The Limping Man (13 page)

Knee-deep, sometimes shoulder-deep in the waves, she led him to the tumbled rocks at the foot of the cliffs. Up there, the Limping Man was sleeping in his palace. And over the hill lay the ruins of the city that had been Belong. I’m going back to the burrows, Hana thought. It almost made her sick like Ben. She was sick with fear.

They found the cave she had hidden in on her flight from the burrows. The sun came up, lighting its mouth as they went inside. She led Ben round two curves into the dark and found a place for them to lie on a fan of sand. They slept all day, refilled their bottles from the water trickling down the wall, and crept out as night swept down like a black fog. Ben found seaweed and bound it with strips of blanket to the cut in his thigh. Hana heard him grunting with pain but dared not show sympathy. They had to keep moving.

Halfway through the night they took to the sea. Hana had no knowledge of the sea wall, just a memory of Danatok’s tale of his house on stilts. She found the gap into the harbour and they peered through. Fires were burning on the road running behind the wharves. Men moved back and forth loading ships. This was the fleet Foss had boasted of: four single-masted vessels with oars along their sides and bows like beak-fish. It was hard to tell in the night, but they seemed to have the limping symbol painted on their sides.

Ben and Hana swam silently, keeping clear of the firelight on the water. The stilt house made a shadow and they moved along it like a road. A wall had fallen outwards, giving shelter as they drew close.

‘Ben,’ Hana whispered.

‘Yeah,’ he replied. He freed his pack, pushed it at her, sank without a sound. I seem to spend half my life under water, he thought. He came up beside a pile crusted with shellfish and sent his mind into the room above, probing in corners and feeling along walls. He beckoned Hana.

The fallen wall made a stairway hiding them from the shore. They climbed and found an open room, grey in the dawnlight. The built-in bunks and iron stove were torn from their places and made a rubble heap on the floor, where rotten planks gave glimpses of the water below. No one would use the pile house again. No one would come.

They drank from their bottles but had no food left. Ben made a sack of his shirt. He climbed down the sloping wall and filled it with mussels from the piles. They opened them with their knives and ate them raw. Then they slept uncomfortably, disturbed by the shouts of men and the rumble of carts from the wharves.

The sun was high when they woke. A wind was blowing from the east, rattling loose timbers on Danatok’s house. ` Hana and Ben were trapped until dark. Even then they had no idea where they would go. She helped him untie the bandage on his thigh. The wound was clean, but although he was stoical she saw how it hurt him. The leech bites and insect bites troubled him with their itching. He needed to head back to the forest for cool leaves and healing berry juice. Hana counted the days they had spent: four days gone, two to go before the burnings in People’s Square. The army would march the day after that. And these four deadly ships were almost ready to sail. She felt helpless. What could they do, two of them against the Limping Man? And where were Blossom and Hubert? Where was Lo? She sat with her back to a wall and let Ben watch the shore through a crack between two twisted planks. He did not seem to have these questions. Every now and then he drew his stone out of his pocket and worked on the edge of his knife.

She was dozing when she felt his hand on her shoulder. At once she knew something had changed. The wind still rattled the house but a hush lay under it. His hand took her shirt and hauled her up. She put her eye to the crack. The workers stood still, the carts had stopped. Even the horses watched as two people, side by side, walked along the empty road towards the wharf where the ships were moored. They did not hurry, they looked as if they were strolling on a path: Blossom and Hubert.

‘Don’t,’ Hana said as she felt Ben’s mind crouch and prepare to spring. ‘They don’t need us. If they know we’re here we’ll get in the way.’

She saw their concentration and unity. Each was held in the other’s hand – Hana felt it the way she had felt Hawk.

They moved as easily as he flew yet she felt the strength hidden by their ease, like tree roots anchored on stone.

‘I want to help them,’ Ben said.

‘You can’t.’

A squad of bowmen ran along the wharf. The line in front knelt to shoot, the line behind stood ready.

Blossom and Hubert ‘spoke’ a command. Hana felt it ripple across her mind: heard a sound like the small hiss of a wave at its furthest reach on the sand. The bowmen laid down their weapons and made no other move as Blossom and Hubert passed through their lines. The workers and their overseers stepped back as though an unseen hand was pushing them. Their arms fell slack at their sides. Blossom and Hubert turned to the ships. Another command. The men on board trooped off and stood with the others.

‘The Limping Man must know. He must feel it by now,’ Ben said.

Hana feared this too. But his palace was miles away on the hill. She wondered why Blossom and Hubert had not gone there to challenge him. Then she understood. Piles of hay lay on the wharf to feed the cart-horses. Men began to carry armfuls up the gangplanks and drop them in the holds of the ships. Blossom and Hubert waited. Hana felt the strength of their concentration: more than a hundred men in control. If one broke out all would follow. They would fall on Blossom and Hubert and tear them to pieces like a dog pack with a pair of trapped hares.

Four men bound hay to lengths of wood. Another with a flint and stone struck sparks on the hay. Four torches flamed. The men walked one to each ship. They mounted the gangplanks and stood by the open holds. Again Hana felt the ripple of Blossom and Hubert’s command. The men threw their torches, which plunged red and eager into the bellies of the ships, each with a tail of smoke behind it.

It took only a moment. White smoke first, swaying and curling. Then puffs of flame, tongues of flame, leaping tigers of flame. Red fire climbed out of the holds and ran on the decks. It climbed the masts and ate the furled sails. It bent over the sides of the ships, caressing them and hissing on the water.

The men on the wharf took no notice, although the nearest ones beat out sparks eating their clothes. Blossom and Hubert stood as though unaware of the roaring furnaces by the wharf. They disappeared and reappeared behind walls of flame. They stood as though waiting and – Hana was uncertain in the haze of heat and the slanting flames – now each had an arm around the other’s waist.

‘Why aren’t they getting away?’ she said.

The fires lost their anger, they settled down to burn steadily. Soon they would eat through the hulls. Then the ships would go down one by one. Ben’s throat was swelling, his eyes were burning with joy and anticipation.

‘They’re waiting for Vosper,’ he said. ‘They’ll burn him up the way they’re burning the ships.’

Distantly, above the noise of the fire, they heard a trumpet cry.

‘He’s on his way. I’m going to help them.’ He stepped away from the crack.

‘No, Ben. You’ll get in the way. Can’t you feel’ – she could not describe it – ‘feel the way they’re aimed like a spear. They’ll break if they have to think about anyone else.’ It was true, she felt it – their strength, so concentrated, was also delicate. She wanted to see their faces. Their faces would glow.

At a new command the workers and bowmen turned like sleepwalkers and shuffled into the streets leading from the wharves. They vanished among the buildings, leaving the carts and horses, leaving their weapons strewn on the ground. The ships continued to burn, flaring, subsiding, crackling with small explosions as timbers parted in the flames. A mast fell hissing into the sea, and as it fell the trumpet blared again.

‘The Limping Man,’ Hana whispered.

‘Vosper,’ Ben said. He dug his knife into the wall.

Blossom and Hubert were tiny on the wharf. Suddenly they looked frail. Hana wished for Hawk’s eyes to see them better. Danatok had told her about the great voice gifted speakers heard – Pearl and Hari had heard it saying their names, joining them to the spirit animating the world. Xantee had heard it. Blossom and Hubert too. They heard it now, making them ready. Hana was sure of it, although until now she had believed it was nonsense. She seemed to hear a whisper, an edge of sound. Taste it too. It tasted like honey.

Ben said, awestruck: ‘They’re hearing something, aren’t they?’

‘The voice,’ Hana whispered.

Then he shivered. And Hana, her eyes drawn away from the twins, shivered too. At the far end of the wharf, where it began its run along the waterfront, a man dressed in black appeared from one of the dark streets. He carried a naked sword that lit up in the sun and a trumpet slung around his neck. Behind him came four bearers, stolid and in step, carrying a litter enclosed in walls of cloth that rippled like fire. Yellow flames within the red darted and licked. Two small men, black-clad like the trumpeter and as thin as wire, walked with prancing steps beside the litter. That was all. There were none of the guards and constables Hana had seen in People’s Square. The Limping Man needed no one but himself.

‘Vosper,’ Ben said. ‘I want to see him.’

‘You will,’ Hana said. She was sick with dread. Blossom and Hubert, in their forest clothes, looked weak and puny. She wondered if they still heard the voice. She could not. And she knew with a certainty that pierced her like a knife, that the Limping Man heard a voice too – the
other
one.

‘Ben, he’ll kill them.’

‘No he won’t. Look at the ships, Hana. They did that.’

The vessel at the head of the line was sinking stern first. It went down slowly, with water swelling from its hold as though from a spring. At the end of the line the fourth one was turning on its side. Explosions of steam shot out as the water reached the seat of the fire. The two in the centre were hooded in red flames and brown smoke.

The ships were destroyed, the Dweller villages were safe, Stone Creek was safe. But Hana knew it was only a little part. It was like kicking a snapping dog out of the way. The multitude of tents on the plains remained, the armies remained. And the Limping Man, who held their ten thousand minds cupped in his hands, was here on the wharf. He was unchanged.

The crier raised his trumpet and blew another blast. It rasped like a saw. Hana put her hands over her ears, but Blossom and Hubert did not seem to hear. They were like two plants growing side by side and intertwining. The crier, the attendants, the bearers were people. They seemed to creep and hop and strut and not feel the air surrounding them. They’re underground people, Hana thought. He’s buried them.

The bearers set the litter down and stepped away. The attendants drew the curtains aside. The crier was ready, saluting with his sword. He raised his face to the sky and bellowed, ‘See the Man. Worship him.’ The attendants knelt, while the bearers lay face down on the wharf.

Blossom and Hubert smiled. Across the water, Hana felt their challenge rather than saw it. It was like the morning light rising into the dark. It was like the first glow of the sun. But she felt a dreadful hollowness inside. The dark always swallowed the light. Night came in the end, it always came.

‘Morning too,’ she whispered. ‘Morning comes.’

‘What?’ Ben said.

She could not say what she meant, she could only watch. The Limping Man’s stick prodded out of the litter. He followed, stepping down in his painful way. Red robes, yellow flames, tall head-dress: he was the same. She could not see his face through the smoke but had an impression of whiteness and pinkness, of a weak-eyed face, of a trembling body inside the garish robes. It was a lie. She had seen in People’s Square how strong he was. Her own body trembled with fear.

He put his weight on his stick. He limped past the prostrate bearers and the kneeling attendants. The crier rose to his feet. He seemed the powerful one, yet he writhed to a shorter stature as he came to the Limping Man’s side. The Limping Man whispered. The crier listened. Along the wharf, a ship’s length away, Blossom and Hubert waited.

The crier raised himself to his full height. He lifted his sword over his head.

‘Listen,’ he cried. His voice was like a cracking whip. It seemed he could wrap it around Blossom and Hubert and haul them in. ‘Listen to the voice of the Limping Man. Bow down to the Limping Man. Worship him.’

Blossom and Hubert shook their heads slightly, as though some night creature had brushed by and left its odour. They ignored the crier. They spoke silently to the Limping Man. Hana and Ben saw him start and lean convulsively on his stick. The twins’ voice was easy. Ben and Hana heard it too, touching their minds.

There is no worship of people, Blossom and Hubert said.

The crier shrank again to hear the Limping Man’s instructions. Then, at his full height, he bellowed, ‘These vermin of the forests invade our city. Listen all, listen my subjects, you in the streets, come forth and listen. They have sunk my ships. It does not matter. I will build better ones. And I will punish these creatures that slink from the forests. See the man. I will drown him. See the woman. She will burn.’

‘Who’s he talking to?’ Hana whispered.

‘Look,’ Ben said.

The ruined streets beyond the wharves were like caves in a cliff face. Slowly, in ones and twos, people began to creep out. They stopped, they fell back, they started again, as Hubert and Blossom on one side and the Limping Man on the other, fought for control of them. It was, Hana felt, like the sun rising, while the night, shaped like a hand, wrapped its fingers round it and tried to crush its light. Blossom and Hubert said: He is nothing. Free yourselves. The people they had sent away, the wharfmen and cartmen and soldiers, crept out: painful steps, pushing against a huge weight. They crept out.

Come, my people, worship me, said the Limping Man.

‘He’s winning,’ Hana said.

‘He’s stronger,’ Ben said, sliding his knife in and out of its sheath.

The men from the shadows came steadily, like a tide. They rolled across the empty wharf, brown and black and red and white, with their eyes burning and teeth flashing. The bowmen picked up their weapons. The cartmen and sailors fumbled in their belts and drew their knives. Blossom and Hubert fought. They tightened their unity, gripped each other hard, with minds that had learned to jump over mountains and seas and throw knowledge back and forth like balls in a game – and it was not enough. They could not hold the creeping tide. All their strength went into the effort. They had none for the Limping Man.