The Inferior

by Peadar O'Guilin

  ‘He can barely sit up!’ said Wallbreaker. He too looked very worried, and that was when Stopmouth knew to be afraid.

  ‘He has to stand,’ Mother continued, ‘or Speareye said they could take him!’ Stopmouth saw that her hair had gone uncombed and her hands shook.

  A voice called into the house from beyond the hide curtain that blocked off the main entrance.

  ‘Hello in there?’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Mother.

  ‘We can’t wait more than a few heartbeats,’ said the voice. It sounded vaguely familiar. ‘We need three more volunteers before nightfall.’

  Mother and Wallbreaker didn’t hesitate. They pulled Stopmouth up and supported him between them. Indrani shouted something at them and tried to make them put him back. But when three hunters pushed into the room, she seemed to understand and stepped forward to block their way.

  ‘He’s standing,’ said Mother to the hunters. ‘Now go away!’

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ said one of the men. Stopmouth recognized him as Brighttooth’s father, Lowsquat. He was red in the face and sweating. ‘The boy has to stand by himself. For ten heartbeats like the chief says. Or else he’s not healing.’

  Stopmouth’s family held him up, but already he needed to sit. The room seemed to spin and what little lay in his stomach wanted to come up again.

  ‘You hear that, son?’ whispered Mother. ‘You stand for ten heartbeats, that’s all.’

  She didn’t know what she was asking. Far easier to lie down. If he volunteered, they’d let him rest. They’d heap praise and honour on his family, whose futile hope could finally end. He could hear that hope now in his mother’s voice. Worse, he felt it in himself: the shameful urge to live, even at a cost to others.

  ‘I’m going to let go now,’ said Mother, ‘and you’re going to stand for ten heartbeats.’ Her voice was so determined, he wished he didn’t have to let her down. She and Wallbreaker pulled away from him simultaneously.

  For perhaps two heartbeats he didn’t even realize they’d gone. The strips of metal tied to his legs seemed to support him all by themselves. But then the pain began: like rocks and knives and sharp beaks under his skin. A fire burned in his legs, in his marrow. He screamed and screamed again, but by the fourth heartbeat he was still on his feet. He heard voices counting. Poor Mother! He swayed, and when he righted himself, the pain doubled, first in one leg and then in the other. He had to end it. He had to fall. He felt as if his bones had come apart and were once more poking through his skin.

  And then his sweaty face was in Indrani’s lap, her eyes the only point of stillness in a spinning room.

  ‘That wasn’t ten heartbeats!’ said Lowsquat.

  ‘We counted them together,’ said Wallbreaker, reaching for a knife. ‘That was ten. Now get out!’

  Lowsquat was hopping in rage. His fellow hunters placed calming hands on his scarred shoulders. But he wouldn’t be still. ‘We all know there’s a few people in this house who should be volunteering. You hear me, Stopmouth?’ There was a catch in his voice. ‘If you were a man, you’d know there was only one right thing to do. You’d not let them have my wife instead of you. You hear me, coward?’

  ‘I told you to get out,’ said Wallbreaker through gritted teeth.

  ‘I’m going,’ said Lowsquat. ‘I’m going to get Speareye. Let him judge if Stopmouth can stand for ten heartbeats!’

  Lowsquat left, and Mother stood to follow him. ‘I’d better be there when he tries to tell the chief his lies. Speareye knows my word is good.’ She knelt next to Stopmouth and kissed him on the forehead.

  ‘Live,’ she told him. ‘Your Tally is far from full.’

  ‘If they c-come b-back,’ said Stopmouth, ‘I w-will volunteer.’ The thought didn’t seem half so terrible to him as the idea of standing again. The Clawfolk were said to kill their volunteers quickly and painlessly.

  Wallbreaker brought food for them as they waited.

  ‘Look,’ he said, pointing at Indrani to distract his brother. ‘See how she eats? She closes her eyes and chews only as much as she has to. When I first married her, she wouldn’t swallow anything. She sat miserably in that corner and I was sure she’d die and I’d be disgraced for not making her volunteer first.’

  Stopmouth saw several new tattoos on Wallbreaker’s skin. He wondered if it meant his brother had rediscovered his courage.

  ‘One day this strange new wife of mine lay on the floor, so weakened we thought that was the end of her.’ Wallbreaker laughed. ‘Mossheart was already celebrating! But Mother held a skull of soup to her lips and–amazingly!–she began to drink. She seemed to wake up then and saw that she was eating. She cried, if you can believe it! But she guzzled down the soup all the same.’

  Stopmouth’s mind drifted, thinking of this strange girl who hated to eat. He wished he’d had more of a chance to get to know her. But soon Speareye would come and he, Stopmouth, would never last another ten heartbeats on his feet. Better to volunteer at once to honour the family.

  When he woke, night had fallen and Mother still hadn’t returned. Indrani pulled the hides up to his chin.

  ‘Indrani,’ he said. She smiled with teeth so straight he thought they’d been carved. He pulled one hand out from under the coverlet and weakly tapped himself on the chest. ‘Stopmouth,’ he said.

  ‘Shtop-Mou.’

  She spoke like a baby with its first words. Perhaps in her strange way she was a child still and, like a child, would someday learn proper speech.

  A day passed and Speareye still hadn’t come for him. Mother hadn’t returned either. To keep from thinking about that, Stopmouth tried to teach Indrani some proper talk. She seemed glad of the distraction, although she kept her distance. In spite of her best efforts–and she was trying hard–he spent the best part of a day teaching her no more than a dozen words: hides, house, hands, legs, metal, urine…

  Rockface came to visit with one of his children, a boy three thousand days old or less.

  ‘This is Littleknife,’ said Rockface, his manner subdued. The boy began to poke about, staring openly at Indrani. He had a small spear that he dragged around the room after him. Presumably his father had also crafted him a dagger which the Tribe had used to name him. He even wore a loincloth, unlike other children the same age. A proper little hunter.

  ‘I’m glad you lived, Stopmouth. I thought we’d be losing you for sure. But then I heard–I heard…’

  ‘R-R-Rockface, I—’

  But Rockface had come to speak his piece and it all came out in a rush: ‘Everyone’s proud of your mother, Stopmouth, very proud. The chief asked for volunteers to help us get Home and…Well, many a woman her age would have had to be dragged. Flamehair still had a thousand days in her or I’m no judge.’

  It was formula. Just formula. The one you used with the relatives of anybody whose volunteering hadn’t been forced. But Stopmouth could see that Rockface meant every bit of it. The big man turned as he was leaving. ‘We will hunt again, Stopmouth. I thank your mother for giving you back to us.’

  He left before his words had fully sunk in.

  6.

  CANDIDATES

  ‘Out!’ said Indrani.

  A few days earlier she’d removed the tips of two spears and had wrapped hide around the top of the shafts. She’d taught him how to stumble about the house using them for support so that Rockface and even Wallbreaker laughed at the sight of him and his ‘wooden legs’. Stopmouth couldn’t say why, but his brother had grown increasingly bitter of late and it came as a great relief to see him smile.

  But now Indrani was keen to get Stopmouth using the crutches beyond the confines of the house.

  She nudged him towards the street. Her hair had grown since they’d first met, taking away some of her strangeness. And she’d picked up one of Mother’s old loincloths to wear. But she still couldn’t hide the darkness of her skin or the unnatural brightness of her teeth.

  ‘Out, you!’ she cried when he pret
ended reluctance. By the time they’d crossed the threshold they were both giggling like children. Stopmouth hadn’t seen the Roof properly since his injury and the blue glare left him turning away and blinking spots from his eyes. When they finally cleared, the first thing he noticed was a Globe, drifting all by itself against the vastness of the Roof. No more battles in the sky, he thought. And grinned. No more Indranis either!

  She was having a hard time with life on the surface. She tended to drift into periods of blackness, moaning things like ‘Nothing in my head! All gone!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he’d asked her once, but she didn’t have enough Human words to answer so maybe that was what she meant.

  ‘You’ll learn,’ he’d said. ‘You’ll speak as well as m-me in no t-time at all!’

  Often he heard her up on the roof of the house, shouting streams of gibberish in the direction of passing Globes. He’d hear threats in her voice and anger turning to a desperate pleading that tore at his heart.

  And yet these episodes never took her for long. Indrani had a sense of mischief and fun that Mother would have loved to see. She delighted in hiding Stopmouth’s crutches and provoking him to laughter by almost any means possible. She was a better friend than any he’d had before, for unlike Wallbreaker she spent all her time with him. Even better, he rarely stuttered in her presence: she was the only person he’d ever met who spoke worse than he did.

  It was a wonderful feeling and he hoped that when she finally accepted her fate and moved into Wallbreaker’s house, he could visit her every day. But not yet. He didn’t want to lose her yet.

  She followed him into the light and threw pebbles at him as he tried to stay upright and hobble a house-length in each direction. He wished the chief were here to see him, but the only onlookers were curious Flyers on nearby buildings and a couple of older women who walked past quickly, frowning in disapproval.

  ‘More walk!’ she cried. ‘More!’

  He gasped, ‘Enough!’

  Indrani took pity on him and helped him back to his bed of hides and pounded moss.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘m-my turn to torture you.’ He picked up a needle. ‘What’s the w-word for this?’

  He laughed when she rolled her eyes Roofwards and groaned.

  Fifteen days later Stopmouth finally got a chance to earn his keep again. Like most of the recovering injured, he worked for the Tribe by taking turns in the watch towers, receiving food as payment. He preferred to take the night watches, for the streets seethed with tension and fear these days, while the hunting seemed poorer than ever.

  The older man he shared his watch with–Bridgecrosser–flexed his hand right under Stopmouth’s nose. ‘See this?’ His voice was gruff, as if he constantly needed to hawk and spit. ‘I told you it was getting better. Another week babysitting you and I’ll be back hunting.’

  Stopmouth smiled in the fading light of the Roof. Bridgecrosser’s hunting exploits had never gained him more than sneers in the past. But Stopmouth enjoyed the older man’s company well enough. Night was falling and only the grid of tracklights–barely enough to see by–remained to help them in their watch. Below stretched the no-man’s-land that had once led to Hairbeast territory. It lay clear of saplings to the front as far as the Wetlane, but in some areas further down, stands of trees had been allowed to cross the water as they did on the Bloodskin side.

  ‘Why do you think the Hairbeasts were never replaced?’ asked Bridgecrosser. ‘My dad used to talk about the time they ate the last of the Semplit. Took no more than a couple of days for the Flim to turn up. There was a big, bright flash–he said you could see it from these here towers–and then…Ha! Thousands of Flim with no idea where they were! We ate well in those days, Stopmouth. Took those stupid beasts five tens to learn they had to eat us to live.’

  Something on the ground below flickered at the corner of Stopmouth’s vision. Had some creature moved in the trees? He interrupted Bridgecrosser with a touch on the elbow. ‘W-what,’ he said, ‘w-w-was…?’ He reached reflexively for the Clawfolk-shell horn, but didn’t blow the alarm. Humans rarely hunted at night, and never in Hairbeast-Ways–not since the alliance of Armourbacks and Hoppers had driven them out. At the same time, enemy raids into human territory had grown more frequent. Chief Speareye had ordered the roofs of more buildings to be manned overnight, but extra guards meant fewer hunters and less flesh to go round. So the chief had requested more volunteers. One day he’d visited Stopmouth to ‘see how he was recovering’. Luckily that was Stopmouth’s first day of walking without the crutches and Speareye hadn’t been able to force the issue.

  ‘It’s Flyers,’ said Bridgecrosser excitedly. He wasn’t even looking in the right place. ‘Wow, you see them? There must be tens of them! What are they doing here?’

  Flyers made excellent scavengers. Their colourful formations had hovered over Hairbeast for days after the destruction of its people, and Stopmouth dreaded to think what their arrival in Man-Ways might herald now. Something terrible was coming. He felt sure of it. His palms were suddenly clammy around the shell and he almost blew the alarm, but all he’d seen was the tiniest of movements amongst the trees and he needed to be certain.

  Bridgecrosser shared none of his concerns. He was still rambling on about the Flyers. His young companion wanted to shout at him to ignore them and look down instead, but nerves had turned his traitorous tongue to gristle in his mouth.

  Then he heard it: the tramp of feet. It wasn’t coming from outside the walls. It was coming from the very heart of the Ways.

  ‘Wow,’ said Bridgecrosser right at his ear. ‘I think a Flyer’s going to land on our tower!’

  Stopmouth heard shouts of alarm from guards on the far side of the road. Then a draught of cold air passed over his back and Bridgecrosser cried out. Stopmouth looked round to see the old hunter’s legs disappearing into the air, a Flyer’s claws piercing the man’s chest.

  The beast looked to be struggling under the weight. Stopmouth lunged for Bridgecrosser’s ankles and missed. The man was screaming, and other screams echoed from the tower opposite and from nearby streets. Bridgecrosser’s feet bumped once against the parapet and then the Flyer released him over the road, where he landed with a sickening impact.

  Stopmouth heard the beating of more wings overhead. He rolled away in time to see another Flyer swoop over the spot where he’d been lying, striking sparks from the roof with its claws. He pressed the shell trumpet to his lips and blew for all he was worth. Two other trumpet blasts echoed through the streets. The second was cut short mid-blow.

  Now he rose to his knees, and suddenly the trumpet shattered in his hands, struck by a flung spear. He looked up to see a Flyer perched on the wall, its flaky wings spread as if to offer an embrace, its huge black eyes staring into his. He felt as if he were disappearing into them, like a child burying itself in its mother’s lap.

  Distant shouting brought him back to himself. He plucked the Flyer’s spear from where it had fallen and his enemy fled at once. By now the muscles of his healing legs were trembling and sweat beaded every part of his skin. He looked over the parapet for the source of the screams and nearly fell back in horror at what he saw: a large party of Armourbacks was retreating past the base of the tower under a desultory hail of slingshot and spears. They were driving at least five entire human families before them–people he had known his whole life. He saw Brighttooth among them, and her two younger sisters.

  So far, less than ten hunters had arrived to confront the enemy. They hung back in confusion, knowing they were outnumbered.

  Stopmouth hefted a rock up onto the edge of the tower’s wall. Once he would have had little problem lifting it, but in his weakened state it nearly drove him to the ground. He balanced it on the edge and pushed. He didn’t pause to watch where it landed. It might be for the best, he thought, if he hit one of the prisoners by mistake. He moved for another rock, every muscle crying out for rest. A Flyer, perhaps the same one he’d chased away
earlier, swooped down and landed on the wall before him. Stopmouth grabbed the spear and was surprised the enemy didn’t retreat. Almost too late, he dropped to the roof. A line of fire seemed to open along his back as another of the beasts swooped in from behind.

  He clambered to his feet, but the Flyers had gone again. When he looked back over the parapet, he saw one Armourback lying crushed under his rock. The others had moved out of range.

  The number of hunters below had risen to twenty now, and Speareye had arrived to marshal them. ‘There are more men on the way, boys! We just need to catch them before they cross the Wetlane!’

  Stopmouth felt dizzy. Something was nagging at the back of his mind. Surely, he thought, the Armourbacks must have known they’d be seen and pursued. They must have known that the humans would be able to gather lots of hunters in a short space of time.

  ‘S-S-Speareye!’ he shouted. ‘Ammmmmb-bu-bush!’

  Speareye looked up, his face a mask of fury. ‘You think I’m stupid, boy? We won’t follow them anywhere we can’t see where we’re going.’ He led the hunters out. There were thirty of them now, double the number of Armourback attackers, who were already crossing the bridge. Stopmouth had never seen so many hunters charging together at one time. They screamed their fury, loosing slings and waving spears. The sight was glorious. It stirred his blood, even though he knew it must be a mistake.

  He saw the Armourbacks trying to get their prisoners to move faster. Two children fell into the Wetlane in the rush to get them across.

  But help was coming. The hunters closed half the distance between them and the enemy in a dozen heartbeats. Then Stopmouth saw shadows moving out of the trees on the human side of the Wetlane. Hoppers! Perhaps as many as two dozen of them. He shouted a warning at the top of his lungs.

  Too late. The hunters didn’t even look behind them. They threw themselves at the Armourbacks, crashing into the enemy line. These days many of them had spears like Stopmouth’s, and a number of beasts went down under the assault. But twenty heartbeats later, at twice the speed any human could run, the grey-furred Hoppers tore into Speareye’s followers from behind. Stopmouth shouted again and again, a wordless, useless alarm. Many other hunters had gathered below him, milling about. Some were crying. Others wanted to save their friends, but Wallbreaker walked among them, his strong voice calling them back from certain death.