Chasing the Valley (10 page)

‘We've already found a creek,' says Clementine. ‘Why do we need another one?'

Maisy leans close to her sister's ear and whispers something.

‘We don't want a creek, we want the main river,' says Radnor impatiently. ‘Hackel said we could follow it to find our way south, instead of using the road.'

‘Yes, well, there's no need for that tone,' says Clementine. ‘And Maisy just reminded me, anyway.'

For the next few hours, we do nothing but ride. As the sun rises higher, it burns most of the fog away from the trees. Even so, the day is bitterly cold. I hope it doesn't start snowing, because that means clearer footprints. The last thing we need is to help the hunters find our trail.

I'm starting to feel more comfortable on the foxaries now. My thigh muscles still ache from their unnatural positioning, but I'm learning to read the beasts' movements better. I can sense, from the throb of a muscle or the twitch of a limb, when the creature beneath me intends to change direction.

Around lunchtime, the trees start to thin out. We must be nearing the edge of the forest, because there are no more clusters of dense foliage or even clearings. It's just uniform, endless woodland: all the same, all completely dull. That's okay though; I like dull. I've had enough excitement in the last few days for a lifetime.

‘Hey!' says Clementine. ‘What's that?'

We stiffen. At first, all I can see is a bunch of scraggly trees – no different from a million other patches of woodland around here. Then I see the pair of human bodies sprawling in the leaves.

 

 

 

 

I stop breathing. The others do the same. The
foxaries must sense our tension because they freeze still and silent, except for the faint quiver of muscles preparing to sprint. Are these hunters? Are they sleeping? Are they awake, lying in wait, baiting a trap for us with their own inert forms?

As the seconds pass, I stare as hard as I can at the bodies. There's no sign of movement – not even the gentle rise and fall of a torso. Are they breathing? Their uniforms are emerald and gold, a mark of palace majesty that looks almost perverse out here in the muck of the woods.
Hunters
.

‘They're dead,' whispers Maisy.

‘How do you know?'

She shakes her head, looking pale. ‘They're not breathing. And they're lying on their faces.'

She's right. It's hard to tell, because of all the dead leaves, but the hunters are lying facedown. Their bodies don't move, not even when a breeze ruffles dirt across their backs. If they're not dead, they're very good actors.

I slip down from the foxary's back. It takes a moment to de-jellify my legs after the morning's ride, but I manage to reach the two hunters' bodies without falling on my face. The bodies are stiff and pale, hands contorted into desperate fists by their sides. I take a deep breath and prod one of them with a stick. No response.

‘They're dead,' I confirm.

The others dismount and lead their foxaries forward. Radnor glares at the bodies, his expression flitting between worry and satisfaction. I glance at the richie twins, half expecting them to squeal or cover their eyes, but they must have stronger stomachs than I expected. They just stare down at the bodies, eyes hard, mouths drawn into identical straight lines.

Teddy Nort, of course, heads straight for the loot.

‘Look at this!' he says, hauling up a pair of packs from beside the bodies. ‘Do you reckon there's food in these?'

Five minutes earlier, I would have jumped a mile high at the thought of food supplies. But now I feel queasy, staring down at the corpses of hunters who wanted us dead. How has this happened? How have our hunters become the hunted?

‘Who killed them?' I say.

There's a pause.

‘Maybe they killed each other,' says Teddy. ‘You know, had a fight or something.'

I bend down to examine the bodies, trying to keep my emotions in check. I've seen my fair share of bodies but even so, it's sickening to see these hunters' corpses up close.

There's no sign of injury on their torsos or their limbs. But the hair at the napes of their necks is clotted with blood. I poke the hair aside with my stick, revealing perfect bullet holes in the backs of their necks. The shots have travelled right through their proclivity tattoos, skewering the image of a flame on one and a mountain on the other. I've never seen a mountain tattoo before, but maybe this man's proclivity was Earth.

‘Do you think . . .' Clementine begins, sounding hopeful. ‘Do you think maybe it was Hackel?'

Radnor shakes his head. ‘Hackel doesn't use guns. He can kill people with Flame.'

I stare at the wounds, perfectly drilled into the base of each hunter's skull. Their bodies lie facedown, as though they were kneeling when they died. I can picture it now: the impact of the shots, the bodies falling forward . . . It's too perfect. Too precise.

‘This wasn't a murder,' I say, quietly. ‘This was an execution.'

Clementine looks up from the bodies. ‘Then where's the executioner?'

No one answers.

 

For the next few hours, we ride. There's no time
to search the hunters' packs and count our new supplies. We just load the packs onto Radnor's foxary and head off into the trees. Whoever killed those hunters could still be close by. Our only option is to put as much distance as we can between ourselves and the bodies.

We hear the river before we see it. It gushes up ahead, like the static of my father's radio. As we approach, the world seems to grow lighter. At first I'm confused – what does a river have to do with daylight? – until I realise there are no more trees ahead. This is the edge of the forest, and we are nearing the next stage of our journey.

We ride out between the last of the trees and find ourselves at the edge of emptiness. At least, that's what it looks like until my eyes adjust to the sudden flood of light. Everything is dappled grey, the same colour as the winter sky. Then I realise it's a sea of rocks – boulders, really. At our feet, the earth slopes sharply downwards: an escarpment tilting into their midst. There are occasional splashes of green, as though a few shrubs or vines might be hidden in this field of stone, and a vast river cascades below us to mark our path. But on the whole, I feel like I've landed on a plate of greyish porridge.

No one speaks for a minute. We all just stare across the expanse, agog at the idea of crossing this world of stone.

‘That's a lot of rocks,' I say eventually. ‘Are you sure this was Hackel's plan?'

Radnor nods. ‘He said to follow the river – that's his smuggling route. This is the only major river around here. And he warned me about this place.'

‘He did?'

‘It's called the Marbles,' says Maisy.

We all stop and stare at her. It's so uncharacteristic for her to speak up in a conversation, I think my mouth actually opens a bit in surprise.

Maisy reddens, then looks down at her feet. ‘I read about it once, in a geography book.'

‘The Marbles?' says Teddy, brightening up a little. ‘I like marbles. Worth their weight in silver, I reckon, if you know what you're doing.'

I bet he does. I imagine Teddy in an alleyway, holding illicit gambling matches with his fellow pickpockets. If the scruffers in Rourton aren't bet­ting on cards or street-ball, there's a good chance they're betting on marbles. It's a common way to make a living – or lose one – on the streets back home.

Then I silently chastise myself. I shouldn't be thinking of Rourton as ‘home'. I will never see those city walls again.

‘Imagine the games you'd have out here,' Teddy says, a hungry glint in his eye. ‘You could roll a big boulder down the hill, and bet on whether –'

‘How is Hackel going to find us?' Clementine interrupts. ‘We paid good money for him to guide us, you know.'

Radnor points into the distance. ‘Somewhere out there, beyond the Marbles, there's a town called Gunning. Hackel said if we got separated, he'd meet us there. He'll look for us in the town market at twelve every day for the next couple of weeks.'

‘Gunning?' Clementine says. ‘Never heard of it.'

‘It's a pretty dodgy town, I think,' says Radnor. ‘A lot of smuggling deals happen there. They used to make illegal pistols – that's why it's called Gunning.'

Teddy looks up eagerly, a glint in his eye. ‘Sounds like fun.'

‘Well, we've got a long way to go first,' says Radnor. ‘Come on. I want to find a good campsite before tonight.'

As we descend into the Marbles, the wind slaps strands of auburn hair across my cheeks. I feel a little uneasy. Over the last couple of days, I've started to feel almost safe beneath the canopy. At least we had trees to hide us from the hunters. In the Marbles, there are no trees. We will be exposed.

At the bottom of the slope, we meet the river. It is wide and noisy, funnelling between walls of ragged boulders. Its banks, hemmed by stone and water, provide just enough room to manoeuvre the foxaries. This part of the journey would be easier on foot; some rocks leave little space for the beasts to squeeze past without touching the water. The foxaries aren't keen on wading; when Teddy tries to steer them into getting their paws wet, they twist away like angry cats.

As the hours pass, I find my skin getting damp and cold. The river churns up mist, just enough to condense beneath my sleeves. ‘At least it's not snowing,' I say aloud.

‘I wouldn't mind some snow,' says Teddy. ‘Snow balls could be pretty good weapons if the hunters rock up.'

‘Give them frostbitten noses?'

‘Something like that.'

When the sun is sinking behind the boulders, Radnor looks worried. This place all looks the same: rocks, rocks and more rocks. I'm starting to suspect I hallucinated the streaks of green when I looked down at this slope from the forest, because there's almost no foliage – apart from occasional clumps of brown thistles.

Worst of all, there's nowhere safe to camp. If we sleep in a cluster of boulders, it'll be almost impossible to set up a decent magnetic circle because the ground is so uneven. But if we opt for a bare stretch of rock, we'll be too exposed.

We press onward, constantly searching the riverbanks, but there's no sign of a handy cave to shelter in. This part of the slope is too fragmented, cluttered with shoulder-high chunks of rock. Judging by the view this morning, there should be larger boulders ahead, but we've got no hope of travelling that far tonight. With every step, the daylight seems to fade further away. I stare ahead, running my gaze across the gnarled landscape. There must be something, anything . . . 

‘Excuse me,' Maisy says shyly, ‘but I think we should try up there.'

I follow her sideways glance, up away from the bank. It's hard to tell from this low angle, and in the evening shadows, but the rocks all look the same to me.

‘I think that's limestone,' says Maisy, when no one else speaks. ‘It's a lighter shade of grey, see? Limestone's quite soluble, for a rock, so it often forms strange shapes. Lots of caves are made of it.'

Radnor looks ready to argue and I can't really blame him. The river is our guide, our sustenance and our only link to Hackel's plan. None of us wants to stray from its banks.

‘Can't hurt to look, can it?' says Teddy. ‘For all we know, there might be a five-star boulder resort up there. With caviar cakes, even, or those little chocolate truffles they have in gentlemen's clubs.'

‘When have
you
been inside a gentlemen's club, scruffer?' says Clementine. Then she seems to consider this and scowls. ‘Never mind, I don't want to know.'

We dismount and lead our foxaries up into the rocks. The sides of the river are steep. My legs are numb from a long day's riding, so I skid a few times on piles of pebbles. Our foxaries are happy to get away from the water, so they strain ahead with forceful necks and bright eyes.

I traipse over the top of the rocks and get a clearer glimpse of the landscape beside us. Huge rocks grasp up like open fists, the residue of a broken plateau. The formations seem ready to shelter us, providing a hundred craggy overhangs.

‘How did you know?' I say to Maisy. ‘About the limestone, I mean?'

She twists her fingers together, like she's been caught misbehaving. ‘I like to read.'

I think of the other times she's shown little glimpses of understanding. When we found the crashed biplane, it was Maisy who thought of look­ing underneath to count the bombs. And this morning, she was the one who knew this place was called the Marbles. She might be timid, but I'm starting to suspect that Maisy knows a lot more about the world than she lets on.

We move between the rocks carefully. It's not quite as cramped as the riverbank this afternoon, but the foxaries can still barely squeeze between some of the formations.

‘Over there,' says Radnor. ‘Under that ledge.'

We follow his nod towards a patch of gravel to our left. A pile of boulders looms above it, blotting out most of the sky. It's not exactly a cave, but it's the best hope of shelter I've seen all evening. We set up camp as far beneath the ledge as we can. I'm not sure whether my illusion can reach right up to hide us from biplanes, so it seems safest to keep undercover.

When our camp is set up, Teddy arranges the magnets in a circle. I summon an illusion to hide us in the night. Then we wrap ourselves in sleeping sacks and prepare to open the dead hunters' supply packs. What might be hidden inside? We've been waiting for this moment all day; I can't help imagining chunks of bread, canteens of soup, maybe even an apple or two if we're lucky. At this point, though, I'd settle for a baked rat if it looked edible.