The Inferior (23 page)

He jerked his knife free of his belt and cut the cord around his leg. He was surprised as hot blood spilled from it. The glowing eyes leaped towards him. He flung up his weapon and had it knocked from his hands by a slime-covered limb. Then talons were pushing him down, digging into his shoulder. Jaws opened hugely against the tracklights.

Stopmouth heard a crunching sound. The creature slid off him. A young man helped him up and returned the dropped knife. He tapped his chest, as if he knew Stopmouth couldn’t understand him, and said, ‘Varaha.’ He was as good-looking for a man as Indrani was for a woman, with a strong jaw, deep black eyes and a winning smile. Varaha showed not the slightest hint of fear and didn’t even appear to be sweating. All over the alley, humans who didn’t know how to fight were flinging stones and jabbing awkwardly with spears. The slimy-skinned beasts who lay in wait couldn’t have been expecting such numbers or resistance. They died quickly, having killed no more than twice or three times their number.

‘You!’ shouted Stopmouth at the former prison guards. He showed them Varaha’s kill. ‘We need to take that corpse.’ He mimed it for them, but they just looked at him stupidly until Varaha growled them into obedience. Men further back picked up another corpse of their own accord. Then the whole band moved on, squeezed at the back by ever growing numbers of refugees.

Stopmouth reached the river without further incident. Behind him, humans were still pouring from the mouth of the alleyway. Far more of them had followed than he’d been expecting. They’d chosen life above all the teachings of their wrinkly old men. Even the chief had come, tears in his eyes, his face so anguished Stopmouth could only pity him.

But it wasn’t over yet: predators had followed prey and screams echoed from the back of the alley. Stopmouth tried to organize his hunters to form a defensive line. Too many people were pushing past, driven by the slaughter at their backs. He might as well have tried stopping the rushing waters of the river. Over their heads he spied the rust-coloured beasts standing on their hind legs, sweeping great claws through human flesh. A mist of gore blurred the air around them.

Blood flowed out of the alley in gutters. He wondered briefly if that was what gutters were for. How many humans had died to produce so much blood? How many beasts would feed on them and for how long would they be satisfied?

People were still pouring out of the alleyway. By now the beasts must have been walking on a carpet of bodies. They were only twenty paces away and the young hunter knew they wouldn’t stop until they’d weakened the humans beyond the point of recovery.

He shouted for Yama, but couldn’t see him in the chaos. So he gathered a group of the terrified new hunters, most armed with no more than rocks. Varaha came too and helped him shove the men into position as close to the mouth of the alley as possible.

Suddenly the last survivors had passed, and Fourleggers, plastered in gore, exposed their bellies to human vengeance. After such easy slaughter, the organized ambush took them by surprise. The young hunter gutted one of them before they even knew they were under attack. Rocks and stones flew into the mouth of the alley, knocking the enemy off balance even as Stopmouth charged them. Other humans ran with him, yelling their hatred, and amazingly the beasts turned tail and ran for their lives. There had only been a dozen of them in the assault to begin with. Almost all of them escaped.

The young hunter sagged against a wall.

He heard Varaha calling out something to the humans behind him in a strong, rich voice. When he turned, the man was grinning and everybody was staring at Stopmouth as if he was some kind of hero. Varaha spoke again and the young hunter heard an approximation of his own name in amongst the gibberish. The crowd cheered, many with damp eyes. Then they rushed forward to hug him, and tears were streaming down his face too. It felt so right. Like home, except better, for here he wasn’t Stopmouth the stutterer, Wallbreaker’s harmless brother–here he was the man who’d saved their lives.

He knew that if only he could protect these people, make them protect themselves, his little group would have a home again. He and Indrani could be together and no man could say otherwise.

And there was another thought lurking at the back of his mind: ‘I won’t have to go to the Roof. I won’t have to live among those who hate my ancestors and hate me!’

18.

THROUGH THE FIRE

S
topmouth found Indrani’s band safe and sound the next day. He’d been hoping for a hug when he saw her. Instead, she yelled at him and punched him hard enough to set his head ringing. Then, with no words of explanation, she bathed his cuts and bruises, tenderly and with great care not to hurt him further. Better than a hug, he thought to himself, although it wasn’t really. At least she’d lost her fear of being close to him.

All around them joyful reunions were taking place. Anxious faces sought relatives and friends. Many tears were shed and throats, raw from days of fear, found the strength to cry some more. There were a few orphans too, like the little girl Stopmouth and Indrani had saved. The Tribe will be their family now, thought Stopmouth. And mine too.

‘We were attacked last night,’ Indrani told him. ‘They were the four-legged ones with the red scales. We beat them off.’

‘Did you kill any?’

‘Oh yes!’ But the beasts had been too canny to leave corpses behind them.

‘They waited until we ran out of stones,’ said Indrani. ‘Then they stole back their dead.’ She hung her head. ‘It was my fault. They knew we were low on rocks because I shouted at the people who were supposed to push them over the edge. The Talker translated what I said.’

‘You stayed alive,’ he told her. ‘That’s what counts. And we have flesh aplenty now!’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Rockface?’

She looked worried. ‘His back hurts, he says. He threw more rocks than anybody last night, but it made him scream. Towards the end he tried to pick up one that was too big for him. He wouldn’t give up and we had to drag him off. He’s sleeping again.’

‘Mother always said sleep could heal a man,’ Stopmouth replied. Still, the injury worried him more than almost anything else. What if it was permanent?

The young hunter started organizing relays of women to carry the flesh back from the scene of last night’s battle and picked out strong men to guard them. Others were set to replenishing the supply of rocks on the roofs of the U-shaped complex of buildings that people were already calling
Headquarters
. Against the moss-covered stone of the surrounding houses, its walls gleamed, almost like the coloured clothing the women wore. Only the windows of the lower two floors, plugged with bungs of crumbling rubble, marred the perfection. Still, the unblocked openings of the upper storey gave glorious views of rooftops and river and would allow enough light for women to do their work throughout the day.

Indrani had hinted that Stopmouth’s ancestors, the so-called Deserters, had created this magnificent place and every other building under the Roof. He couldn’t imagine how. They must have been like these people’s gods to do so. He wondered how long a man might spend smoothing even a tiny section of this wall. How could they spare the people for it? How many hunters had it taken to feed them all? He shook his head.

He turned to look around at his new comrades. Not all members of this strange Tribe were making themselves useful: many were too weak to carry more than themselves. Even now some of these refused all beast flesh. Strangely they had fewer qualms about eating human meat.

‘And why should they?’ said Kubar, his grey beard even wilder than it had been. People looked up at the sound of his gravelly voice. Many seemed relieved to find him alive. ‘These were our friends,’ he continued. His skinny arms had muscles of a sort, unlike most of the other humans. ‘We didn’t hurt them and they would have wanted us to have their bodies now that they are gone.’

For the time being Stopmouth was happy as long as the other hunters ate. They needed weapons too. A dozen more knives had turned up in the alley and he suggested tying them to the ends of sticks to form makeshift spears.

As bands of flesh gatherers returned from the alley, Stopmouth pulled the hunters aside and divided them into groups, making sure always to combine spear carriers with stone throwers. It was only the combination of the two that had saved them all the night before. He sent some of the men back to the alley for any corpses that hadn’t already been taken. Others were to patrol the perimeter of Headquarters.

‘You’re not to attack the enemy,’ he told each group. ‘They’ve been hunting all their lives and will kill you if you go too near.’

‘Why not?’ said Yama. He sported scars on his arms to match those on his cheek. He showed them to any woman who glanced in his direction. ‘We beat them last night. We can do it again!’ Earlier Stopmouth had seen the boy stuffing his face with flesh and laughing as older men retched.

‘It doesn’t matter if you can do it again,’ said Stopmouth. ‘If you lose one fighter and they lose ten, it’s still a loss we can’t afford.’ The boy just shrugged, then shouted at ‘his’ hunting party to follow him.

Stopmouth didn’t think the beasts would risk an assault on armed humans that day. They’d be too busy butchering their enormous kill and transporting it home. No, he thought. For another day or two at least, the tiny human community would be fine as long as nobody got caught outside alone.

He went to check on Indrani, who’d been trying to organize the collecting of wood for fires. She had gathered up orphan children for the task and was trying to marshal them and keep them from wailing.

‘It’s not so easy when you keep the Talker to yourself all day,’ she complained.

‘But surely these are your people!’

She curled her lip. ‘Some of the younger ones speak a little of my tongue. But I can no more understand their speech than you could a Flyer’s. These…these spirit-lovers’–it seemed the worst insult she could imagine and Stopmouth wondered if, for once, the magic of the Talker had failed to come up with a good human word for it–‘they are not my Tribe. They’ve had all the benefits of
civilization
, all the knowledge, and still they’ve turned their backs on it.’

‘Ah,’ said Stopmouth, ‘that might explain why some of them look at you with such hatred. One of them called you a witch, I remember.’ This had been worrying him.

Indrani laughed so much that nearby conversations stopped. Perhaps it had been a long time since they’d heard a loud human voice that wasn’t screaming.

‘That’s not why they hate me, Stopmouth, not at all. That’s not why three of their weakling old men have already tried to kill me.’

Stopmouth’s jaw dropped. ‘I didn’t know…’

‘I don’t need you to protect me from the likes of them!’

‘Of course not!’ He clenched his fists, wondering who’d attacked her. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her now that they’d found a home. ‘But what have you ever done to them?’

Her eyes took on a distant look. ‘I did my best for them in the Roof, Stopmouth. I always remember thinking how awful it must be for them, trapped by the words of grumpy old fanatics when all the wonders of
civilization
were there for the taking. So I made sure their children went to proper schools where the madness of their beliefs could be challenged. I forced medical checks on them and fought to free their women.’ She shook her head. ‘They always paid me back in hatred, Stopmouth, and now, although they know it’s impossible, they hold me responsible for their presence here below the Roof. Me! And I was always the one who spoke out against it whenever it was suggested. But maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.’ Her voice turned to a whisper. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t be here if I had.’

Stopmouth’s mind was swirling with strange ideas, some of them frightening, some merely hurtful.

‘Why…why
are
you here, Indrani?’

She shook her head. ‘I always ask myself that. Always. Every day I have a different answer. Every—’ She pressed her hands over her eyes and stumbled away from him. She didn’t want to cry in front of the people, he suspected, but many had seen her anyway and some had openly sneered.

‘What are you looking at?’ he shouted at them.

For now he had plenty of other problems to deal with. No one seemed to know about even the simplest of tasks and they looked to him for orders as if he were a chief like Wallbreaker or Speareye.

It’s because Rockface is injured, he thought. Otherwise he’s the one they’d be looking to for help.

A few of those charged with bringing flesh from the alley got lost on the way and were never seen again. Screaming matches broke out in the confined spaces between and within families. The balding chief, too weak to stand, continued haranguing his subjects from a pile of cracked stone blocks. And nobody wanted to butcher the corpses they’d fought so hard to win. Most were too squeamish even to touch them. Stopmouth gathered up his hunters for the job as they returned from the alley.

‘Oh, let me do it!’ said Yama. He had a funny smile that only ever lifted the left side of his mouth, maybe because the scars on the other side had stiffened his face. ‘But I want to start with the corpse of my stepmother.’ A lot of the men broke into smiles until the boy stared them down. They thought he’d meant it as a joke. He took a knife and went off whistling to find the woman’s corpse.

Another willing helper was the handsome Varaha, who’d saved Stopmouth’s life in the alley. He looked totally relaxed, not in the least bit tired or even hungry. He wore a crafty wooden necklace, but had abandoned most of the other clothing these people wore except for a loincloth he’d improvised for himself. ‘Now that we’re in this game of murder,’ he said, ‘we might as well play it to the end.’ Every woman’s eye was on him and Stopmouth wondered what Indrani thought of him.

‘It’s not murder, Varaha. We have killed only beasts!’

The man shrugged, smiling brilliantly. ‘Sure. But, well…All my life I have believed it to be murder to kill another living creature for food. Oh, I used to watch your adventures, Stopmouth! Avidly sometimes. But I was a teacher before I came here, and one thing I learned is that even
your
carnivorous ancestors would have considered it murder to kill a being that could think as well as they!’

Stopmouth handed the man a sharp stone. He had a sudden urge to ask Varaha for the story of his ancestors, in spite of the promise he’d made to Indrani. What harm could it do? But he kept his mouth shut until the teacher bent over a corpse and began hacking at it.

Meanwhile Indrani’s crews had finally learned to identify the stones for making sparks. She showed them how to pound the juice out of moss to make kindling and growled when they demonstrated a clumsiness that had once been hers. All of them were weary, their bright clothing filthy from the knees down. Surprisingly, even the most squeamish showed no qualms about putting bodies into the flames.

‘We need to be careful,’ Indrani warned Stopmouth. ‘Some of those idiots are trying to cremate the bodies rather than cook them.’ This idea seemed like madness to him, but several times before the night was out, corpses were burned beyond use. Some people even tried to sneak to the river with the ashes, but their pitiful screams a tenth later deterred the others.

Finally the awful process produced enough to feed them all for a couple of tens. The last struggle was to try and convince everybody to eat. It wasn’t as difficult as Stopmouth had feared. The survivors were all people who’d chosen life over their beliefs. And so, when the delicious (to Stopmouth) odours of roasting meat filled the air, most partook, even if only to swallow a few scraps.

Sounds of retching continued long into the night.

Strangely, he couldn’t sleep. He should be exhausted–and he was! His body ached from numerous wounds and every muscle quivered with fatigue. But he was too happy to sleep. He’d found a home. The bodies lying nearby, the clumsy lookouts he’d picked, all were Tribe to him now. Hopeless, they were all hopeless and probably doomed, but they had more chance of survival than his little party had of reaching the Roof. At first he’d been worried about the hatred many of them felt towards Indrani. And yet, even as they’d conquered their fear of flesh, they would soon learn to value Indrani’s courage and strength. They’d need her almost as much as he did. Only one thing remained to make his happiness complete.

‘Are you awake?’ whispered Indrani from her bed of moss next to his.

He smiled. Would it happen now? He pictured her beautiful lips touching his. If it could happen anywhere, surely it was here in the bosom of their new Tribe. He’d often thought she’d never want anything more to do with men. But the further they’d walked from Wallbreaker, the less fear she had of him and the closer they became.

‘I’m awake,’ he said. He reached a hand out towards her, not daring to open his eyes. His stomach fluttered as warm fingers intertwined with his.

‘I’m glad,’ she said. He thought he knew what she meant. For a while they lay like that. He’d waited so long for this moment, so long for a chance to tell her his feelings. He felt himself drifting off and forced himself alert again. It had to be now!

‘Indrani?’

‘Mmmm…’

‘Don’t go to sleep, Indrani.’

‘Mmmm…’

‘I–I want you.’ She was awake now: he felt her hand snake away from his, even as his face burned. ‘I mean, I want you to jump the fire with me, that’s all.’

There was a pause. Nearby, Indrani’s collection of orphans stirred and muttered in their sleep.

‘Oh, Stopmouth.’ Her voice sounded terribly sad, but he didn’t dare look over at her. His heart was hammering and there was a churning sickness in his stomach. He had his answer and he wanted her to stop speaking.

She didn’t. ‘Ever since I came here, I’ve had one horrific experience after another.’

‘Am I horrific? Because—’

‘Of course not!’

‘Because I thought you liked me. Back before Wallbreaker—’

‘I
do
like you, you idiot! How could a woman not? In every way, you’re beautiful. Every way. But jumping the fire with you would be like…like surrendering to this place. Like becoming part of it. Do you see? You told me before that I was acting more and more like a savage and you were right. But oh, the gods know how I hate it! The only thing that allows me to live with myself now is the thought that one day I might get home and put an end to this whole disgusting system. I can’t believe I used to be part of it.’