The Book of Koli

by M. R. Carey

  Up above though, on the side of the mountain, there was maybe six or seven people running fast. I couldn’t tell if they was Senlas’s people from this distance, but it was plain to see they was following us. And though they was a long way back, they was making much better speed.

  I licked my lips, and found they was dry as dust. “We better run,” I said.

  “Yes,” Ursala says. “We better had.”

  We run as best we could, but we didn’t have much running left in us. Up ahead, the stone walls went on and on, it seemed like for ever.

  My leg was like a block of steeped wood now, that wouldn’t bend and didn’t have no feeling except for a numbness. Numbness was better than pain, but it wasn’t much good for keeping any kind of a pace. Ursala kept running on ahead, then waiting for me to come.

  And every time we looked back, them people behind us was closer. They wasn’t on the side of the mountain any more. They had come down onto the stone wall that was on the right side of us. There had got to be a trail up there, and I bet it was a lot clearer than what we was passing through.

  “You go ahead,” I says to Ursala. “I’ll follow as I can.”

  She didn’t do it though. She took my arm and put it over her shoulders, so I could borrow some of her strength and maybe her speed too, and like that we went limping on.

  “Just a little further,” Ursala said. But I didn’t see no good that a little further might bring. Them that was following us was not far behind at all now. I could see they was Senlas’s people, all right, and one of them I knowed well. It was Sky. She was right out in front of them and pulling away, a spear in her fist, running with great big strides that et up the distance.

  I thought I seen weeds waving and bending on the left-side wall too, and heard them snap from time to time. Something was moving fast up there. We was like to be flanked, so even if we found an opening we would not be able to get out of this.

  It’s funny how sometimes you can get something you been wishing and wishing for and end up in worse case than you was before. Now the wall that was on our right dipped down, slow and gentle. Up ahead of us, I could see where it come down to the level of the tracks at last, and the tracks turned away across a space that was more open. The way Sky was going, she was going to get to that place before us, and the others was not far behind her. The movement on the other side of the valley was further back but coming quicker still.

  I tried to push myself harder. I thought maybe if we got to the open space first we could run off into whatever green was there and hide in it. But it was not much of a hope, and it was dashed down soon enough. The wall dipped and dipped. Sky run and run. By the time the wall was just about twice as high as our heads, she was level with us.

  I wondered that they didn’t kill us right then. They was all carrying spears, and we was about as easy to get to as apples in a hallow tub. But I guess they was all on fire for the hunt by this time, and wanted to finish it properly. Either that or they wanted to bring us back alive and kill us after.

  Sky run on, overtaking us. Then she gathered herself and jumped.

  She come down right in front of us, and we had got to stop or else run into her. She whipped that spear around and pointed it at my face. Maybe there was a moment when we could of rushed on her and tried to knock her down, but I don’t really believe we would of had much luck with that.

  The rest of Senlas’s people come trotting down now and spread theirselves out around us.

  Sky was panting hard from her run, her chest going up and down like a bellows. She bared her teeth. I don’t know if it was a smile or a threat like dogs do, but whatever it was it made me piss myself. I felt the wetness run down my leg into my boot, and I was right sorry, for that boot deserved better.

  “Tie their hands up,” Sky says. “And give the end of the rope to me.”

  The shunned men moved in to do what they was told. Ursala stepped back.

  “Wait,” she says.

  “Wait for what?” Sky says, still showing them clenched teeth. “Do it, dead god fuck you.”

  “You’d better not,” Ursala said. And there was something in her voice that give them pause, just for a second. So Sky come in to do it herself. She stood over Ursala, and she set the point of that spear between Ursala’s breasts. She didn’t speak no threat. She didn’t need to. I could see she was deciding if she needed to bring the both of us back, or if it was just me, the altar boy and the betrayer of Senlas’s trust, that was the issue.

  “I’ve got an offer to put to you,” Ursala said.

  Sky laughed. “Oh,” she says. “An offer, is it? Well. Let’s hear it then.” And she pressed a mite harder with that spear point.

  “Turn around right now and go back to your cave. We won’t hurt you. We won’t come after you. We’ll call this a draw and be on our way.”

  “I knowed it would be funny,” Sky said. She drawed the spear back, the muscles bunching in her arm.

  I seen it coming, and I was moving, aiming to run full tilt into her arm and make her miss. But she was quicker. She drove the spear deep into Ursala’s chest, and I bounced off her right after, like I was bouncing off a wall.

  Sky pulled her spear free, and Ursala sunk down on her knees. Her lips was moving, but there wasn’t hardly no sound coming out of her mouth. Sky leaned in close to hear.

  “War…” Ursala whispered. “War…”

  The words come out with a great, hurtful effort, and a spray of bright blood that spattered on the front of Sky’s shirt. “Warned you.”

  Sky jumped into the air. Not high, but fast. She jumped into the air and spun in a circle as she jumped.

  The sounds of the shots come after, and the quivering of Sky’s body as the bolts bit into her seemed to come after too, though that doesn’t make no sense. She was flying and falling both, turning in the air like a Summer-dancer. And then she was down, with blood spreading out from her body and her eyes open on nothing.

  The other shunned men made up their minds one of two ways. Some of them run on us with their own spears raised up. They was taken first, and it was done most careful in the order that they come on us, the closest first. There was one bolt for each man or woman, hitting them high up in the body where the heart is wont to be found, killing them before they knowed they was attacked.

  The others run the opposite way, trying to get back up onto that rock wall and maybe take some cover there. But there wasn’t no cover to be had. They was shot in the back, one by one, and fell down onto the tracks, and lay there not moving.

  The awfulness was over in about the space of ten breaths, though I don’t believe I was breathing much right then.

  The drudge come down the wall on the opposite side slowly, anchoring one pair of legs before it moved the other, as sure-footed as a goat would be on that sheer face. The gun on its back spun and stopped, rose up and fell back again like it was looking in all directions for enemies it might of missed. But there wasn’t none.

  When it was on level ground, it padded across to Ursala and settled itself down, the legs seeming to get shorter by an inch or so as it planted them firm in the ground. I cringed away from it, too terrified even to think. I believe I would of fell to my knees and begged for my life, only I knowed the drudge was tech and would only answer to its user.

  Ursala grabbed a hold of my leg. I looked down and seen she was trying to speak again, so I bent to listen. There was dead people all around us, and the sound of the bolts was ringing still in my ears. I was scared I might never stop hearing it.

  “Open him up,” Ursala said. More blood come out of her mouth, and there was bubbles under the words. “The side. There’s… a release. There.”

  She pointed. The thing she called a release was like the little buttons on the DreamSleeve. I pressed on it and the side of the drudge fell open. The dagnostic filled most of the space inside. It was dark at first, but then Ursala touched her fingers to it, and lights gun to flicker all over it. The computer I seen her using tha
t first time I come into her tent was in there too, set into the side of the dagnostic like a window.

  Ursala said a word to the mote controller, so low I couldn’t hear it. Some wires come snaking out of the dagnostic and hung there in the air. They was shining silver, and they was rounded at the end like beads or teardrops.

  “Hook me up,” Ursala said.

  Well, I didn’t have no idea at all how to do that, but she told me what was needful and I done it as best I could. I had got to tear away her shirt, first off, and attach some of them wires to her chest both around the wound and under it. Another one went to the side of her head, and the last one to her throat.

  I guess the drudge was taking a good look at her through them wires. By and by it put out two tubes. Ursala said for me to give them to her, which I done. She fed one into the wound and stuck the other on her arm, where it kind of dug in and made itself at home. Then there was a thing like a little bottle with a needle on the end of it, that somehow was just there on a little ledge inside the drudge that seemed to come out of nowhere. Ursala stuck the needle in her arm and touched her thumb to the end of the bottle. It emptied itself into her.

  There was more things too, but since I didn’t know what they was for I wasn’t watching close. Sometimes I was looking up at the walls on both sides to see if anyone else was coming after us. Other times I was looking at the bodies on the ground, especially Sky’s. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t make my eyes stay away from them any more than I could stop smelling the blood and shit smells that was in the air. Flies was coming in great numbers now, drawed by them smells, and settling on the bodies.

  We stayed there for what must of been half a turn of the glass or more while Ursala fixed herself. I seen her empty some blood into herself through the tube that was in her arm, and some other stuff went into her chest that sealed up the hole in her, kind of. When she was done, it looked like she had got some new skin where the wound had been, that was a different pink than the rest of her and somewhat shiny.

  She got me to bare my leg then, and took care of that too. She done it with another one of them needles that she pushed into me at the back of my knee. I had got to look away, for looking at it made me want to be sick. I gun to get a little feeling back right away though, and more by and by. Some of the feeling was pain, but it was not so bad that I couldn’t bear it.

  “Okay,” Ursala says at last. “I think we should go now.”

  “Did you know?” I asked her.

  “That the drudge was coming? No, Koli. Not for certain.” She tugged down her sleeve to show me the mote controller, which I had clean forgot about. “There’s a tracker in this that has a five-mile range. But I couldn’t be certain these people had left the drudge intact, or that it would be in a good position to read the signal. Obviously it couldn’t track me when I was underground. If it had been on the wrong side of the mountain, it might not have sensed me at all. Or it might have been too far away to do any good. We got lucky. Frankly, I think we were overdue.”

  She lifted up her hand for me to take, and I helped her up. Her face was pale and she was not so steady on her feet. I said maybe she should ride up on the drudge, and she said she had been knowed to do that sometimes, but right then she wanted the gun on the drudge’s back to have as much travel as possible. “It won’t do any good if we’re ambushed and all it can see is my arse.”

  I never heard Ursala say arse before. It struck me funny and would of made me laugh if we was not still surrounded by the bodies of them the drudge had killed. And if I didn’t have that memory in my mind of the people jumping into the train after we set light to it.

  I done two last things before we went. One was to tie the DreamSleeve into its sling again, but this time on the outside of my shirt. I wanted it to start getting charged up just as soon as could be. The other was to kneel down at Sky’s side and take the big curved blade she weared there, sheath and all. I thought of taking a spear too, but I never yet could hit my mark with one of those.

  “We’re all right, Koli,” Ursala said as we set out – so, so slowly – on our way. “We’re going to be fine.”

  The drudge’s gun spun round and dipped and rose and spun some more.

  Flies buzzed behind us, calling each to other. Saying hey, come to the feast.

  52

  We did not know where we was at first.

  The open space in front of us was just some more of the mountain, sloping down towards a river that looked like it might be too deep to cross. I didn’t think it was the Calder, for we was going south and Calder was surely at our backs.

  The sky was full of scudding clouds with the sun coming and going between them, but the slope was stony scree and there was no trees rooted in it, only weeds and scrub and gorse bushes that might scratch but would offer us no other harm. We limped down to the water’s edge, slipping and sliding from time to time on the loose stones.

  The river was in spate, but when we come to it we could see that it was shallower than it looked. We held to the drudge’s sides as we waded through, and its weight kept us from tripping and being swept away. It was hard going still. The water was so cold it was like knives stabbing into us. I had got to hold one hand up over my head the whole time to keep the DreamSleeve from getting wet – for Monono had told me long before that water would void her warranty, and that was a thing I did not mean to test. I remember thinking the water would at least wash the smell of piss out of my clothes, and being not much consoled.

  We come up on the other side at last, shivering and exhausted, and Ursala suggested we stop and rest for a while. There was a bank of sand and mud and pebbles that was about twenty paces wide. The forest took up again after that, but the nearest trees was not close enough to get to us. I said a rest sounded good to me, only we needed some shelter from the wind and some wood to make a fire. I did not relish the idea of venturing in among the trees to collect twigs, but there might be driftwood enough along the bank to get us started.

  “Oh, we can make shift as we are,” Ursala said. “Drudge, give us basecamp.”

  The drudge stopped walking. Its four legs went straight, and braces come down out of its body to lock into them and hold them steady.

  The side of it opened up just like before. Only it was the other side and instead of the dagnostic I seen the greens and browns of Ursala’s tent. It spilled out from the drudge’s side, but not like it was falling. It was more like it was building itself right in front of us without us even touching it. There was things that held it on a right line as it unfolded, the way your bones is wont to do inside your arms and your legs, and whatever they was, they sort of pushed the tent into the shape it was supposed to have. I could maybe of finished a count from one to ten, and there it was.

  “Go on inside,” Ursala said. “I’ll get the heater and see if there’s anything to eat.”

  I crawled inside the tent and lay myself down on the ground. I was glad to rest, though I was soaking wet and freezing. Then Ursala come and went a few times. The first time, she brung the thing I seen before in her tent that I said was like three burning sticks on a fire. Only now they was just three bars of silver, near as thin as wires. She set it down and the bars gun to glow until they was so hot you couldn’t touch your finger to them.

  The second time, she brung a kind of a cloak or blanket made of soft cloth that was slippery when you touched it and was puffed up somewhat like a pillow.

  The third time, she brung the jug that heated itself up without no stove. She must of fetched some water from the river, for it was full when she set it down. She busied herself with the walls of the tent a while, and they gun to glow like they did the first time I seen them back in Mythen Rood. “Field’s up,” Ursala said. “We’re safe now.”

  There come a sound like a molesnake’s hiss that made me jump. I looked down and seen it was the jug. The water in there was already boiling. Ursala used some of it to clean out the wound on her face, which did not look so bad once the blood and
crust was washed away. The eye was not altogether gone. It might heal with time, at least some of the way.

  The rest of the water she poured into two tin cups, adding mint leaves to make a tea. She had got some dried meat too that we dipped into the tea to soften it before we et it. I felt a lot better after that.

  “Where did all this stuff come from?” I asked her. For it seemed like it had got to be magic.

  From the packs on the drudge’s back, Ursala said, and also from inside the store spaces in the drudge itself. “The first drudges were made for soldiers to use when they were in battle. They could carry a lot of the soldiers’ kit for them, and also act as mobile barricades if the soldiers got into a fight.”

  I never heard the word ‘soldier’ before, but I guessed from what Ursala said that they was people like the ones in our red tallies, that was raised up in past times to defend the village when reavers come against it. Even without the gun, a drudge would of been a marvellous thing for them to have.

  It was a boon to us one other way right then, for Ursala told it to keep watch while we slept. Anyone who come by that way and looked like they might be of bad intent would wish they had gone another road. She said nobody could get into the tent anyway when the field was up, but this way they couldn’t mount an ambush neither. The drudge would see them from a great way off.

  The thing that was like a blanket was also somewhat like a sack. We crawled inside it and slept holding tight onto each other for the warmth. I didn’t sleep deep though, and I waked a number of times – I can’t say how many – thinking I was back in the cave, behind the grating or struggling against the hand people as they grabbed hold of me to take me out and put me on the fire.

  “Koli,” Ursala mumbled after one of these times, “if you can’t keep still I’m going to kick you out of the sleeping bag.”

  I said I was sorry, then dozed off and done the same thing again. After that, I slept outside the blanket sack, but the fire-box had made the inside of the tent so warm I was not much less comfortable. It was only the nightmares that kept on breaking into my sleep, waking me ever and again with fresh starts and alarms.