The Iron Swamp (38 page)

My middle and index finger burned with every movement, but my little and ring finger were dead. They hung limp on the edge of my hand like sticks rammed into place. I strained to bring about some sign of life in them, but nothing.

Lisbold jabbed the point of the gun in my face. "Tell the slider to start moving again."

I muttered the command, unable to talk above a whisper.

"Louder." He pulled me into a seated position causing blood and drool to drop onto my lap. Still stunned, my head sagged sideways, weightless and independent. My consciousness was ebbing away with the trickle of blood from my hand. Lisbold slapped me on the side of the face. "If you pass out, you die here, and neither of us want that."

I barely felt it. He slapped me again and once more before I felt Cos flooding back to me. He was right. I didn't want to die here. "E.V. stop over, South Von Ras."

The slider pulled away.

Lisbold started going through my pockets, pulling out the bottles of vansetomia and its antidote. He ran his hands round me, shifting me as if I was a sack of potatoes. "Why don't you carry a gun?"

"I'd only end up shooting myself with it."

He laughed, picking me up and sticking me back on the seat. "Don't do that again, or you'll wish you hadn't."

I poked a finger through the hole in my hand in a motion both remarkable and trivial. "I already wish I hadn't."

He snorted, grabbing the first aid kit from beneath the seat. "You'll need to bandage that. We don't want to be attracting things before we get you to the degodiles."

After that we sat in silence for a while, but as the slider reached the south of Von Ras, Lisbold perked up again. "Tell it to stop by the side of the road and then continue round east towards Picto, stopping every ten kims."

I did as instructed. He had at least enough sense to know that we were probably being tracked by now. That was a shame. "Did Fache tell you to do that?" I asked.

"Frak off, dwarf. I'm not an idiot."

I was in enough pain, so I made no retort. We went round the outskirts of Von Ras on the K8, a wide road with two lanes in both directions raised above the ground on a plastic scaffold that became visible as the road turned. The trees grew tall above our heads and disappeared below the road, giving the K8 the appearance of a huge circular bridge. Finally, we saw another slider pulled over at the side of the road, and Lisbold instructed me to make ours join it. I hesitated for as long as possible, obliging only when he raised his gun.

The slider pulled over, and Lisbold was on top of the pimp. "What shall we do with him? Can't take him with us like this, and we can't leave him here." He reached down to a vallee skin pouch hung at his hip and pulled out a blade as long as my forearm with ridges on the top designed to lacerate flesh. Oldan groaned, interpreting what was happening outside his vision.

"Wait," I said. "We can take him with us. You just need to give him the antivenom."

Lisbold considered this for a moment. "Take too long. Have to kill him here."

"Wait!" I hesitated as he pulled the pimp's head up by his hair. "It benefits no one to kill him here. He dies, I lose a potential ally to help me escape, and you have a bloody corpse of a man too heavy to drag as evidence of your crime."

Lisbold laughed. "Still think you're going to escape do you?"

"Otherwise, I would have made you shoot me at the police station. It all depends how confident you are that you can control a dwarf and a man whose hands are cuffed behind his back."

He tapped his gun on the pimp's head. "Dwarfy has just bought you a bit more time; best repay him by getting him out of the swamp, eh?" He fiddled around in his pocket and pulled out the two bottles. "Which one is it?"

I pointed at the larger bottle, the size of two of my fingers with a white label.

"And the other one makes you go limp?"

I nodded.

Fache tapped on the door and swung it open. "Caught ourselves a small one, did we? Told you I'd get you back you pile of dis." He was wearing similar attire to Lisbold – mist goggles hiding his eyes behind black circles sealed to his face by silver rims. His thin trousers tucked into huge boots that came almost to his knees. But while Lisbold's puffed up clothes and bulging black goggles made him look like a posturing toad, Fache's concealed good looks were more frightening, as if behind those black lenses were eyeless tunnels.

I smiled at him, manifesting my missing tooth and bleeding gums. Lisbold had made his first mistake. This was the first stop that wasn't at 10 kim intervals, so assuming there was anyone looking for me, I would be easy to find.

Fache didn't smile back. I knew instantly it was his idea to feed me to the degodiles. He was no fool. This was a calculated risk, Fache's forte.

I doubted this was a random location. We were precisely where we would find a degodile filled river just far enough in to ensure I would never be found.

Lisbold fidgeted impatiently, waving the gun around. Nudging the pimp became pushing, and pushing became kicking. He was more afraid than I was. In truth, I had my reservations about keeping the pimp alive, but awaiting his resurrection bought me time. More importantly, it bought Becky and the search party time, but Lisbold knew they couldn't kill him. There would be no point in disposing of my remains so completely if they were just going to leave a dead pimp in a police slider.

The colossal figure slowly began to animate and sat up. He tried talking, but all he accomplished was lip movements and groaning as saliva dripped to the floor.

Lisbold waved the gun from me to the door. "Get moving."

"Missing a tooth are we?" Fache said. He offered me a hand getting down, but I wouldn't touch him.

Lisbold pushed the pimp as he shuffled forward on his ass like a baby. "That won't be the only thing he's missing soon enough."

Oldan let his legs drop to the ground and pushed himself up, wobbling to one side. Fache caught him and righted him, laughing at the beast I'd seen break his restraints as if they were tissue paper. Lisbold helped hold him up until Fache could kick his legs apart enough for him to stand. I considered making a run for it, but they would have just dropped him and come after me.

"Who is this, and what's happened to him?" asked Fache.

"The dwarf drugged him," Lisbold said. "And who he is doesn't matter."

The pimp took his first few steps teetering over like a new born deer as he picked up momentum. Fache and Lisbold pushed up against him like bracing posts, both men spitting laughter. "Either you hold yourself up, or we'll see if a bullet to your head improves you any."

They let him go, and he took a single unsteady step without falling.

Lisbold pointed the gun me, as if I'd forgotten. "Tell the van to keep going and making stops until it reaches Picto."

I did as commanded, telling it to make stops at the same intervals. Then Lisbold smashed my tablet under his gun and filled his pocket with the pieces.

"You on av ao ees," said the pimp.

"I think he's retarded," Lisbold said, grinning as he gestured with his gun for me to get moving. Even on the side of the road the smell of rot and waste was already thick in my nostrils, and the damp wind prevented even the thickest clothes from feeling warm. My abductors were both wearing rib suits which clung to the skin like Lycra keeping the disease ridden air away, but I only had my rib vest. Good enough for the dank buildings and cities, it would offer little protection in the great swamps.

The road was at least a man's length from the ground, which neither myself nor the pimp were in much condition to dismount. I peered over the sides to see the plastic rods holding up the road extruding from their rubbery support bases. They crisscrossed to make a scaffold that a larger man could climb without struggle, but for me it was not dissimilar to declining a ladder with three out of every four rungs removed.

The pimp leapt over the edge, orchestrated by Lisbold. He landed on his feet, but the swamp opened up around him, sinking him to his knees before he fell forwards into the mud.

"Get moving or you'll be following," Fache said to me, laughing.

Multiple sliders had gone by as we made our way to the edge, but I knew already that none of them would help. Even if they weren't going too fast to see anything, people didn't interfere with men entering Von Ras, even if they weren't wearing black hoods.

I forced myself over, wrapping my arms around one of the mud spattered yellow tubes and began to shimmy down it, but gripping with my recently shot hand was impossible, and almost immediately I plummeted to the floor, bashing one of my legs on a pole before hitting the wet ground. Both Fache and Lisbold found it hilarious, following with ease.

"Seems almost cruel to kill two people so pathetic," said Fache, but Lisbold shook his head.

"Nah, it's natural selection; nothing cruel about nature."

On that, like a great many things, we disagreed. There were a plethora of cruelties about nature, not least of which was my current predicament.

Fortunately, the swamp floor was soft and absorbed much of my fall. I made no attempt to shield my bleeding hand as I picked myself up. The bandages were already soiled with corpse-smelling organic matter, stinging as it mingled with my blood. If the degodiles didn't kill me then the micro-organisms would warp me into a mass of swelling and necrosis until my body finally gave out.

Fache helped the pimp out of his mud hole just as his words gained some clarity. "You don't need to do this. I hate him as much as you do."

Lisbold punched him in the gut. "But I bet you don't feel too rosy about us either."

The pimp bent with the impact, but as the effects of the poison dissipated, the strength that had allowed him to break his restraints was returning. He rose after the impact as quickly as he'd bent, and for the first time I saw uncertainty in Lisbold's eyes. It was a bully's recalculation after a victim showed resistance, cowardice driving him to find a weaker target to serve his purpose better. He grabbed me by the neck and pushed me into the closest tree trunk, forcing my face to rub against the bark. Turning back to the pimp, he said, "You hate him so much then let's see you kick him right now."

A thousand protests flashed across my mind as Lisbold held me against the tree, but they were no better than cries for mercy, as effective as my bandage was at keeping the swamp away from my wound. The pimp trudged over, pivoted, and flicked his leg into my side with enough force to wrench me out of Lisbold's grip into the mud.

"Good," said Lisbold. "A bit more like that, and we might be able to trust you. Do it again."

"I won't be able to walk," I groaned from the mud. "He's too strong, and I'm too weak. You'll have to feed him to your degodiles instead."

The pimp stepped up, ready for another round, but Fache moved between us. "I'm not carrying him, Kevin, so either we beat him to death here or we take him to the degodiles."

Lisbold looked enraged, even as I squirmed in the mud. "Get up."

The pimp looked almost as disappointed. Any hopes I'd had of a temporary alliance were looking to have backfired as badly as my emergency stop.

"I did what you asked, now let me go," Oldan said, spitting on me and kicking wet mud in my face. "Whatever you do to this piece of dis is ok by me. You won't hear a word said against you."

As the two captors looked at each other, I felt strongly that I should have let Lisbold cut his throat.

"We'll think about it," Lisbold said, in probably the first clever statement of his life. It meant no, but offered the pimp hope that if he did what they said he might survive. Oldan's nod suggested he might even be stupid enough to believe it.

"Get up," Fache said.

I obeyed, putting all my weight on the leg which hadn't just been kicked by a man twice my height and probably three times my weight. At least it wasn't broken and I could walk, keeping my chances of survival above nil.

"Stop faking," shouted Lisbold, "or I'll kick your other one."

I tried to straighten up, not wishing to spend any more time in the mud, but I couldn't lose the limp. The leg was too damaged. It couldn't hold my weight for more than half a click, forcing me to move the other at an uncomfortable speed.

Von Ras was one of the five remaining great swamps of The Kaerosh, home to a host of lethal creatures. But there was no need for the larger animals to come close to the edge where they were at risk of hunters and traps. It was going to be a long walk before we found degodiles, and there were plenty of things that could happen between now and then. Of greatest importance, I needed to remember which way we were going so I didn't end up running further into the swamp if I managed to escape.

Admittedly, I was less hopeful of escape now that I was limping. Anything that attacked us would go for me before the others, which made it difficult to use as a distraction without being eaten.

Chapter 24

Even with two intact legs it was impossible to run anywhere in Von Ras. The ground was more water than mud. Sometimes a thin layer of ice coated the pools, but each time my foot would sink right through it with a snap. Only by stepping into it would the depth be revealed, and some of them were deceptively deep. Despite my slow and careful walk, twice I sunk almost to my waist, jumping quickly to the side before I disturbed anything living beneath the surface.

The others were mostly dry above the knee and would fare better against attacking fauna, but none of us were equipped to survive these swamps. Von Ras was full of animals, plants, and fungi evolved to navigate the muddy pools the way we traversed our bedroom floors. There were reptiles here that could swing through trees and amphibians that could swim through mud or walk on water. Bigger animals had webbed feet and streamlined bodies capable of sliding from pool to pool. Even the trees would eat us here if we gave them the opportunity. One wrong step, and vines hidden beneath the water would drag us to our deaths, or branches would contract like a whip and swing us into the tree tops.

The air was as stagnant as the water and almost as wet, catching in my throat as if I were breathing smoke. My upper body was sopping wet despite not coming near a pool. The zeolate beads in the strips across my rib vest, designed to dispel moisture, sagged under the weight of the wet fabric so that I could feel the pouches rubbing against the hairs of my chest. I pulled each leg out of the thick mud as if walking through glue, unable to make sufficient pace to keep warm. At this rate, I would freeze to death long before we saw a degodile.