The Inferior (19 page)

‘Leave them to me!’ shouted Rockface, running to head them off. ‘They’re mine!’

But the beasts hadn’t finished with Stopmouth yet. One creature, pale and slender of body, surged out of the Wetlane and fixed the needle teeth of its jaws about the young man’s biceps. The pain and the beast’s weight dragged him back to the water, where shapes were rising and jaws opening.

Indrani screamed with rage. She still had the Armourback-shell spear. She plunged it deep into the chest of the creature on Stopmouth’s arm, and although it didn’t let go, the two humans together managed to wrestle it ashore.

The hunter felt its grip release and he rolled away, clutching at his arm, almost delirious with pain and terror.

‘I can’t breathe,’ said a ‘voice’. ‘I’m dying. I can’t breathe.’

Stopmouth’s arm was bleeding profusely. ‘Shut it up,’ he said. ‘Kill it!’

But he heard a splash, and when he sat up, the creature was nowhere to be seen.

‘What…?’ For the first time since the arrival of the Talker, he was speechless.

‘It was frightened,’ said Indrani.

‘Frightened?’ He couldn’t believe it. He looked around. Rockface stood panting fifty paces further up the bank. He was covered in scratches and bites, but none of the enemy had managed to scramble ashore. Stopmouth turned back to Indrani. ‘But what are we going to eat? It might have kept us alive.’

Indrani shook her head and pointed upwards. ‘They’re watching me, don’t you see? Every awful thing I do down here will make them less likely to take me back. And…and that beast’s no different from you, Stopmouth. It’s an intelligent, suffering being. I couldn’t kill it, I—’

‘You did kill it!’ he shouted.

‘Go easy,’ said Rockface, walking back towards them.

Stopmouth ignored him. ‘You stabbed it through the chest with my spear. It’s being eaten, right now, by its own kind!’

She started crying then. Great sobs that pulled at his heart. She didn’t move away when he wrapped his bleeding arms around her, but nor did she hug him back. Instead, she soaked his shoulder with tears.

‘It’s not so bad,’ said Rockface, patting her back from the other side. Stopmouth didn’t contradict him, although he knew they’d all be dead in a few short days.

‘Not all the flesh was lost,’ Rockface continued. His voice was surprisingly gentle and Stopmouth remembered how caring and careful he’d always been around his son, Littleknife. ‘I still have a roll of Clawfolk meat in the pouch on my tool-belt. And we’d have wanted to do a bit of hunting on this trip anyway, hey? What was the point of bringing more than we could carry? Now we get to chase something fresh, something no human has tasted since the Traveller!’

Indrani pulled away from both of them. ‘I don’t want to kill things. I don’t want to eat them.’ Her weeping got worse. ‘It’s wrong. I can’t do it any more.’

Stopmouth didn’t know what to say. He remembered his own mother’s words whenever he refused the flesh of some evil-tasting creature as a child. He repeated the admonition to Indrani: ‘If you don’t eat flesh, you’re killing yourself,’ he said. ‘You’re weakening the Tribe.’

‘I have no Tribe,’ she said. ‘They’ll never take me back now.’

‘We are your Tribe, Rockface and me!’

‘You’re only savages.’ The Talker had never found a good word in Human for that particular concept, but it hurt him as nothing else could.

‘You’ve taken flesh like the rest of us savages,’ he said. ‘And we had to kill extra so you wouldn’t go hungry. Those beasts died at your hand even if you were too much of a coward to lift the spear yourself!’

She wiped her eyes with the palm of one hand. ‘You’re right. It’s too late for me now.’ She took a deep shivering breath. ‘I will hunt with you tomorrow.’

Later Stopmouth took the risk of lighting a fire. He felt Indrani needed it and he certainly did. He baked all Rockface’s Clawfolk flesh, seeing no point in trying to save any for the morning.

That night, for the first time, Indrani ripped into her food as if she were really enjoying it. She ate with relish and asked for more when she’d already put enough away to keep Rockface quiet. But there was no more. She shrugged and lay back, firelight dancing over the perfect lines of her face even as Rockface’s first snores tore through the night. Stopmouth watched her, thinking, surely she was too beautiful to be real.

‘Are you truly human?’ Stopmouth asked. He hoped she’d open her eyes and look at him. Another part of him wanted her to keep them closed so he could watch her without making her angry.

They stayed closed.

‘I’m human,’ she muttered. ‘As human as you are, anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, puzzled.

She lifted her head. ‘None of your men have hair on their faces. You live on a diet of pure meat, most of it non-human. Your women never die in childbirth. You rarely get sick, any of you. And all of a sudden
I’m
the one who’s not human?’

‘Well,’ he said, confused by her strange words, ‘I only asked because…well, you mentioned something about my ancestors yesterday. As if they were different from yours.’

‘You don’t really want to know.’

‘I do, of course I do.’ Wallbreaker would want to know, but never would. It was a thrilling thought.

She nodded slowly. ‘I’m not sure, Stopmouth. You’re so different from your ancestors.’

It was a cruel thing to say. ‘I am?’

‘Yes. Very different. You see, they were cowards. They were
deserters
and thieves.’ That word again, deserters. Uttered as if there were nothing worse in all the world. ‘They stole everything from my people and left us to die. They deserved this gods-forsaken world and everything that happened to them since. But you don’t, Stopmouth. You’re—’

Stopmouth felt his face grow hot. He was dizzy. She mustn’t have meant it, she couldn’t have. To speak ill of the ancestors was like…like wasting food, like murder. And the hypocrisy of it! He and Indrani were the ones deserting their Tribe. They were the thieves, stealing their own flesh from the needy. Stopmouth turned away lest his forefathers see her through his eyes and force him to avenge them. Perhaps she apologized afterwards, but he didn’t listen. He waited until she slept. Then he was up on his knees, begging forgiveness on her behalf until sleep took him.

15.

AN ANCESTOR’S WRATH

T
hat night the ancestors sent Stopmouth many bad dreams. He was a criminal, they informed him, who’d stolen his flesh from the Tribe to run off with a woman who despised him.

‘You’re just a savage; a potential rapist.’

He tried to block out their voices, but Mother was among them, and his half-remembered father.

‘If Indrani hates us who are the marrow of your bones, your flesh, your heart, then what must she think of you?’

He opened his eyes, praying desperately that the night had finally ended. But darkness still reigned under the trees with the patter of Roofsweat playing softly on the branches. He wasn’t the only one visited by nightmares: big Rockface was sobbing in his sleep. How terrible to lose your whole family all in one go. During the day Rockface smiled and joked and blustered. Yet sometimes it didn’t seem real to Stopmouth and he worried about the man. Many in similar situations had simply volunteered. But not Rockface. His whole chest shivered with grief, his deep voice now so childlike.

And Stopmouth heard something else: a sound of jerky movement. He looked over to Indrani and saw that she’d gone. She liked privacy for when she made water, but she wasn’t so stupid as to go unarmed. She’d taken his tool-belt with its weapons and left the Talker behind.

More movement. A struggle, he thought.

Stopmouth grabbed his spear and surged to his feet.

‘Rockface!’ He kicked his companion awake. ‘Up! Up! I think something has taken Indrani!’

The ground he stood on trembled slightly, but he had no time to worry about that. He placed the Talker about his neck and helped Rockface to his feet. Both men padded towards the movements as quickly and quietly as they could.

‘That way!’ said Rockface suddenly, and started running through the whipping fronds of darkened trees. Stopmouth chased after him. He too could hear sounds ahead now.

Something whipped past his ear and shattered against a nearby tree. Then Rockface cried out and fell over. The young hunter sidestepped and half fell behind a solid trunk. He could hear more impacts through the wood. Slingstones? His heart was hammering. He wondered for a moment if Indrani had lost her mind and started attacking him with his own weapons.

‘Rockface? Rockface?’ There was no answer and he couldn’t see his companion from where he hid.

The vibrations in the ground were getting stronger.

‘Come out, Stopmouth,’ said a man’s voice.

The young hunter felt his gorge rise. Crunchfist. He should have been expecting it. The ancestors seemed to inhabit the man constantly and kept him alive through everything. What better vehicle could they have for the punishment of law-breakers?

‘Your woman gave me more trouble than the Longtongues I killed on my way here. She nearly broke my nose. I will enjoy her while you cower behind that tree.’

‘What do you want from us, Crunchfist?’ Underneath the protection of the Talker, he stuttered worse than he ever had before.

The earth rumbled. Back towards the edge of the wood, a number of trees started listing to one side, sinking into the ground.

‘The Diggers are coming,’ said Crunchfist, his voice harsh against the
drip-drip
of Roofsweat through the branches. ‘They’ve been tracking me since I took a bit of flesh from their fields.’ He didn’t sound in the least bit concerned. Trees began falling, some of them breaking in half with a great cracking noise. Stopmouth pictured the Diggers underground, struggling through the roots with empty eye-sockets and chewed-up skin, while their own young ate them alive. He wondered why they hadn’t simply surfaced outside the forest and run the last few hundred paces. And yet, in spite of the route they’d chosen, the beasts were getting nearer. When they reached the clearing where the large hunter waited with his prisoner, there’d be nothing to stop them.

‘It’s very simple,’ said Crunchfist. ‘Your coward brother wants another metal toy. He’ll have to forgive me publicly if I get it for him. Then he’ll have an accident and I’ll be chief. But first I’ll give him a full account of how I enjoyed his woman.’

‘I’ll swap you the Talker for her,’ said Stopmouth as Crunchfist must have known he would.

But both of them had waited too long. Somewhere below ground the Diggers had found a corridor free of roots all the way to the clearing where the big hunter waited with his prisoner. Stopmouth’s tree leaned back so suddenly it knocked him over onto his side. He saw soil fountain into the air between himself and the other humans. He heard Crunchfist curse above the din and saw Indrani collapse to the ground as he released her. Diggers with writhing skin and powerful claws surged out of the hole towards Crunchfist before he could run from them. He bellowed as the ancestors filled him with anger and inhuman strength.

Stopmouth could only watch helplessly. He wondered how he could use the distraction of the attack to sneak in and rescue Indrani. Seeing her endangered swallowed all the anger he’d felt for her only a few hours before. He realized that no person in this world was more precious to him. She’d suffered terrible crimes at the hand of his family and it was his sacred duty to see her safe now. But the Diggers were on all sides, scrambling towards the man who’d stolen from them, and there was no way through.

Crunchfist was fast as well as strong. He worked his spear like a club, sweeping beasts into heaps with the butt until he saw a opening. Then the pointed end found throats or empty eye-sockets. He fought with fury, snarling and snapping like a Bloodskin. Spitting curses. The Diggers were no weaklings as the Flims had been, and Stopmouth counted at least ten in their hunting party. But incredibly the big man drove them back towards their hole, receiving only small wounds and scratches for every one of them he put out of the fight. But he was weakening. Stopmouth saw one Digger tear a gash in his calf and Crunchfist almost went down, staggering and swaying, biting his own lip bloody with pain. He flung his spear straight into the head of an enemy before wringing the neck of the one that had injured him. He used this corpse as a bludgeon. Another creature ducked under it to score him across the ribs.

Stopmouth hated the man and feared him above all others. But when he saw Crunchfist in trouble, a human fighting heroically against beasts, he knew he had to intervene. Only two of the original attackers remained, but the earth was rumbling again and Stopmouth felt certain more of them were about to climb out of the pit that separated him from the other humans. It was no wider than a man lying down, and if Stopmouth positioned himself at the lip on his side, he might just be able to spear the Diggers from behind as they emerged.

Crunchfist dispatched the last of his enemies and staggered back towards Indrani. The shaking of the ground was intensifying and Stopmouth was about to shout across the pit to offer the man the Talker again when something incredible happened: eight of the creatures Crunchfist had ‘killed’, including the one with the spear jammed in its body, seemed to have revived themselves enough to begin crawling or rolling back towards the pit.

‘How?’ asked Crunchfist when he too saw it.

A great
crack!
filled the air and three trees on the far side of the clearing toppled over. The upper branches of one of them scratched Stopmouth all along one side of his body, cutting him off from Indrani even more. To get to her now, he’d have to climb through branches and over the trunk. And he’d need to hurry: even as he watched, a new pit opened up behind the other humans, and Diggers clustered at its edge.

Crunchfist roared his frustration. He picked up his prisoner and flung her body at the beasts to scatter them. Stopmouth screamed. He fought through clinging, sopping branches, knowing he’d never make it in time. One of the creatures, perhaps to disable her, had already shoved claws deep into one of her calves.

‘Give me the Talker!’ shouted Crunchfist. ‘Give it to me and I swear by all the ancestors I’ll save her. I swear it. Let me never go Home if I lie.’

Stopmouth didn’t hesitate. He threw the pouch over the tree and the first pit. Crunchfist nodded once, his great frame leaking blood from a dozen wounds. Then he charged straight in among the beasts. There were fewer of them and they must have sensed the battered remains of the first party. But they showed no fear.

Stopmouth didn’t wait to see what happened. He was desperately trying to climb onto the fallen trunk and it blocked his view of the fight. He heard Crunchfist’s shouts and sometimes the grunts that indicated fresh injuries. The younger man’s spear kept getting in the way, yet he didn’t dare let go of it. In a dozen heartbeats he’d made it onto the trunk and all of the carnage became visible.

Dead beasts lay everywhere, but they’d left red slashes of revenge all over their enemy. Now the big man was wrestling with one of two surviving Diggers. Such was his weakness, the contest was an equal one. But not for long: the other surviving creature, its hind legs broken, crawled towards the struggle, intending perhaps to hamstring its opponent.

Stopmouth had too many branches to get through to join the fight. So he steadied himself on the trunk and pinned the crawling Digger to the ground with a mighty throw of his spear. Crunchfist needed no help with the last beast. He snapped its back over his knee.

‘Good,’ said the big man, looking up. Already some of his ‘dead’ opponents had begun dragging themselves back to the pit from which they’d emerged, yellow grubs wriggling frantically over their skin. ‘You gave me the Talker and I have saved your woman as I promised.’ With visible effort, he picked up Indrani. Her leg wound was bleeding freely and would need to be bound as soon as possible.

‘Leave her there,’ said Stopmouth. ‘I will tend to her when you’re gone.’

Crunchfist laughed. ‘And what am I supposed to eat for my journey home? Do you think I’ll risk one of those’–he kicked at a crawling Digger–‘coming alive in my belly?’

‘You promised,’ said Stopmouth. He was already looking for a way down through the rest of the branches to challenge the weakened hunter.

Indrani groaned and blinked her eyes. Crunchfist transferred her to his left arm. With his right, grunting in pain, he wrenched the Armourback-shell spear from the body of a twitching Digger.

‘You’ll be needing this,’ he said. He flung it, point first, straight at the younger man. Stopmouth jerked to one side, but the tree swayed beneath him and he fell backwards in amongst the clinging branches. He too was not as strong as he should have been, and he struggled far too long to free himself and recover his weapon. Dawn was brightening the Roof by the time he’d made it into the clearing. Some of the ‘dead’ Diggers had disappeared underground. The others, perhaps five, lay unmoving, and the grubs that had once crawled all over them had fallen off the bodies and were nowhere to be seen.

His stomach rumbled. He remembered Crunchfist’s comment about the Diggers coming alive in his tummy, but for all his fears he knew he’d need his strength to track the man and find Indrani. The shell tip of his spear sliced easily through Digger flesh. It was riddled with little grub-sized holes, but he put that out of his mind and forced himself to chew the tough flesh and swallow. A horrible thought came to him: Crunchfist would be hungry too.

He jumped to his feet. And stopped. What about Rockface? Crunchfist must have hit him with a slingshot. After all he’d done for Stopmouth, surely the least he was entitled to was that a friend should consume his flesh.

Stopmouth shook himself out of his reverie. Indrani couldn’t afford to wait. He followed bloodstains into the forest. The trees seemed to close around him, almost bringing night again. Pungent moss, unlike any at home, hung from every branch and quickly bathed him in a cold slime. Tracking became extremely difficult. Crunchfist, in spite of his injuries, had gone to some effort to cover his trail, and several times the younger man would have lost it entirely had it not been for a curious thing: he kept finding items from his own tool-belt. His sling lay caught in the branches of a bush; his needle glittered in a stray shaft of Rooflight. Part of him wondered if the other hunter were leading him slowly into a trap, but that was more Wallbreaker’s style than Crunchfist’s. No, it had to be Indrani, calling for help.

He stumbled on, ignoring a thousand scratches and a throbbing pain in his left biceps. The ground squelched beneath him here and the cloying smell of rot hung in the air. By nightfall he still hadn’t caught them. He was getting desperate.

The trail finally ended when Stopmouth found Crunchfist’s bloody knife. Hidden in the undergrowth around it lay the entrances to three tunnels. The beasts must have picked their way carefully through the roots to get here, for above ground there were no signs of sagging trees. It was a perfect ambush. Stopmouth’s legs wobbled beneath him. He allowed himself to fall and lay still on his back, watching the tracklights of the Roof. He didn’t need to go looking for Indrani any more. He knew where she must be.

The young hunter forced himself to wait for daylight, trying for sleep and failing. When dawn brightened the Roof, he shoved Crunchfist’s knife into his belt and made his way to the forest’s edge. He could see the border of the Diggers’ territory from here.