The City (6 page)

Elija tried to tell them he was too tired to walk, but they ignored him, and he awkwardly fell into step with the woman as they carried on. ‘My name is Elija,’ he told them, but no one replied.

They walked for a long time, through tunnels large and small. Mostly they travelled downwards, with the stream, keeping the water to their right, the rough, dripping wall to their left. Elija could recognize none of it, although at one time he heard a sound in the distance he thought might be the Eating Gate, but it was too far away to be sure. They climbed for a while then went down a long flight of
crumbling stairs, slick and treacherous, a dark chasm to their right. They kept going down and Elija thought he had never been so deep in the Halls before. After a while, his brain foggy and his legs weak, he wondered if they were still in the Halls, or in some foreign country he knew nothing of. He tried to remember what Rubin had told him of distant Halls, for Rubin had been a mine of information, a gushing never-ending fount of it, and the little boy had only kept a few cupfuls of what he had been told in the long days while Rubin talked.

The woman, carrying a torch, and Elija were at the head of the party. He glanced at her from time to time. She was wrapped in many layers of ragged clothes, like all the other Dwellers. But her feet were encased in heavy boots, a prized rarity in the Halls, and Elija thought she must be an important person. He tried to look round from time to time to see how many people were following. He glimpsed many torches and thought there were maybe twenty. Once in a while he heard a child’s high cry or a groan, then the woman would turn and grin at him. He had no idea what the grin meant.

At last, when he felt he could not move another step, the woman stopped and told him he could rest. They were in a narrow corridor, rough-hewn and dry, and the boy fell to the floor, exhausted. He dozed for a while and when he opened his eyes again several people were sitting around him eating. His stomach growled painfully.

He licked dry lips. ‘Please. Can I have some food?’

They all glanced at the woman, who nodded, and a man gave Elija a flat round of grey bread. He ate it eagerly, looking round at his companions. The woman was tall and stout, and her hair was long and grey, her face red and stern. Her name was Badger. The man with the deep rumbling voice was a giant, taller than any Elija had seen in the Halls, with shoulders and arms like slabs of meat. He kept looking at Elija and smiling at him, revealing a few grey teeth.

‘Please,’ the boy offered nervously, ‘I would like to go back to the Hall of Blue Light. I want to find my sister. She was lost in the storm.’

There was a long pause and he thought they would ignore him again. Then Badger leaned towards him and bared her teeth. Elija thought of the gulon and its wide yellow smile.

‘The Hall of Blue Light, eh?’ she said. ‘It just so happens we’re going there. In a couple of days. We have business there. We will take you back to your sister, boy.’

As she spoke Elija saw a fat louse run out of her hairline and down
her face and dive into the plait of grey hair. He imagined the plait was teeming, heaving, crawling with insects. But he tried to smile at her, grateful for her kindness.

He wondered if the old gruff man and Anny-Mae had got home safely. And if Em was with them. For the first time since the storm he slept peacefully.

When he awoke he was being dragged to his feet and they were on the move again. He wondered how far they would go this time, but the food in his stomach had given him some strength, and he marched alongside Badger, looking up at her occasionally, thankful that he had found a friend. Again they travelled without stopping for many hours. At one time they all had to squeeze through a low narrow tunnel, half filled with water, which turned and cornered until Elija thought it would never end. It was much easier for him than for the adults, and he wondered how it was possible the giant could make it through. But he did, for the boy heard his voice rumbling behind as they pressed on.

At the end of this long march, when they had stopped only once to eat and rest, they clambered through a narrow cleft in the rock and came out on to a wide highway. Elija gazed around. The roof of the tunnel was so lofty the torchlight could not reach it. A small stream trickled down the centre of the way, which was otherwise bone dry and dusty. Downstream Elija could just make out what looked like an enormous bridge spanning the way. Upstream there was only darkness.

Badger ordered a halt and her companions slumped to the ground. Some rummaged in their rags for food or drink, others fell asleep instantly. Elija was hungry and he looked around hopefully, but they all turned away, even Badger, and, stomach grumbling, he fell deeply asleep.

‘Boy! Wake up. Boy!’

He felt hot breath wet in his ear, tickling, and he squirmed away in his sleep.

‘Boy!’ Sharp fingers pinched his earlobe and he awoke with a start. He tried to yell, but found a hand hard over his mouth, mashing his lips against his teeth. His eyes flew open and searched around in the gloom. Someone’s matted hair was over his face and he could barely see. Panicking, he struggled to get away.

‘Boy, listen to me. You must be quiet,’ the voice hissed. ‘Will you be quiet?’

He nodded, then drew in a breath to yell as soon as the grip on his mouth relaxed. But his captor was not fooled.

‘We must escape,’ he heard, and it slowly filtered into his brain that his captor was a child too. The hair in his face withdrew a little and he looked around. The others still lay where they had fallen, like piles of discarded clothes, and the noise of snoring rose and fell, echoing in the high tunnel. Elija’s captor moved away slightly, still holding his mouth, and he could see it was a girl, older than him, with long hair thick and dirty and a pale square face.

She leaned forward and spoke urgently in his ear. ‘We must escape before we reach their camp. They are reivers and will kill us and eat us.’

He shook his head. She was wrong. These people had rescued him. They were looking after him. He had heard of reivers, but he thought they were like wraiths – something evil heard of but never seen. He tried to speak and she put her head close to his and cautiously released the grip on his mouth.

‘They rescued me,’ he whispered.

‘Why did they do that?’ she hissed. ‘Out of kindness?’

Elija knew there
were
kind people down in the Halls, people like Rubin and the gruff old man he had last seen with Em. But deep in his gut he guessed these people he had fallen in with were not like that.

He looked around again, uncertain. The cavern was totally still; everyone slept the sleep of the dead. Just one torch glowed and the watchman was asleep beneath it, his mouth gaping open. It would be easy to creep away. But the thought of fleeing into the dark terrified him more than the risk of death at the hands of these people. He shook his head. ‘I’m staying.’

The girl scowled. ‘Then they will kill you.’

‘We will die in the dark.’

‘We will die if we stay here.’

Elija felt tears crawling down his face. The girl looked at him with a V-shaped frown between her brows. How can she be so fearless, he thought?

‘This is a well-travelled way,’ she explained to him. ‘I’ve been watching out for rats. We didn’t see any for hours, but there are lots of them here. You only find rats when there are people. That means
there are people nearby. We can hide in the dark until someone else passes by, someone with a torch.’

‘But they might be evil men.’

‘
These
are evil men.’ She shrugged and looked around her, as if already dismissing him from her plans. ‘We will die if we stay,’ she repeated.

‘I’m staying,’ Elija told her, and turned his back on the girl and curled up. He closed his eyes tight. He guessed she was still sitting beside him, watching, and he tried to sleep. Fears skittered through his head. Was she right? Did Badger and her friends plan to kill them? Finally, brain and body exhausted, he fell into a doze.

Moments later, it seemed, he was startled awake by an angry shout and a high-pitched squeal.

‘Bitch bit me!’ a voice snorted. There was a thwack of flesh on flesh and another cry of pain. Elija closed his eyes tighter and curled up into a ball. He felt the stir of rank air around him as sleepers rolled over and sat up. Then a strangled yell rang out, and Elija opened his eyes.

In the torchlight he could see the watchman holding the girl. Her feet were off the ground, but she was kicking with all her might and flailing with the other arm. Her face was growing red and she was weakening. Elija watched, eyes wide.

The others were laughing at the entertainment and Badger stood up, straightening her rags and patting them down in a leisurely way, and went over to the struggling pair. The girl raised one bare foot and kicked her in the chest. The blow hardly rocked her, but she growled.

‘Shall I bind her?’ the watchman asked Badger, who was rubbing her chest, wincing.

‘Too much trouble to carry her,’ the woman told him. ‘Kill her.’

She turned and looked down at Elija. He cowered to the hard floor, and her gaze passed over him.

The girl had stopped struggling. Her eyelids were fluttering and when the watchman set her back on her feet she slumped forward. He held her up with one hand and with the other dragged a rusty knife from the sheath at his side.

Elija took a deep breath, drove off his heels and ran, head down, straight at the watchman. The top of his head punched into a leather jerkin clothing slack flesh. He heard a breathless grunt and felt the man fall back. Elija plunged forward on to the big rolling body and slithered
over it, then lost his footing as he tried to rise. He looked around. All he could see was the flaring torchlight, and dark incoherent movement. A hand grabbed his arm and dragged him to his feet.

‘Got you, brat,’ Badger’s voice said. ‘Hold still!’ But Elija, in the madness of panic, flailed about in her arms until he slipped free. He ran in the direction he thought he heard the girl’s voice – straight into a rock wall. He fell over again and then, seeing a tunnel opening, struggled to his knees and shuffled through it into empty darkness. He scrambled to his feet and walked quickly with his hands out in front of him. His fingers brushed a wall and he followed it, trying to hurry, trying not to fall over. The ground plunged away suddenly and he fell again, rolling down a short slope and fetching up in a shallow puddle. Something hurt in his side, but he got up and carried on. The shouting was drifting away behind him.

He heard a whisper of sound and had no chance to run before a hand grabbed his arm. Mewling in fear he tried to run away, but the hand held him like stone.

‘It’s me!’ the girl said.

Elija felt his heart racing wildly. He could scarcely breathe.

‘It’s all right, it’s me,’ she repeated. ‘My name’s Amita.’

He calmed down a little and felt the wild drumming in his chest slow. ‘I’m Elija,’ he muttered. ‘How did you find me in the dark?’

‘I could hear your feet on the rock. You were shuffling like an old man.’

‘What do we do now?’ he asked. ‘Where do we go?’ The fear of being lost was rising again inexorably.

‘We go back,’ she told him.

‘Go back?’

‘We go back and get the torch. You were right. We cannot stay in the dark.’

‘But what if they catch us?’

‘They won’t be expecting us. They’ll think us too frightened.’

Elija
was
too frightened, but his belief in Amita was growing and he didn’t argue with her.

‘It’ll be easy,’ she said, nodding as if keen to convince him and, perhaps, herself. ‘They’ll probably sleep again and we can just walk in and take the torch.’

Elija thought about it, his brow furrowed. ‘But what if they decide not to sleep? Badger might want to carry on.’

‘Even better. We can follow them at a safe distance. They won’t be able to see us in the dark and they won’t hear us above all the noise they make. When they get to where they are going – well, then we’ll decide what to do.’

Elija could find no argument with this plan, but he said, ‘We need food and water.’

‘I know,’ she said.

In the end it was as easy as Amita predicted. The reivers had not slept again – they were pressing on to their unknown destination. The children heard the clamour of their progress from far away, and they slid into a deep niche in the rock wall to let them pass. The band carried two torches now, one at the front of the party and one at the dog-end. They were easy to follow, and one of them even dropped a half-empty water skin which the children snatched up eagerly.

They walked for what seemed like hours. At last they guessed they were near their destination for the reivers started to hurry. Elija, footsore and lurching with exhaustion, found it hard to keep up. He could hear shouts and laughter and the sound gave him a little energy. The reivers stopped and Elija and Amita edged forward, careful to stay outside the reach of the torches.

The band had halted at a high narrow crack in a rock wall. They were jostling to get through and were pushing and shoving each other in their haste. The children heard Badger’s voice cursing them all. Slowly the group diminished, then vanished completely like water down a pipe, leaving silence and darkness behind them.

The children moved forward, waited for a while, then stepped through the crack into the largest Hall Elija had ever seen. The cavern rose high above their heads to a hidden roof, from where daylight filtered thinly down through high shafts. The air was lighter here; it weighed less heavily on the senses. Elija was astonished to realize he could see.

Far ahead a wide river meandered through the centre of the Hall. Between them and the river was a broad shore crossed by plank paths, and spanning the river was a bridge of rusted metal and timber, which Badger and her band were hurrying over. They were elated now, for they were coming home, and Elija could hear them singing and laughing. Only then did he see that there were children in the centre of the group, small drooping figures being pushed and prodded across the bridge. On the far side he could make out a
settlement of tents and shacks. Even in the gloomy light he could see it was a big community. In a square in the centre, illuminated by the shafts of light, dozens of people were gathering, perhaps to welcome the reivers home to their village.