The Inferior (30 page)

‘Brighter,’ he whispered.

‘What did you say?’

‘Brighter than the Roof.’

The Talker flared suddenly and so sharply that even with his head turned and eyes closed, Stopmouth still got spots in his vision. He didn’t wait to see what effect this had on Varaha. Weeping with pain, he rolled onto his good side and managed to make it to his knees and then his feet. He staggered towards a warren of alleys and narrow lanes that he didn’t recognize. But he could hear the river far to his left and realized that this time, at least, he was going in the right direction.

A shout of rage and anger came from behind him. The green light flashed and a spray of stone erupted from the side of a building in front of Stopmouth. More explosions followed, but none came close to him. Varaha would need longer than that to recover his sight!

That was when Stopmouth realized he’d left the Talker behind him, giving his Tribe even less chance of survival. And him too, for how could he explain the threat that followed him if he reached home before his enemy?

He wandered for another tenth, down an endless maze of bone-filled alleys. Varaha would be moving far faster than he was and was bound to catch him soon. That’s if exhaustion didn’t pull him down first. Stopmouth had just reached the intersection of two twisty roads when he heard voices in conversation. He approached cautiously, checking above and behind, making sure he wasn’t walking into a trap–a child could have bested him in his present condition.

Three Fourleggers crouched down at the entrance to an alleyway, their pointy faces all pressed together, one against the other.

‘Home,’ said one. ‘The green light brings terror to this mind.’

‘Hunger needs flesh,’ objected the second.

‘Flesh,’ said the third.

Stopmouth tried to understand what was happening despite the constant distraction of pain. He’d left the Talker behind him under the window. Either the Fourleggers themselves had found it or else…or else Varaha had picked it up and was now nearby. Stopmouth scanned the mossy buildings and saw nobody. Wherever he was, the spy was certain to be listening to the beasts too.

‘Why hasn’t he killed them?’ wondered Stopmouth. Varaha had no need of the flesh and yet the killing would be easy for him, maybe even enjoyable. But then the hunter realized that while the creatures couldn’t be much of a challenge to Varaha’s strange green weapon and unnatural strength, to Stopmouth they would be deadly; a barrier to force him back or funnel him in a direction he didn’t want to go. Praying that Varaha hadn’t spotted him and that the Fourleggers with their excellent hearing wouldn’t notice, he took a curvy lane that ran in the general direction of the alley the beasts were blocking. He was exhausted by now. His heart beat fast, speeding up the throb of pain in his arm. He needed to get home soon or he’d collapse.

The lane ended in an open area with several exits. At one of these, crouching in wait, lay Varaha. Stopmouth mightn’t have seen him if he hadn’t been expecting to. As it was, most of the roads nearby seemed to meet at this place, and it might be morning before he could find a way around it. His strength wouldn’t hold out that long.

He pulled back a step or two, wondering if his enemy could hear his ragged breathing. How could he escape? His injury wouldn’t let him crawl through the shadows, and while some of the alleys were narrow enough for a hunter to jump from roof to roof, he’d never be able to take the impact of a landing. He checked himself for weapons. The fight on the tower had cost him his spear and he hadn’t seen his knife since then either. Only the sling remained. He cursed. It might have been enough if he wasn’t such a terrible shot with his left hand. He knew he’d be lucky to come within a body-length of his enemy and would never strike the head. Even so, Varaha mightn’t know that. And perhaps an ancestor would smile on Stopmouth even now.

He crouched, out of sight of the open space, and laid the sling on the ground. He placed a stone on top, larger than those he normally used.

So much the better, he thought. It certainly couldn’t make his left-handed accuracy any worse. He found it hard to rise afterwards. The twinge in his recovering left leg joined in with the chorus of suffering from other parts of his body.

‘Why move?’ sang the pain. ‘You’re dead anyway. Why move?’

‘For the Tribe,’ he gasped. ‘For Indrani.’

A moment to recover. Then he spun the sling and stepped into the open. Varaha must have spotted him or caught a glimpse of the whirling motion for he ducked just as Stopmouth released. The rock flew through the darkness, missing the spy by at least ten arm-lengths and crashing into the alley behind him.

Varaha leaped forward, ready for action. And then stopped. His eyes took in the chief’s helpless condition and the now harmless sling hanging from his fingers. A broad smile crossed his face: arrogant, superior, triumphant. Why hadn’t Stopmouth seen through him from the beginning?

‘You missed,’ said Varaha. He held his wooden necklace in one hand and Stopmouth realized the delicate object must be the green light weapon.

The chief’s voice cracked with weariness and pain. ‘I didn’t miss. You’re such a fool, Varaha. I tried to teach you to hunt along with the others, but you never took me seriously.’

The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you talking about?’ He must have heard something just then, for he turned to look behind him. But the starving Fourleggers, attracted by the noise, were already upon him. He yelled in fear. The green light flashed once and two of the beasts exploded backwards in a shower of blood. The third, however, rose onto its back legs and shoved sharp claws deep into his belly.

Varaha’s eyes widened in disbelief and horror. The beast twisted its claws in the wound. Its victim managed a single high-pitched scream before the creature’s other paw punctured his throat.

Stopmouth stepped closer to where Varaha had fallen. He couldn’t leave the beast in possession of the Talker, not to mention the strange weapon–it might make all the difference in the short-term survival of the Tribe. ‘Hey,’ he said to the Fourlegger, pointing his sling at it. ‘Leave this place or I will use my green light on you.’

It paused, staring at him. Maybe it was wondering how he could speak its language. Or perhaps it was weighing up the risks–death by starvation against death by green light.

‘You may take one limb of your kill,’ said Stopmouth. ‘The rest belongs to me.’ The effort of holding up the sling was becoming too much and his hand began to shake. The Fourlegger stared at him, daring him to shoot if he could. Then it roared at him. It tore a leg from its victim and ran back the way it had come.

Stopmouth sank to the ground, careful of his various agonies. Not least of them was the fear that Indrani was in trouble–already under the control of those who’d kill her as soon as she told them what they wanted to know. He daydreamed about going after her. Long ago she’d told him how to get to the Roof: thirty days’ travel from here perhaps. Down the river to the giant Wetlane thing called ‘sea’, and then along the banks of ‘sea’ to a hill so tall it touched the sky. ‘Stopmouth!’ Was he still dreaming? He raised his head and saw her, directly above him, leaning out of the hatch of a jittery Globe, too near to the surface.

She had blood on her face. ‘The pilot hit me,’ she explained. ‘He was more of a handful than he looked.’

They smiled at each other, too far apart to embrace, even if Stopmouth could have made it to his feet to do so.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I don’t want the pilot here when he wakes up.’ She ducked back into the swaying craft and presently she slipped out the body of the hairy-lipped man. He fell twice his own height to land, little damaged, on the Fourlegger corpses. Indrani reappeared.

‘I saw the weapon flash,’ she said. ‘I thought…I thought…’

‘I’m all right,’ he lied.

She smiled. ‘I can’t land here, can’t even get close to you. You’ll have to climb a building, the taller the better. But you need to hurry. They may already know what I’ve done. They’ll be sending for the other Globes.’

Stopmouth looked at her, taking in the emotions running across her face: fear, excitement, love. Each made her beautiful in a different way. Each was uniquely Indrani.

‘I can’t come with you.’

‘W-what?’ A droplet of blood ran down her cheek to hang on her chin.

Her face blurred and he wiped his eyes. ‘I’d be useless to you in the Roof, Indrani. You know that. I’d slow you down. But the people here…They wouldn’t be alive by the time we came back. They need me.’

‘Oh, Stopmouth.’ And now she was crying too. He could see she wanted him to come with her, but must have known that he was right, that he had no choice in the matter.

‘Promise me you’ll come back,’ he said.

‘I have no Tribe, Stopmouth,’ she said. ‘No Tribe but you. Of course I’ll come back. I’ll find seeds for us to grow so nobody ever has to volunteer again. I’ll find weapons to fight the Diggers. And I’ll never leave you after.’ Her voice broke into a sob. ‘Never.’

A raucous sound came from inside the craft. Her eyes widened. ‘They’re–they’re coming!’

‘Go!’ he said. ‘Go and come back to me!’

She nodded, but stayed looking at him a few precious heartbeats more. Then she ducked back behind the closing hatch and the Globe rose straight into the air at great speed.

Stopmouth heard a groan from nearby. The pilot seemed to be waking up. He glanced in horror at the hunter beside him.

‘By the gods!’ he cried. He scrambled backwards through the guts of one of the Fourlegger corpses, then threw up at the sight of his gore-spattered clothes.

‘Welcome to the Tribe,’ said Stopmouth. Really, the man should be grateful to be alive.

The chief felt a wetness on his head, too warm to be Roofsweat. He touched his fingers to it and frowned when they came away red and sticky. He didn’t remember getting a scalp wound. ‘Indrani’s!’ he realized with a smile. This was the best of all possible omens.

‘Your blood has come back to me,’ he whispered, ‘and so will you.’

He looked off in the direction she had flown. Her Globe had already become a dot. Another heartbeat, and it disappeared.

Acknowledgements

I need to thank the following people in order to avoid them killing me. They’ve worked hard to help me out of the many dead-ends I encountered on my way here. They know it and I know it. I grovel before them. I grovel even lower before those whose help I have selfishly forgotten.

David Fickling, who fell off a chair. Ben Sharpe, eagle-eyed and cruel. Tiffany, deliverer of soup and sushi. Patrick Walsh, agent of all he surveys. Sue ‘the suggestor’ Armstrong and Jake of the many contracts.

My readers were many and filled with helpful advice, such as, ‘you should stick to the day job.’ First among all comes Tracylea Byford, Mama of the Critterlitter writers group and instigator of extraordinary plots. Other early readers were Nathan D English, Alan Ennis, Peter Lee, Derek Cramer, Carlos Mendoza, Roberto Basavilbaso and Patrick Moran.

Those whose help was less concrete include my long-suffering family: one very supportive mother; an equal number of sisters and my nephew, Luke, who always needs to know what’s going on. Others include Alan Dee, who supplied the music, and web wizards like Manix McPhillips and DjTaz.

Last of all, I would especially like to thank Corky, who dances down the stairs in red shoes.

A DAVID FICKLING BOOK

Published by David Fickling Books an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc.

New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2007 by Peadar Ó Guilín

All rights reserved.

Originally published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, in 2007.

David Fickling Books and colophon are trademarks of David Fickling.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ó Guilin, Peadar.

The inferior/Peadar Ó Guilin.—1st American ed.

p.                            cm.

Summary: In a brutal world where hunting and cannibalism are necessary for survival, something is going terribly wrong as even the globes on the roof of the world are fighting, but one young man, influenced by a beautiful and mysterious stranger, begins to envision new possibilities.

[1. Cannibalism—Fiction. 2. Hunting—Fiction. 3. Stuttering—Fiction. 4. Science fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.O363Inf 2008

[Fic]—dc22

2007034496

Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

eISBN: 978-0-375-84952-7

v3.0