Under Fragile Stone (16 page)

‘You’re not gonna believe this girls!’ she exclaimed. ‘There’s a minkren under here!’

‘The heck you say!’

‘I’m tellin’ yuh,’ she pointed. ‘There! Under the dyin’ bench.’

‘Holy meat,’ Bettith gasped. ‘I thought they were all dead and gone!’

‘It’s gotta be worth a fortune!’ Willeth whispered. ‘That coat’ll trade for its weight in gold.’

‘It’s makin’ for the door. Stop it!’ Ula cried.

But they were too slow. The door was ajar and the
creature
took full advantage of it, racing out into the darkness.

‘Get it!’ Willeth shrieked, picking up a heavy piece of wood to use as a club. ‘We split the trade on the coat, but the kidneys’re mine. I got a recipe for pickled minkren kidneys.’

They rushed outside, leaving the tannery empty. Taya waited a few moments to be sure they were gone. Then she crawled out of her hiding place and hurried over to the unconscious Parsinor.

‘Draegar!’ she hissed. ‘Hey! Wake up! It’s me, Taya. I’ve come to get you out of here.’

Draegar’s eyelids lifted as if they had weights attached and he looked up at her. There was no sign of recognition in his eyes. Then his face changed and he said something so weakly that she had to lean her head closer to hear.

‘Get … out,’ he croaked. ‘They’ll … kill you.’

‘Well, you’ll just have to stop them,’ Taya told him, as she examined the frame he was tied to. There was a lever for
tipping
it back and she pulled on it, lifting his feet out of the lacharin. Then she unbolted the shackles holding his wrists 
and ankles and tried to help him off. He could barely move. His head rolled around his neck and his breathing was loud and strained. She looked anxiously towards the door. If he could not walk, they had no way of getting him out of the village. With great effort, he heaved himself over the side of the frame and got his feet under him. But he nearly
collapsed
when he tried to stand up. Every movement was laborious and seemed to take an age.

‘Stand up!’ she urged him. ‘They’ll be coming back. We have to go.’

‘My gear,’ he mumbled.

Taya saw his bags and weapons discarded in a corner and went to pick them up. They were heavy, and too big for her to carry comfortably. She helped him pull the various straps onto his shoulders, cursing the fact that these would slow him down even further.

Lorkrin appeared under the bench near the vent. Having led the women astray, he had returned to his normal shape and come back in through the rear wall. Seeing Draegar was up, he tried the door that led out into the alley at the back. It was unlocked. He opened it and peered out carefully. There was nobody to be seen.

‘He can barely walk!’ Taya muttered to him as he joined her at the Parsinor’s side.

Between the two of them, they were able to give him enough support to make it to the door. But it was slow going and they knew they could not hold him up for long and there was certainly no chance they were going to be able to carry him.

‘Draegar! You have to walk. If you don’t, they’re going to kill all of us!’ Lorkrin said. ‘Come on. Get your feet moving!’ 

The massive figure struggled against poisoning and exhaustion to stay on his feet and they walked out into the alley. Rug saw them come out and hurried over to help. His thin frame was dwarfed by the Parsinor, but he was able to take a lot of Draegar’s weight. Not far away, they could hear that more voices had joined in the hunt for the minkren. Soon, the whole town would be out. But Lorkrin had been careful to leave tracks heading into the forest in the opposite direction, to lead their pursuers away.

‘How did you finish the trail?’ Taya asked.

‘Changed my feet into horse hooves,’ he told her. ‘They’ll have real problems tracking me back here.’

Taya nodded, but she was uneasy. The Reisenicks were renowned trackers, and even with the rain, they would find his trail sooner or later. The escapees had to be long gone by then. Draegar was going too slowly. She wondered how long they could evade the clansmen even if they managed to lose themselves in the forest. The whole village would be coming after them.

‘We need to find a place to hide,’ she said, ‘or a quick way out of the area, a wagon or something.’

‘They have some wagons in the village,’ Lorkrin replied. ‘Rug, can you drive?’

‘What do you mean, “drive”?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Let’s get Draegar out of here first,’ Taya grunted. ‘Then worry about shaking them off.’

It was a struggle. Without Rug, they would not have
managed
at all. But they willed Draegar on, coaxing and bullying and pushing and pulling him as he used all his strength to cling to consciousness. They made their way through the 
back alleys, from one building’s shadow to another,
avoiding
the lights from windows and freezing when they heard footsteps or voices. It was tortuous going and more than once, the two children thought they were going to be caught. But the hunting fever was on the Reisenicks and in the gloom of the night, four very different figures were able to slip out of the village and climb the hill into the cover of the forest.

Draegar’s strength was almost spent by the time they reached the top of the hill and only the rain kept him
conscious
long enough to get them there. But Rug was able to drag him the last stretch to the cover of the trees. Taya went ahead to scout. She was soon back with a plan.

‘There’s a river with a jetty further down the hill,’ she told them. ‘If we can find a boat down there, we might have a chance of putting some distance behind us.’

‘Let’s do that, then,’ Lorkrin nodded.

When they reached the river, there was only a single skiff tied to the jetty. It would not even take Draegar’s weight, let alone hold all four of them.

‘We could paddle Draegar downriver,’ Taya said.

‘The boat is too small,’ Lorkrin pointed out, in the slow exaggerated manner people reserve for simpletons.

‘I didn’t mean in the
boat
,’ Taya retorted in the same tone. ‘I meant we could paddle
him
downriver.’

Lorkrin looked at his sister with unaccustomed respect.

‘You’re right. We could.’

‘What about his … armour?’ Rug asked. ‘Won’t he sink in the water?’

‘No,’ Taya replied. ‘The armour’s light. We’ve seen him swim, even carrying all his gear. And there’s a big layer of fat 
under his shell. He says it’s for surviving in the desert. He definitely floats.’

The two Myunans already had their tools out and were starting to reshape their bodies. Rug watched in fascination. At first he could not make out what they were doing. Lorkrin had joined his legs together so that the bottom half of his body looked like the bow of a canoe, but he appeared to be missing the back of his boat. Taya, on the other hand, was fashioning her lower half into a form that could have been the stern of a boat, leaving her feet sticking out just below her waist. Then they asked Rug to take the map-maker’s gear in the skiff and to slide Draegar into the water. The tall, thin man did as he was asked, and saw that the Parsinor did indeed float, although his feet dropped toward the bottom and his head sank beneath the surface until Taya caught it. The two children eased in after the Parsinor. The water was fetid and still, and coated with a film of green algae. Insects skated along its surface and gnats hung in clouds in the air above it.

Lorkrin took up a position at the front, using some cord to tie Draegar’s feet around his waist. Taya bound the
Parsinor’s
hands up out of the way, then took the back,
supporting
his head under her feet and tying herself up to his shoulders. Both the Myunans had taken shapes that allowed them to slot seamlessly into position so that together they made a kind of Parsinor boat. When they were in position, they both enlarged and flattened their hands into paddle-like blades. They could not resist some giggles at the spectacle – the proud warrior would have had a fit if he’d seen himself. They gave Rug some pointers on how to paddle, then they pushed off and started downriver. The two children were skilled paddlers and handled their ‘boat’ with ease despite 
Draegar’s unconscious bulk. Rug splashed about helplessly at first, the skiff spinning slowly as it drifted downstream.

‘Come on!’ Lorkrin called softly to him. ‘Put your back into it!’

‘It won’t go where I want it to go,’ Rug explained
helplessly
, trying to straighten the boat out.

‘Paddle the other side to stop yourself spinning!’ Lorkrin said in a hoarse whisper. ‘Not that side ya dolt,
left
!’

‘What is left?’ Rug asked.

‘Don’t you know left from right? Look!’ The boy held up one hand at a time. ‘This is your left. This is your right. Got it? Now, you do the left, then right. Seeing as you can’t do proper strokes, you’ll just have to keep swapping.’

Rug did as he was told, switching his paddle to the other side. He understood that this was an escape, but he was not sure where they were escaping to. It was very exciting, whatever was going on. He was starting to get the hang of the paddling now too. At least, he was going in a reasonably straight line, which seemed to be the idea.

The river ahead and behind them was shrouded in mist, the rain having given up when they set off. They went
forward
cautiously, straining to see what lay in their path. The fog turned the darkness to a murky grey that fooled the eyes into believing there was more light. The constant signs of insect life around them made them twitch at imagined itches and maddening bites. But there was nothing to be done but bear it and put as much distance between themselves and their pursuers as possible.

Paternasse was the first to falter, stumbling to a halt and 
leaning forward, his hands on his knees. He gasped for breath, his whole body trembling. Noogan looked back, and called to the others to wait. They were all drained anyway and, one by one, they collapsed to the floor and tried to get their breath back.

‘I can’t…run…any more,’ Paternasse heaved. ‘I’m done.’

‘We’re tuckered out,’ Noogan nodded, clutching his bruised arm. ‘I don’t hear them comin’ after us. I think we’ve lost ’em.’

‘This is their territory,’ Nayalla spoke up. ‘We can’t have lost them for long. We need to keep going.’

‘I’m done, I tell you,’ Paternasse wheezed. ‘I can’t go any further without a rest.’

‘Then we’ll rest,’ Mirkrin said.

‘Maybe they won’t come after us,’ Dalegin said hopefully.

‘They’re not finished with us by a long shot.’ Noogan shook his head. ‘They’ll be comin’ after us all right. And the next time they’ll make sure of us.’

They were all bleeding from bites and scratches, and bruises were already starting to blossom on their bodies. As the effects of the adrenaline faded, the pains set in. Nayalla had some herbs and mosses in her pack and she dressed the worst of their wounds as well as she could.

‘We need to find water,’ she said. ‘And we’re out of food.’

‘Right now,’ Noogan muttered. ‘What I need is some sleep.’

Paternasse was already slumped on the ground, snoring. Nayalla could feel herself wanting to nod off too, but she was afraid of the Seneschal finding them while they slept.

‘Someone needs to keep watch,’ Mirkrin said, echoing her thoughts.

‘I won’t sleep,’ Dalegin said. ‘There’s no way I could sleep after that.’

‘Wake me when you start getting drowsy,’ Nayalla said. ‘I’ll take next watch.’

She huddled up close to her husband and was asleep in minutes. Mirkrin rested his chin on her head, stroking her hair. He wondered how long they could go on like this,
running
around in the dark, with no supplies and no idea where they were going, and enemies hunting them at every turn. But even as he thought about this, he remembered Taya and Lorkrin and hoped that they had been found safe and that they were now back with the tribe. All their troubles under this mountain would be bearable, if they could just be sure that their children were all right. Troubled by his thoughts, he drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

11
A
RE THE
G
ODS
H
AVING A
L
AUGH
?

Ludditch was woken by the sound of his father’s shuffling feet, accompanied by the old man’s two canes, scraping across the floor outside his room. His father would not be dragging his crippled body out of bed for nothing. Ludditch’s wife was still asleep beside him as he sat up, threw back the heavy fur and pulled on his soft, rawhide shoes. Ludditch Senior opened the door.

‘The clans’re out on the hunt. Someone’s seen a minkren in the village,’ the crippled old man said. ‘Best get down there and show yur face, less’n you want someone else claimin’ the head fer theirselves.’

‘A minkren?’ the younger man frowned. ‘They were all hunted out. Even if they weren’t, there’s no gobden trees round here.’

Realisation dawned.

‘Skullucks!’ he swore. ‘The damned Myunans!’ He jumped to his feet and pushed past his father. ‘Cleet! Get the hunnuds out. We got Myunans on the loose!’

The rest of his immediate clan were up and armed in no time, and Cleet opened the hunnud cages and went inside to put on their leashes. His appearance was greeted with shrill chatters and howls and the sound of clawed feet running back and forth in excitement.

The village was nearly deserted when the chieftain and his party arrived. The first thing Ludditch did was to hold a light up to the cages hanging up outside the meetinghouse. He snarled at what he saw. In the darkness, it would have been easy to mistake the arranged hides as sleeping bodies.

‘Canny little wretches,’ he said, baring his teeth.

‘The Parsinor’s gone, Learup,’ Spiroe called, coming out of the tannery. ‘Someone let him loose.’

‘Set the hunnuds on ’em,’ the chieftain growled. ‘Get the scent off the cages. Send word to the lookouts on all the roads. And someone go and check the river. Find those skullsuckers! The Parsinor’s mine. Whoever catches the others can have their skins. And bring me whatever bowel-brains were supposed to be on watch tonight. Someone’s gonna lose some fingers over this.’

Lorkrin swore bitterly as another gnat flew up his nose. He snorted it out angrily, unable to scratch the itch because he was using both his hands as paddles.

‘I’ve just about had it with these bloody insects!’ he growled.

‘Me too,’ Taya said from behind him. ‘What’s up ahead?’

‘Fog,’ her brother replied.

‘The ground looks a little more open over to the right,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘Maybe we should try walking from here on. They’re going to come down the river after us sooner or later, and we won’t be able to outrun them.’

‘Right,’ Lorkrin agreed. ‘We’ll have to scuttle the skiff.’

They pulled up into the mud of the bank and the two Myunans shed their canoe forms as they dragged Draegar’s
head and shoulders up out of the water. The ground was more open here, the trees thinning out to give way to tufts of bush and grass. Taya followed it away from the river until she was almost out of sight in the damp mist.

‘There’s a steep slope down into a valley,’ she said, coming back. ‘I can’t see any more than that.’

Rug paddled to the shore, but got stuck in the mud. Lorkrin rolled his eyes and dragged the little boat further up so that the man could get out. Then he went to have a look at the slope for himself.

‘It’s as good a way as any,’ he said.

‘We should head north and west until we hit the
mountains
,’ Taya added. ‘At least that way we’ll be able to figure out where we are.’

‘Here, help me sink this thing,’ Lorkrin said to Rug as he walked back towards the boat.

‘Why are we sinking it?’ Rug asked.

‘Think, Rug. If they find the
boat
, they’ll know where we got
out
, won’t they? So we’re sinking it so they won’t find it. Now get your mits on that end and hold it while I put some holes in it.’

They noticed a soft rumble through their bodies. They all froze. Rug felt a sickening feeling come over him.

‘What is tha–?’ he began, but then he saw ripples run across the still surface of the river and a shudder ran up through his feet from the ground.

They were knocked off their feet by the violence of the next tremor. It struck with a suddenness that stunned them, the ground jolting under them and stopping them from
getting
back on their feet. The fact that they could not see what was going on around them made it all the more frightening
and Rug cried out in fear. Another shockwave followed and they felt it to their bones. Trees could be heard toppling nearby, and animals awoke, screeching in panic. Birds burst out of the trees and into the air, flying blind in the dark.

Then it was gone, as suddenly as it had started. Lorkrin picked himself out of the mud and stood up on shaking legs.

‘What is going on?’ he shouted.

‘Lorkrin, hush!’ Taya urged him. ‘Someone might hear!’

‘Who gives a flying fart!’ he snapped. ‘Our luck couldn’t get any worse if we prayed for it. I mean, earthquakes? On top of everything else? Are the gods having a laugh, or what?’

‘Quiet!’ his sister hissed.

‘Why should I …?’

‘Listen!’

They all fell silent. There was something, a dull, slipping, rumbling sound. It was coming from the hill that towered, half-hidden, above them on the far side of the river.

‘What’s that?’ Taya asked.

Rug was frozen to the spot as he listened, as if trying to recall a lost memory. Then he held up his hand to point towards the opposite side of the river.

‘I know this sound,’ he said. ‘Mud and rock slipping down the hill. Lots of it.’

‘Landslide,’ Lorkrin said, matter-of-factly.

‘It could take the whole hillside with it!’ Taya exclaimed. ‘Lorkrin, the boat …’

The two Myunans pulled the boat up out of the river and dragged it with them towards the edge of the slope. The rumbling grew louder.

‘Come on!’ she called to Rug. ‘You can ride this down the hill. It’s the quickest way!’

‘But what about you?’ he asked.

‘You go on,’ she told him. ‘We’ll take Draegar.’

Rug shook his head and ran back to them. Something massive was coming down the hill, pushing air ahead of it. A faint breeze blew through the mist.

‘Maybe the river will stop it,’ Taya said hopefully as they all grabbed hold of Draegar and pulled him through the mud, away from the water to where the ground dropped away.

‘And maybe it’ll take the river with it,’ Lorkrin grunted. ‘Look, we can’t carry him …’

‘We won’t have to,’ she told him. ‘He’s going to carry us. Rug, get back in your boat and go, we’ve got him.’

Rug nodded and hurried over to the skiff. With one look back, he climbed in and Lorkrin shoved the boat forwards. The boat’s bottom scraped over the ground, the bow stuck out into empty space for a moment, then dropped and Rug slid down into the fog, quickly gathering speed and disappearing into the grey.

Draegar’s feet were still bound and the two children pointed them downhill, Lorkrin holding the ends of the rope so that he could lift the feet if he needed to. Then they sat atop the Parsinor, Lorkrin on his belly and Taya on his chest. With one foot either side of his torso, and his arms tucked under theirs, they eased his unconscious body over the edge. Even as they did, a wall of black muck hit the far side of the river hard enough to send a wave ploughing across it and over the near bank. A flood of mud and water surged towards them.

‘We’re not moving!’ Lorkrin cried, as his feet slipped against the wet ground.

‘Push harder!’ Taya shouted, digging her own heels in as hard as she could.

‘I
am
pushing harder!’

With that, the first wash of the flood hit them, lifting Draegar’s body enough to slide it over the edge and they were gone. Their makeshift sled bucked and rocked as he picked up speed, the wet ground carrying them on downwards. Steering was out of the question; they could only hope that they would not run into a tree or other obstacle. They veered into the path of a shallow stream and found themselves channelled down its course, Draegar’s back and legs crashing over stones and driftwood as they swept faster and faster downhill.

‘Hee … e’s going to be a wreck, wh … en he wakes up!’ Lorkrin bellowed as they bounced and slipped along.

‘If the…re’s anything left to wake…up, I’ll be ha…appy!’ Taya grunted.

The mud was rushing past with a roar around them, and they were only just keeping up with it. Taya risked a glance back and saw fallen trees and rocks being carried along behind them. They were running a race with the mudslide and they could not get out before it ended. They would be crushed by everything behind them if they stopped before the mud did. A boulder loomed up in their path and Lorkrin used the rope tied to Draegar’s feet to try and steer them clear, but it was no use. Taya shut her eyes. The mud swept by on their right, washing up against the bank and slopping back down, pushing them sideways and around the
boulder
. Taya opened her eyes and looked back at the boulder in amazement, but then fixed her gaze on the course ahead. They couldn’t expect that kind of luck to last.

Off to one side and slightly ahead of them, they saw Rug careering down the slope, the avalanche of muck and debris closing swiftly on him. With the bank rising and falling past them, the two children could only get fleeting glances of their new friend, but they saw the little skiff buck sideways as it hit a tree and then it tumbled over and over, rolling on top of the tall, thin man. The bank of the stream blocked the Myunans’ view as the mudslide crashed down over him.

The slope was easing off and Draegar’s descent was
slowing
now. But the momentum of the landslide carried them on and the surge built up behind them, lifting them up on its leading wave. Draegar’s head and shoulders tilted higher and higher and then Taya and Lorkrin felt themselves being pitched forward. They plunged into the stream, its water deeper as it was pushed ahead of the landslide, and they found themselves carried headlong down a narrowing
channel
. There, ahead of them, they saw a mill-house, its large wooden wheel turning under the force of the water. They were going to be carried right under it.

With a scream, Lorkrin slunched just as the water swept him under and he felt the pressure of the wooden wheel’s paddles crushing him against the bottom. He lost what breath he had in his lungs and nearly blacked out from the pain. When the wheel spat him out the other side, his body was marked from head to toe with a ladder-like pattern of grooves. He could feel every one of them. Taya’s serrated body was ejected from under the paddles after him and she shunted up against him as they both floated with the slower current into a wider stream.

There was a crunch of splitting wood and Draegar’s unconscious form was spewed out from under the wheel,
bringing some of the broken paddles with it. Lorkrin winced at the sight. That was going to hurt when the Parsinor woke up. Then the roar of slipping earth bore down on them and they saw the mudslide tear the large wheel from its
mountings
and bring it crashing towards them. Taya and Lorkrin threw themselves against the bank of the stream and
covered
their heads as the world came down around them.

Rug came to and found that opening his eyes had little effect on the darkness. Apprehension came over him as he
remembered
the landslide and he knew he had been caught beneath it. But there was air around him, and he could move the top half of his body. He felt above him; there were wooden boards over his head. Was it a … he struggled to remember. A box that people were buried in. A coffin. A chill went through him. Had someone actually buried him, thinking him dead? He pushed up against the boards. They were slippery with mud. With his fingertips, he followed them and found they angled downwards and pressed into his thighs. If it was a coffin, he was only halfway in. He felt further up and realised he knew this shape. This wasn’t a coffin – it was the skiff; upturned and acting like a roof over him against the mud, it had probably saved his life.

He pushed with all his might against the boat, but it did not budge. He shouted for help, but no one answered. He lay embedded in the mud, the overturned skiff protecting the upper half of his body. His legs were caught in muck up to his thighs, but a crack of light up under the other end of the skiff told him that he was not completely buried. He wondered how long he had been unconscious.

Rug realised he should be more scared. Being buried beneath a landslide was a frightening thing. But there was something about the darkness that he found comforting. He had a sense that the home he could not remember had been a dark place, a cave perhaps. Yes. He could imagine feeling at home in some deep cave. He heard sounds of movement nearby.

‘Hello? Taya? Lorkrin?’ he called. ‘Is there anybody to help me get out of the mud, please? I can’t seem to move! I’m over here … under the boat. Can anybody hear me?’

Nobody could. He waited and listened. Nothing. It was raining outside; he could hear it. And water was seeping down into his little hole beneath the boat. He wondered how long it would take to fill up completely. He pushed against the boards to try and lift the boat, but it did not budge.