The Inferior (11 page)

The Flyer took off again, leaving a few shreds of dried skin behind it. Something glinted in its claws, and suddenly Stopmouth realized it hadn’t been a stone after all, but a small sphere of metal.

His jaw dropped. The Flyer swooped low over a crowd of Armourbacks and Hoppers. ‘Attack!’ it screeched. Was it talking Human? ‘Attack! Or I take your children instead! Attack! Use the trees! Remember, human flesh belongs to Flyers alone!’

The Armourbacks and Hopper fighters surged towards the human positions. Hoppers leaped over pits with ease; Armourbacks bridged them with tree trunks. When they reached the base of the walls, humans emerged to push rocks on top of them or fire slingshots. Flyers dived at the humans, but they too were shot at and several fell from the sky into Man-Ways.

The enemy fell back in disarray until only a few angry Flyers remained hovering over the defenders. When the Armourbacks and Hoppers had reached a safe distance, the Flyer with the metal sphere in its claws swooped over them, screeching for more stones to be brought to the rooftops.

‘Try and watch where that one lands,’ Rockface whispered. But the Flyer didn’t seem to have any one perch. Once again Armourbacks and Hoppers gathered stones and stockpiled them on the roofs of houses. By the time they’d finished, Rooflight had faded. The Flyers gathered in flocks on the same buildings that held their missiles, but this time they stayed to rest and groom each other. It appeared that the attack was over for the moment.

The two hunters witnessed an exchange of wounded between Armourbacks and Hoppers. The Hoppers killed the Armourback wounded one at a time, dismembering each corpse before pulling forward the next victim.

The shelled beasts, on the other hand, preferred live food, and the high screams of Hoppers kept Stopmouth awake for some time after. He wondered what kind of effect it must be having on the relatives of those same Hoppers. Surely they must have wished for better allies.

Stopmouth woke later with Rockface’s hand over his mouth. The big man smiled and whispered directly into his ear: ‘Let’s find that Flyer with the Talker, hey? The only guards they’ve posted are at their perimeters. They’ll never be expecting us!’

Stopmouth’s eyes widened. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of when Rockface had asked to be part of the mission. They couldn’t risk it yet. They had to wait until the enemy was weaker. He shook his head violently. They didn’t even know which roof that Flyer was hiding on!

‘We could be stuck up here for days while the fighting goes on,’ said Rockface. ‘Besides, this should be easy, and if we don’t see the Flyer, we can always find an Armourback to knock on the back of the head, hey? What will my boy think when I tell him I hid while others were keeping him safe?’

Rockface didn’t wait for a reply. Stopmouth sent a quick prayer to the ancestors, then followed despairingly through the maze of traps he himself had helped to set.

This is madness! he thought. He should have stayed on the roof and left Rockface to risk his own neck, although if Rockface were seen coming out of this building, Stopmouth would be doomed in any case.

On the ground floor they found two Hopper legs and one arm jutting out from under a pile of rocks. The beast had set off the trap on the stairs. Rockface pried a spear from its grasp. Its point had been made of human bone, and grips had been fashioned in the haft to fit a Hopper’s long fingers. Rockface grinned, happy as a child, making Stopmouth even more nervous.

Immediately outside their doorway, two more of the furred beasts slept, entwined. They made Stopmouth think of Indrani for some reason. He winced when his companion stabbed each of them quickly in the eye and moved on. Death, but not for food, not for survival. It seemed strange and wasteful.

A fire burned at the next intersection. More Hoppers slept here, a large crowd, and Stopmouth grabbed the big hunter’s shoulder before he could advance on them. Rockface looked hurt, as if the very idea he would do something to endanger the mission were absurd. Instead, he pointed at a nearby building and signalled ‘Go!’ Stopmouth didn’t understand. Rockface signalled again, then made for the doorway and straight up the stairs, leaving his young companion with no alternative but to follow.

Stopmouth understood when they reached the roof. Three Flyers slept with heads curled under flaky wings. They were surrounded by the small stones they used as missiles and the shredded remains of a meal that might once have been one of Stopmouth’s neighbours. None of them had the Talker. Rockface pointed to one of the Flyers, which was sleeping off to one side, and then pointed to Stopmouth. The younger man, knowing he had no choice in what came next, nodded.

He climbed carefully over the piles of rocks, heart pounding, worried they might skitter beneath his feet. He could see the creature’s blunt snout poking from under its wings. A faint, rhythmic buzz issued from it, which didn’t stop until he wrapped one hand over its face and another around its skinny neck. A quick twist, a snap, and the creature was no more. Rockface had also killed one of the beasts on his side, but he seemed strangely reluctant to finish the other. It had wakened before he could attack it, and now he stared into its big, dark eyes, frozen to the spot. Slowly the creature spread its wings.

Stopmouth slipped his bone dagger from its sheath. He would get one throw. If the creature even screamed, they were both dead. He flung the dagger and watched it spin in the air. It seemed to take days to reach the target. When it did, the hilt and not the point struck home. The creature fell from the roof, stunned. Rockface shook himself, but otherwise wasted no time in grabbing up his weapons and running down the stairs to finish the Flyer off. It had fallen on the opposite side of the building from the door. So when they reached the ground floor, they sneaked round the corner of the house. And froze. An Armourback had found the Flyer and was shaking it as if to wake it. Rockface was about to charge, but Stopmouth pulled him back. He pointed to his sling repeatedly, until Rockface sighed and nodded.

The shot was perfect. The Armourback dropped even as the Flyer’s wings began twitching. There was no stopping Rockface this time. The big hunter rushed forward and ended yet another life. But not for food.

A thought came to Stopmouth, the type of thought that must have come to Wallbreaker every day. He took the fallen Armourback’s spear. On the way back to the hide, he jammed the weapon deep into the corpse of one of the two Hoppers that Rockface had killed outside their building. He left it there, jutting from the body where it couldn’t be missed.

Another attack was well under way. Flyers bombarded defenders from a safe height, while below, lines of Armourbacks battered the shaky wall with tree trunks. Humans had never built anything before, certainly not in Stopmouth’s lifetime. So rocks quickly came loose and tumbled into the street. Some crashed into the attackers, but not enough to drive them back. Rockface cried out when he saw what was happening, his voice lost in the collapse of an entire section of the wall.

Ancestors save us! thought Stopmouth.

Tens of Hoppers leaped through the gap into a great cloud of dust. Armourbacks followed them, although many of these disappeared down another pit just inside the wall. They were quickly replaced.

Stopmouth thought of Indrani and Wallbreaker and of what the enemy would do to them when they were caught. He saw Rockface biting his lips and clenching his hands and knew the big man was thinking about his own family: two wives and their children who lived by the strength of his arm. So when Rockface tried to run down into the street, the younger man was ready for it and tackled him around the knees so that both fell into a heap.

‘N-n-n-ot over yet! C-C-Centre Sssssquare!’

Rockface threw him off, but didn’t run. Everyone in the Ways had been drilled to retreat to a new line of defences at Centre Square when the wall fell. They’d be safe still. For a time.

The chief’s original idea had been to make the enemy pay such a heavy price for the attack that they’d give up and choose some less fortified victims. But Stopmouth realized this was never going to happen: the Flyers seemed to be completely in control of the attacking forces, and their own losses were very light. What was to stop them simply choosing other allies after the Armourbacks and Hoppers had spent themselves? But, as usual, Wallbreaker had another plan, a darker one. For it to work, the humans would have to hold out at least a full day longer.

The air carried the sounds of desperate struggles all the way to the hideout: the clashing of weapons; human and Hopper screams. Sometimes the men even heard the booming cries of Hairbeasts, and many of their Armourback victims stumbled back to camp with smashed and splintered shells. Once again Wallbreaker had been proven right. But the men saw more and more enemies filing into Man-Ways, until soon only their wounded remained outside. The stronger of these began dragging the weaker back towards their own lines.

A few times Stopmouth saw Armourback young running on four stubby limbs to swarm over dying Hoppers. Other Hoppers chased them off, perhaps because they felt the victim might yet recover, or perhaps they were just angry with the Armourbacks and the torment they caused those they fed upon. Stopmouth couldn’t tell.

‘The waiting is killing me!’ said Rockface. ‘They could all be dead in there.’

‘No,’ said Stopmouth.

Half a day passed and still the two men had no indication of how the battle might be going inside the perimeter. Every now and again, wounded enemies would stumble back through the wall carrying others of their kind. Often, too, it was a human corpse they brought. At one point a Hopper hopped by below with Speareye’s youngest child, Bonehammer, over its shoulder. The boy was pale but for a bright slash across his throat.

A Flyer swooped over the Hopper and screeched at it until it dropped the boy and hopped back towards the battle. The Flyer flew off with the child in its claws.

‘It’s begun,’ said Rockface, horror and awe in his voice. ‘Wallbreaker’s really going ahead with it.’

Finally, to the hunters’ great relief, night fell, and the enemy began streaming back out of the Ways towards their own lines.

Armourbacks and Hoppers dumped corpses of all kinds, including a few Hairbeasts, practically beneath the building in which the two men were hiding.

The Flyer with the Talker in its claws flew low again over the gathered ranks of its allies.

‘Human flesh belongs to Flyers,’ it screeched in perfect Human, and the only way Stopmouth could tell a beast had spoken was because he’d seen the creature. Someone clever like Wallbreaker would be able to use that to his advantage when planning more of his strange hunts.

The other corpses and injured were to be divided equally among the Flyers’ allies. At one point a fight erupted when an Armourback tried to drag off a Hopper still strong enough to resist. Beasts on both sides were wounded until the Flyer leader put an end to it.

Stopmouth saw the corpse of Mossheart’s friend, Redcheek, hauled into the air. He’d had last seen her dancing around the fire at his brother’s wedding, laughing and making eyes at Waterjumper. Her only smile now was a gash across the throat.

‘What a beauty,’ said Rockface sadly.

‘B-b-brave,’ replied Stopmouth. Even if his brother’s plan worked, Stopmouth worried that the Tribe could never recover from the loss of so many of its young.

The sounds of squabbling and gorging came from every direction. Neither of the hunters ate. Both watched the Flyer chief feeding itself to a standstill on a nearby building. They were half afraid it would move away afterwards. Instead, it tottered into a corner of the roof and lay down.

When the humans hazarded a look over the parapet of their house, all they saw in every direction was sleeping enemies. Stopmouth didn’t try to stop Rockface leaving this time, but padded after him through shadows towards the building where the Flyer leader had made its perch.

Outside, he stood on something soft that shifted under his feet. He stabbed blindly down with his weapon until the movement ceased. It was the place where he’d left an Armourback spear in the corpse of a Hopper the night before. He hoped the furred beasts would blame their allies for this killing too, rather than seeking out any humans in their midst. In either case, it was another creature he wouldn’t eat. He consoled himself with the thought that he had yet to commit a waste as great as the one Wallbreaker had planned. In spite of his disgust, right now, in the midst of his enemies, he hoped his brother had done more than just plan it.

They climbed the stairs to the roof, where four Flyers waited. The creatures hadn’t placed head under wing as they normally did when they slept. Instead, they lay about the roof, wings twitching uncontrollably, big eyes staring up at the sky. They seemed to have succumbed to some strange kind of fit. The two humans stepped over the remains of Redcheek’s corpse and made the easiest kills of their lives. Blood ran hot onto their hands, sticky and delicious. But they didn’t dare lick it off. Wallbreaker had said that if the battle went badly enough, he’d call for volunteers and have them eat handfuls of mossbeasts until foam came to their lips. Then they were to be killed and left where the enemy might find them. One human corpse might account for ten beasts or more. Quite likely there were dying Flyers on half the rooftops of the area.

Stopmouth didn’t have time to mourn the waste. He prised the Talker from the leader’s grasp. It fitted easily into his hand, warm and alive, like the tiny head of a newborn.

He signalled to Rockface, swearing to himself that if the older hunter went on another killing spree, he could do so without Stopmouth’s help. They needed to get back to the hide and stay there until they could sneak home. But no sooner had they hit the street than they heard it: ‘Humans!’ An Armourback had
shouted
, if shout was the right word for creatures that spoke without sound. Whatever the explanation, the men understood it well enough to start running for their lives.

Stopmouth took the lead. His instincts pushed him away from Centre Square, where traps would be waiting in the dark. He’d grown up in these streets and knew alleys and turns that the enemy had never seen. Nevertheless, if a few Hoppers took up the chase, the men would be caught in moments. The young hunter’s original home lay no more than two hundred paces away. He ran in that direction, sometimes leaping over huddles of the sleeping enemy.