The Inferior (22 page)

Kubar looked away. He was filthy, his hair matted with moss and dirt, his hands shaking with hunger or fear. ‘
I
do not want to die,’ the elder whispered. ‘Not like that. Last night some of us formed a circle and fought back. I don’t think we even scratched any of the beasts, but they let us be in favour of others who were weaker. We will be reborn as mossbeasts or worse for what we did.’

Stopmouth had a momentary vision of himself and Rockface leading these few back to join with Wallbreaker. However, remembering the hazards of that journey–Diggers, Longtongues and Wetlane beasts–he knew that none would make it. He wasn’t sure what his party could do to save them, especially with Rockface wounded. He looked at Indrani.

She sighed. ‘We could do far more for these people if we got to the Roof. They can’t survive here. Even if they did, sooner or later the Diggers will come and that will be that…’ She shrugged. ‘Oh well, they need your help now and I suppose you’d better give it.’

‘Of course we’ll help them!’ said Rockface.

‘Rockface, you’re injured,’ said Stopmouth, ‘and I’m not sure I’d be much good to them.’

Indrani snorted in disbelief, sending a warm glow through his body. The others looked at him imploringly. One twitchy young man even went down on his knees and held shaking arms outstretched in Stopmouth’s direction.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll do our best. Rockface?’

‘Ha! I knew it! Just like your father!’

The newcomers looked relieved, breaking out into a babble of prayers and weeping. Stopmouth had to speak up to be heard above them. ‘But are there no others who want to live?’

‘Oh yes,’ said the elder. ‘Many others.’

‘Good.’ He looked round and spotted the boy Yama. ‘You–could you…please go back to your people and tell all those who wish to fight…all those willing to
eat
, to come here. Bring any sticks you have. And make sure you get back to me before dark–that’s when most of the attacks will take place.’ The boy whooped and ran off.

Stopmouth left the weaker ones under Rockface’s protection. He took the rest of the new humans scouting. It would have been better if he could have sent them collecting sticks or bones for weapons, but he didn’t trust them on their own with so many enemies around. They didn’t trust themselves either. They milled about, their terror and exhaustion evident in every movement, each afraid to be the last in line.

‘Keep your eyes peeled! We need a few buildings we can isolate from the rest and defend.’

He found what they were looking for next to the wildly rushing river. A complex of buildings, three storeys high, formed a U shape around a blind alley. Very little moss clung to the smooth material of the walls, as if it couldn’t get a grip, or didn’t like the taste. Stopmouth looked up three storeys and couldn’t see a single crack in the facade. That would have been unusual at home, but in this area it seemed a miracle. Best of all, the flat roofs overlooked the only unblocked entrance to the complex on three sides.

‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘And look at all that rubble!’ At some time in the past a house across the street had collapsed and many of the stones had obligingly rolled over towards the small opening of the U.

He piled up some heavy rocks and began carrying them one by one up to the roof. The others, apart from the injured Rockface, followed his example, groaning under unaccustomed weight. When he saw they were getting the idea, he limited himself to supervision, hoarding his energy for the night to come. Nobody complained. These people who’d begged the savages’ protection seemed to fear him. But Indrani…they
hated
her. Still, when she grew exasperated at them and shouted, they leaped to obey.

‘These fools seem to think they can just lie down and leave all the work to others!’ she said to him.

‘It’s not that,’ he replied. ‘They don’t have the strength for this. They need flesh.’

‘And courage.’

And rest too, they needed rest. After half a day they’d managed a few dozen rocks and he doubted he’d get any more work out of them short of killing them.

Kubar had scraped his hands raw with the stones he carried. Splinters and fragments of stone jiggled in the strands of his beard. ‘Where’s that young idiot, Yama?’ he asked, his voice even lower with all the dust in his throat. Nobody knew. Some of them had families the boy had been supposed to collect and bring here. No more than a tenth of daylight remained. Many of them wanted to go back to the square.

‘None of you are leaving!’ said Stopmouth. ‘I’ll find Yama for you.’

‘But who will protect us here?’ asked Kubar. ‘No offence to your big companion…but he’s gone to sleep. Look at him! He couldn’t fight off a child in that condition.’

‘Indrani will be in charge,’ Stopmouth said.

‘What?’ She hadn’t expected that.

‘You can fight, Indrani. You terrified our hunters back home with your kicks, remember?’

‘I can
defend
myself, Stopmouth. Against humans.’

‘It’s the same thing,’ he said, although it wasn’t. But he knew she could do the job. He pressed the Armourback-shell spear into her hands. He didn’t plan on being gone long enough to need it. More importantly he wanted her to be safe. In spite of the things she’d told him the day before, the thought of harm coming to her was too much to bear. ‘Bring the people to the top of this building,’ he told her. ‘Keep quiet and drop rocks on any beasts that come into the alleyway. They’ll find easier prey and leave you alone. All right?’

He left her stuttering in protest and ran towards the square. It felt wonderful to stretch his legs, to see the buildings glide past almost in a blur. Beneath his feet the thick moss of the area hid wobbly stones and other hazards. Nothing slowed him down; it felt like nothing could.

He ran on until he heard the shouting and weeping of the crowd.

Night is approaching, he thought. They know what’s coming. He passed several half-butchered corpses on the way. Mostly old people with that strange grey hair. None of them was the boy and he didn’t stop.

The square itself heaved with panic. People on the outer edges tried to push closer to the centre. The weak finished on the outside or screamed as those with more strength walked on top of them. If Yama and the families he was supposed to bring with him were hiding in this mass, Stopmouth would never find them.

‘Yama!’ he shouted at the top of his lungs, but doubted he could be heard more than a few body-lengths away.

Stopmouth ran into a nearby building and climbed the steps three at a time. From the roof he could see right into the centre of the crowd. He didn’t find Yama but he did see the bald-headed chief of these people. The man rested against a huge, squat building which bordered the square on the river side. Young men kept the crowd at bay. Others crossed sticks in front of the entrance to the building. It looked like they had imprisoned somebody inside and Stopmouth had a good idea who it was.

He left the roof and moved into side streets and alleys, trying to find a route that would bring him to the river. He heard it, roaring constantly in the background, but this wasn’t much like the Ways he’d grown up in–the lanes here kept twisting away in strange directions, confusing him even as the Rooflight grew fainter. Finally he cut through the hallway of a house and emerged from the back window to see the river no more than twenty body-lengths distant.

Here lay the back end of the huge building that the chief’s men had been guarding. It had a few windows, but they were small and high. No way through there, he thought. He kept walking around the building until he saw a place where a house had collapsed against it, one precariously leaning wall forming a natural ladder.

Lumps of concrete cracked under his feet as he climbed. Some fell away in a spray of powder and stones. Once he reached too far for a handhold and slid a full body-length, braking painfully with his bare skin while the whole structure shuddered. It was Bloodskin all over again, except this time he made it onto the roof before the wall came tumbling down.

He could hear the people in the square beyond the building. The sounds of panic were already reaching fever pitch. He knew he didn’t have much time. Tonight neighbouring beasts would aim to cripple the new arrivals, maybe even exterminate them.

He searched about frantically for a skylight. When he found one, it was so dark inside that he couldn’t see any stairs. Maybe there weren’t any.

‘Yama?’ he called. His voice echoed into the darkness, but the building was so large that even if the boy was inside, he mightn’t hear him. Stopmouth dropped a stone through the skylight. It struck something almost at once, so he lowered himself over the edge and let go.

Stairs! Thank the ancestors!

He descended them carefully while his eyes adapted to the darkness. This too reminded him of the night he broke his legs. ‘Yama? Yama?’ he called.

At the bottom he started moving in what he hoped was the direction of the guarded doorway. He reached a large open space where the last of the Rooflight trickled in from the high, small windows he’d seen earlier.

‘Yama?’

A voice called back something in gibberish. Stopmouth ran towards the source of it until he could see the guarded doorway and hear the noise of panic from the square beyond. ‘Shtop-Mou?’

Yama’s silhouette bowed, outlined in a sheen of perspiration. Around him other silhouettes waited, perhaps a hundred of them, or two hundred. Men and women both. Why had the chief placed the rebels here? Surely this was the safest place in the whole area, with the crowded square buffering it from attack?

Outside the screaming began, first at one end of the square and then the other. Yama’s people began murmuring among themselves, their fear almost palpable. Then came a scream from
within
the building. Gurgling and short. Another shriek nearby, and a wave of panicked bodies ran for the guarded doorway. White shapes danced through the back of the room, their skin glowing gently.

Stopmouth grabbed Yama. ‘Why are we running from so few? We have to fight them!’

The urgency if not the meaning communicated itself. Yama did some shouting of his own and grabbed a few of the fleeing men. The Skeletons were getting closer. Stopmouth picked up a piece of masonry and charged in the direction of the enemy. His stomach churned with the old fear and he prayed the others would follow, knowing he was dead if they didn’t.

His rock crashed down on the glowing head of a Skeleton. He grabbed its spear as other white figures converged on him. But then the rest of the humans arrived in a ragged charge, throwing rubble. Stopmouth saw two Skeletons stagger while another went down altogether. The rest retreated, one group fending off his men while another dragged away human corpses. They all disappeared into the floor.

Back home, Stopmouth and his comrades might have pursued the enemy in an effort to save the bodies. Not here. He didn’t know how many more entrances to this place lay hidden in the darkness. They had to get out. He thought of bringing the people up onto the roof, but the stairs he’d dropped onto didn’t quite reach the skylight. He imagined the chaos of exhausted people trying to lift each other up while those at the bottom of the stairs were savaged by beasts. The panic alone would cost many lives. No, he’d bring them out through the square, where the enemy would find easier targets and where he could at least see his way.

He grabbed Yama and showed him the spear he’d captured. The boy nodded, his grin flashing in the light from the door. He called out gibberish until the others began collecting abandoned enemy weapons.

The next step would be harder. Stopmouth pressed a strip of white flesh into Yama’s hand. The boy squawked and flung the morsel away. Stopmouth grabbed him and forced his fingers to close around another piece, still warm from the corpse. Stopmouth could hear him almost whimper at the thought of what he was about to do, but slowly, without any further help from the hunter, he raised the meat to his mouth. Stopmouth heard him swallow, almost gagging. But his voice was firm when he shouted at the others–most of whom were older than him–until they lined up nervously before Stopmouth. Some got sick as soon as the flesh passed their lips. It didn’t matter, thought Stopmouth: now they would have to fight.

He led them to the door. Guards still blocked the way with sticks. They were big men by human standards, but Stopmouth could see they were soft. Sweat beaded their skin while their heads swivelled now one way, now the other, following whatever was causing the screaming in various parts of the square. The balding chief knelt just in front of them, his hands over his eyes.

Stopmouth stepped between the guards. They jumped, but stood back from the tip of his new spear. More of the newly armed prisoners pushed in behind him.

The chief and Yama began shouting at each other, but Stopmouth ignored them, appalled by what he could see: a great boiling mass of humans, under attack from all sides by a bewildering variety of beast species, but weaponless and helpless as babies.

Several alleyways lay free of attack and sometimes people ran into them to escape. Stopmouth felt sure that more creatures lay in wait there, grateful for easy prey.

He shook Yama out of his argument with the chief and indicated a side street leading around the prison towards the river.

‘We’re going that way.’ Any other path would take them across the swirling crowds of the square.

Stopmouth moved off with his allies behind him. Three of the guards came too, and women and children ran to join them. A riot began in the middle of the square as tens rushed to follow.

Stopmouth halted the group at the mouth of the alley. It looked clear, but that meant nothing. He pulled three spearmen to the front along with the guards and their pathetic sticks. He made others pick up rocks.

‘Slowly does it,’ he said, moving forward.

The hissing of the river grew louder. Halfway down, one of his men dropped his spear and clutched at his neck. He fell and slid backwards into a doorway. People shouted in fear. Then Stopmouth felt a tightness around his own left ankle. His leg was pulled from under him and he crashed onto the stone-covered street. He too began scraping towards a doorway, where a pair of red eyes flashed in the darkness close to the ground. He called out for help, having dropped his spear, but all he heard were screams. People were falling everywhere; some were being trampled.