts were
supposed
to be replaced. Only the Hairbeast streets hadn’t been filled after the demise of its owners. That extinction had happened around the time of Indrani’s arrival. Stopmouth looked at her now and wondered for the first time what connections might exist between this most beautiful of women and all the strange things that had occurred over the last two hundred days. He asked her if the arrival of the Longtongues meant things were finally returning to normal, but she wouldn’t answer.

She spent most of that day with her arms clasped about her knees, staring accusingly at the nearest Globe. When he suggested she do some work, she uttered an obscenity which the Talker translated for him in full sexual detail.

Many days had passed since then. Now the spirits had decided that Indrani should see the Longtongues for herself.

When they came to the end of the trees, Flim-Ways seemed totally empty. No guards waited in the towers. It looked as if the two humans could just stroll down the main street, and perhaps, by day, they could.

‘Do we cross, or do we go round?’ asked Indrani.

Stopmouth wanted to go round. He felt fear knotting his muscles at the thought of the beasts that waited behind those quiet walls. But already they could hear the shouts of a large party of human hunters in the distance. The sled hadn’t covered their tracks as effectively as he’d hoped.

‘They’ll catch us in no time if we take the long way. Unless we abandon the supplies.’

‘If we do that, we’re dead anyway,’ said Indrani.

He nodded and took a deep breath. ‘Then we go through. I think I understand the dangers of the Longtongues better than the hunters do.’ At least he hoped so.

They set off across the cleared area between the trees and the wall. The footing here was treacherous–small pointed rocks hid under beds of moss, while old branches awoke from their graves to pull at the sled. Indrani tried to help free it whenever it got caught, but her hands seemed barely strong enough to lift themselves, and it was left to Stopmouth to finish the job.

Just as they were staggering through the gates, Stopmouth heard somebody cry his name. He turned back to the forest and saw a group of hunters emerging from it. Wallbreaker walked at the front and Stopmouth swallowed back his anger. At least, he thought, if anybody feared to follow them into Longtongue, it would be his brother.

‘Let me speak to you, Stopmouth!’ the chief shouted. ‘I’ll come forward alone.’

‘No weapons!’ Stopmouth called back. He dropped the rope connecting him to the supplies and quickly reached to check on the Talker. ‘No tricks either!’

He was aware that Indrani had also dropped her rope. ‘I’ll kill him,’ she snarled.

‘Wouldn’t your people be angry?’ asked Stopmouth, alarmed. He didn’t blame her, but they both needed to be calm. His brother was already on the way over. Behind Wallbreaker, the other hunters stayed under the trees and leaned on the butts of their spears. Stopmouth could almost sense their reluctance to get any closer to Tongue-Ways.

Wallbreaker stopped about fifteen paces from them. He pointed at Indrani, who was now holding Stopmouth’s bone dagger.

‘Keep that creature-bitch away from me, Stopmouth!’

Lines creased his brow like a cracked old building and his hair looked tangled and filthy.

‘You look tired, Chief,’ said Stopmouth. He felt some of his anger ebbing away.

‘Am I still your chief?’

Stopmouth considered and finally shook his head. ‘I don’t think I even want you for my brother any more.’

Wallbreaker nodded and looked no happier about it than Stopmouth. He pointed at the new Tongue-Ways. ‘Are you really going to let those creatures have your flesh instead of your own people? Could a son of my mother do such a thing? I’m sure you don’t plan on getting killed, but you, me and the spirits know you can’t avoid it. And what will happen when the Longtongues get hold of a Talker? Children lured into the night? It’s a nightmare, brother, a nightmare, and I know about nightmares.’ He shivered visibly, then pulled himself together and fixed Stopmouth with a steady gaze. ‘Not a heartbeat goes by when I don’t miss you, brother. Not one! But it would’ve been better for all of us if you’d volunteered instead of Mother when your legs broke.’

Once Stopmouth would have given way. But not now. Not with a Talker of his own; not with Indrani watching. He looked his brother fiercely in the eye.

‘You’ll lose hunters if you chase us in here.’

‘Maybe,’ said Wallbreaker. ‘And if it was just your flesh you were wasting, I wouldn’t send anybody after you. Especially if you brought that faithless woman with you!’

‘I’ll kill him!’ Indrani screamed. Stopmouth put out a foot and tripped her as she ran past. He knelt quickly and grabbed the knife she’d been carrying. Then he helped her to her feet while Wallbreaker looked on, drinking her up with his eyes. For once she didn’t resist Stopmouth’s touch. Under his hands every one of her muscles trembled. She was still weak from her illness and had exhausted herself dragging the sled.

‘Whether we die today or not, Wallbreaker, we’re never coming back, be sure of that.’

‘Good,’ said the chief. ‘But, as I said, it’s not your puny flesh I want. You must hand over the new Talker. Give it to your Tribe, Stopmouth. Otherwise we
have
to come after you.’

Stopmouth reached down to the Talker again. Then he turned his back on his brother. He and Indrani picked up their ropes and passed under the towers into Tongue-Ways while Wallbreaker shouted after them, ‘You leave me no choice, Stopmouth! The women will break your Tally and make a ghost of you! Do you want that? Do you?’

Stopmouth didn’t want that at all. Ghosts were not allowed back into the Tribe and might even be buried uneaten. But he suppressed his shudder and pulled on the ropes.

‘They’ll catch us before we get more than a thousand paces,’ said Indrani, puffing.

‘Five hundred if they don’t hesitate,’ said Stopmouth. ‘But they will hesitate.’

Not a creature moved in the streets. Stopmouth looked around as his body began to remember its fear. Small, flat-roofed houses surrounded him, no different from those at home…Except that here every door seemed a drooling maw, and the windows stared down greedily at the little humans passing beneath. Stopmouth felt his breath catch. They couldn’t turn back now, he knew that. So he steered the sled and Indrani towards the same house where he and the Hopper had fought until the sticky moss had imprisoned them both.

‘We’re going inside,’ he said. Indrani threw him a frightened look–he’d explained the horrors of the Longtongues to her in great detail. ‘It’s either that or abandon all our supplies. I’m hoping the hunters will look on it as suicide and won’t follow us in.’

‘It
is
suicide!’ she said. But she kept hold of her rope and listened carefully to his instructions.

‘Touch nothing,’ he told her. ‘If you’re tired, don’t lean back against the walls. And they’ve got good hearing, so don’t scream.’

She already sounded like she wanted to. ‘Won’t the creatures be waiting for us just inside the door?’

‘Not at this hour,’ said Stopmouth. ‘Their skin is perfectly black and their eyes don’t open. I think they must be night hunters.’

‘You
think
!’

‘Sssh! Remember what I said about their hearing!’

They were standing right at the front door. Behind them, they could see men nearing the base of the towers. The pursuers halted their advance, each looking at his companions, hopping from foot to foot.