North! Or Be Eaten (20 page)

They had been running with little rest for half the day, and Janner was glad for Leeli’s sake that Podo led them at a walk. They veered off the road and crossed the green bottomland to the trees so there would be no question that they intended to enter the Strander camp. When Podo approached, three men rushed forward, hissing and swinging daggers. Podo stood his ground and held Claxton’s pendant in the air.

The Stranders stopped in their tracks a few steps away.

“That’s Claxton Weaver’s pone, but you ain’t Claxton Weaver,” one of them said suspiciously.

“No, I ain’t,” Podo said. “But I got his pone all the same, so if you’re wise, ye’ll let us tread on without trouble.”

The three men considered this in silence.

“Tell us how you swiped Claxton’s pone. If we believe ye, we’ll let you traipse the Middle Bend. Aye?”

Podo glanced at Tink. Janner wondered if the story that an eleven-year-old boy had not only thieved Claxton Weaver’s pone but had twice stolen his dagger and
conked him unconscious with it would be more believable than something Podo might make up.

“Truth is,” Podo said, stepping aside and pointing at Tink, “this young feller swiped it. Pulled it clean out of Claxton’s tunic just last night in the East Bend. Left Claxton so befuddled that he didn’t notice the boy swiped his dagger too.”

The Stranders raised their dirty eyebrows at Tink. “This boy swiped the pone?”

“Aye,” Podo said. “Ask him if ye like.”

One of the men narrowed his eyes and stepped forward. Tink stood still as a fence post.

“You expect us to believe that you’re the one that lifted the pone, boy?”

Tink gulped and nodded. Podo reached for his dagger.

The Strander grinned and slapped Tink on the back.

“Then I reckon you’re none other than Kalmar Wingfeather,” he said. “You can come near anytime, lad. Got word from one of the East Benders that Claxton Weaver was finally knocked from his heap. Well done, young feller. Claxton had it comin’ for a long time. Tread on, then.”

The Stranders slipped into the trees and were gone.

“Tink, you’re famous!” Janner said, and Tink smiled from ear to muddy ear.

“Blast,” Podo said. “Now the whole Strand knows yer name.”

Tink’s smile faded. “I didn’t mean to give him my real—my
really
real name. I didn’t want to tell him my name was Tink, and Kalmar was all I could think of. Sorry.”

“It isn’t such a bad thing, my boy,” said Oskar. “The name Wingfeather may not be widely known in Skree, but there are those who know enough of Anniera to recognize it. Seems to me that if word spread the King of Anniera was alive and loose on the Strand, why, Skreeans will relish the news! And it’ll make the Fangs none too happy.”

“I reckon that’s true,” Podo said, and he winked at Tink. “
Let
the Fangs know High King Kalmar swiped the pone of Claxton Weaver. But if the word’s spreadin’ this fast, we’ve got to get movin’. We need to find the burrow by dark.”

P
odo had to show Claxton’s pone to three more Strander clans that day, each less threatening than the one before. Only the first clan showed any sign of having heard the rumor of Kalmar Wingfeather’s quick hands, but Podo assured Tink the tale would ride the tongues of storytellers for a few years at least and the details would double and triple in size. Tink laughed, but Janner could tell something was on his mind.

The closer they drew to Dugtown, the worse the road got. Everywhere Janner looked he saw potholes and broken wagon wheels, abandoned shanties, stray dogs with missing legs or eyes or fur. Mud caked everything and sucked the color from the world. Mud splattered up from puddles in the road and dried on Janner’s arms and neck so that he felt like he was made of clay.

After they encountered the last group of Stranders, the Strand changed. What had been grassy bottomlands became worn-down farmsteads, sagging fences, and hogpigs snorting in muddy fields. Before, they traveled alone but for the occasional Stranders, but now scrawny chickens squawked across the road, and poor, sad-faced men and women stood in silence and watched the Igibys pass with dull interest. The Wester Strand, as Podo called it, was a listless place, a string of shacks as bent and bony as the people who dwelt there. The water crept downstream so flat and slow that it seemed less like a river than a long, narrow lake.

Podo nodded to himself and announced they were clear of the Stranders.

“Then this is Dugtown?” Leeli asked.

“No, lass. We’re close, though.” He lowered his voice. “These poor folk live along the Strand but aren’t so mean yet that they’re willing to make their beds with the clans farther east. They’re content to try to make their way by plantin’ seeds and raisin’ beasts. Too poor to live in Torrboro, too honest to scrape by in Dugtown, not yet vile enough to throw in with the Stranders. They live their lives with a mighty sorrow.”

As the company moved on, most of the mud farmers—as Podo called them, though not without pity—ignored them, but some stood up from the fields where they were unearthing stones in the way of the plow, or stopped hammering a rotten plank to a rotten structure with a rusty nail, or peered out their windows to watch the Igibys as they passed.

“Has it always been like this?” Leeli asked.

“No, lass, not always,” Podo said over his shoulder.

“But for far too long,” Oskar said, “that’s certain. For many years the Stranders have made trouble along the river. These poor, tired folk have suffered between the indifference of the elite in Torrboro and the hostility of the ruthless in Dugtown and the Strand.”
¹

“Someone should do something,” Leeli said quietly.

“What would they do?” Janner asked. “It seems like the whole world is as awful as it is here.”

“Things weren’t this bad in Glipwood,” Tink said.

“No, but it didn’t take much to tip the scales,” Janner said. “In just a few days, the town was deserted and the Fangs moved in. Everything in Skree is as bad as it is for these mud farmers. It’s just that here we can see it for what it is.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Janner saw a smile on his mother’s face. She and Podo’s eyes met, and he sensed he had done something that made her proud. He thought back to the way he felt in Glipwood on Dragon Day, when Oskar had first helped him see the sadness beneath the merriment. None of the visitors to Glipwood laughed from the belly; none of them smiled except in defiance of the way they really felt. Only Armulyn the Bard was able to muster any true feelings of joy, and Janner had noticed that for himself and for the people who listened to his songs with such
desperate attention, the joyful feelings the songs brought to the surface always came with tears. Theirs was a burden too heavy to be lifted by songs alone, however fine the melody.

“Someone should do something,” Leeli said again, this time in a feisty tone. Everyone knew better than to challenge her. She was right.

Podo stopped at the top of a gradual incline. To the right stood another cluster of tired buildings. Chickens chattered and pecked at the dirt, and a fat rooster perched on the roof of one building. An old man snored on the porch, a wad of rags his pillow. Behind the house stretched a fallow field bordered at the rear by a stand of scrub trees. To the left and down the slope coursed the Mighty Blapp, which was now anything but mighty.

Then Janner saw why Podo had stopped.

“What is it?” Tink asked as he approached. “Oh.”

“Aye, that’s Dugtown,” Podo said. “I’ve not seen it for a great many years.”

The city lay in the distance like a bruise on the green land. The shacks on either side of the River Road grew in number and were absorbed into the sprawl of Dugtown. Janner knew Dugtown was big, but his imagination hadn’t prepared him for this. His stomach crawled at the sight of so many streets and angles in such disarray. Buildings stood three and four stories tall, constructed at odd angles, as if each level were an afterthought.

At some unknown signal, a ringing of bells erupted from the city—first one, then a few more, then what seemed to be thousands of bells clanged like a swarm of invisible, metallic bats rushing into the night. Above the buildings, Janner saw hundreds of wooden towers, rickety and thin, scattered across the city like ugly weeds sprouted from ugly grass. At the sound of the bells, a fire was lit on the platform at the top of each tower. The flames rose as high as a man, and on each of the towers nearest them, Janner spied a figure standing watch. A city lit by a hundred giant torches should have been beautiful, but it looked to Janner more like something from a scarytale.

“Is that Torrboro?” Leeli asked, pointing at the other side of the river. Janner pulled his eyes from the terrible sight of the nearer city and was relieved to see the fine, soaring walls of Torrboro in the distance. The Palace Torr crouched near the river like a giant animal. The tallest tower was the tail, and the palace walls bulged and curved to give the impression of the animal’s legs and bulk—

“A cat?” Janner asked.

Oskar chuckled. “A
kitten
, to be precise. You’ll see the same theme repeated often in Torrboro’s architecture. A most unfortunate obsession of the Torr Dynasty, I’m
afraid. In the words of Verbichude Yay, the famed art critic, ‘Ugh. Might they have thought of something else?’”

Torrboro shone in happy contrast to Dugtown. Its wide, paved streets wound in graceful curves, and the majority of its buildings were of pale, creamy stone.
²
At the river front were many boats moored to docks, and Janner detected the movement of what must have been thousands of people bustling to and fro. The mass of people and activity thrilled Janner. He didn’t get the same claustrophobic, sinking feeling from Torrboro as he did from Dugtown.

“Why can’t we go to Torrboro instead?” Janner asked.

“Because the Fangs are thicker there,” Podo said. “See that palace? That’s where General Khrak resides. The meanest Fang of them all.”

“He commanded the invading armies,” Oskar said. “He’s shrewd—not your ordinary brute Fang. He’s probably sitting in the palace right now, trying to figure out how to get his claws on the lot of us.”

“Aye, which is why we’re not headed that way,” Podo said. “It’s easy to get lost in Dugtown, and that means it’s easy to hide. The Fangs are in Dugtown plenty, but they’re not there so much to patrol as to carouse. They like the taverns and the filth and the shadows. They’re there for fun, and so they’re not as like to interfere with a traveler on the street unless they have to.”

Janner saw movement on the road ahead. “Grandpa, look.”

“Eh?”

Janner pointed.

Podo sucked in a breath. “Fangs!” he said. “Follow me!”

He bolted into the house where the old man slept on the porch. Chickens scattered. Oskar, Nia, and the children hurried after Podo into the shadowy old building. The old man stirred and muttered a few garbled words but kept sleeping.

Once inside, Janner could see nothing. He could hear Podo’s familiar
tap-clunk
and his raspy gripe: “Been so long I can scarce remember how to find the…”

Janner heard the rattle and clomp outside of armored Fangs on the march. It didn’t sound like a large unit, but it was enough to make him tremble.

“Papa, they’ve stopped,” Nia whispered.

Podo ignored her, grumbling to himself.

The harsh sound of a Fang’s voice came from outside, and the old man on the stoop woke with a grunt.

“Grandpa, they’re right outside,” Tink said.

“Shh!”
Podo said, and then, so quietly Janner could barely hear him, “Step down. Easy, that’s it, honey. Oskar, ye’d better pretend you’re one of those Torrboro kittens and tread lightly, ye hear? Good. It’s not far down.” Then Janner felt Podo’s strong, sure hand on his shoulder. “Down we go, boys,” he whispered.

The wooden steps creaked as the family and Oskar moved down into darkness, but not loud enough to alert the Fangs, who questioned the old man on the porch. Podo pulled the trapdoor shut above them. He removed his pack in the darkness, fished about inside for a match, then lit it.

They stood at the foot of a stair in a damp cellar.
The Fangs aren’t the smartest creatures in Aerwiar, but even the dullest of them would know to search the cellar
, Janner thought. For some reason, though, Podo didn’t look worried. He ran his fingers along the seams in the stone wall, still mumbling to himself. The match died out and the cellar went black again. Footsteps thumped somewhere in the house above them. When the second match hissed to life, Podo’s face appeared in the yellow glow, his eyes wide, holding a finger to his lips—unnecessarily, since the Igibys and Oskar already stood silent and terrified.

Podo crept to another wall, still feeling the stones for something. Fangs clunked through the house while others taunted the man outside. Then Janner heard a click, and in a corner of the cellar floor, another trapdoor swung down, spilling the dirt that had covered it and revealing the first few rungs of a wooden ladder. Podo used the last seconds of the match light to point down. As quiet as mice, they all crept down the ladder into what Janner guessed was the Strander burrow.

At the top of the ladder, after Podo clicked the trapdoor back into place, he tugged a string that dangled from the top rung. As Podo later explained, the string wound through a hole in the stone floor, behind a beam in the cellar wall, and up to the ceiling of the cellar, where it was attached to a mechanism that released a pan of dirt through a grid of holes.

With a muted
poof
, the dirt landed atop the conspicuous square of the trapdoor and concealed it.

The Fangs who leapt into the cellar a moment later were certain they caught the sharp scent of a match recently struck, but it was a mystery they couldn’t solve, as the old man on the porch swore again and again that he had seen no one enter the house.