by Maurice Gee
‘Vosper,’ Ben said. ‘I want to see him.’
‘You will,’ Hana said. She was sick with dread. Blossom and Hubert, in their forest clothes, looked weak and puny. She wondered if they still heard the voice. She could not. And she knew with a certainty that pierced her like a knife, that the Limping Man heard a voice too – the other one.
‘Ben, he’ll kill them.’
‘No he won’t. Look at the ships, Hana. They did that.’
The vessel at the head of the line was sinking stern first. It went down slowly, with water swelling from its hold as though from a spring. At the end of the line the fourth one was turning on its side. Explosions of steam shot out as the water reached the seat of the fire. The two in the centre were hooded in red flames and brown smoke.
The ships were destroyed, the Dweller villages were safe, Stone Creek was safe. But Hana knew it was only a little part. It was like kicking a snapping dog out of the way. The multitude of tents on the plains remained, the armies remained. And the Limping Man, who held their ten thousand minds cupped in his hands, was here on the wharf. He was unchanged.
The crier raised his trumpet and blew another blast. It rasped like a saw. Hana put her hands over her ears, but Blossom and Hubert did not seem to hear. They were like two plants growing side by side and intertwining. The crier, the attendants, the bearers were people. They seemed to creep and hop and strut and not feel the air surrounding them. They’re underground people, Hana thought. He’s buried them.
The bearers set the litter down and stepped away. The attendants drew the curtains aside. The crier was ready, saluting with his sword. He raised his face to the sky and bellowed, ‘See the Man. Worship him.’ The attendants knelt, while the bearers lay face down on the wharf.
Blossom and Hubert smiled. Across the water, Hana felt their challenge rather than saw it. It was like the morning light rising into the dark. It was like the first glow of the sun. But she felt a dreadful hollowness inside. The dark always swallowed the light. Night came in the end, it always came.
‘Morning too,’ she whispered. ‘Morning comes.’
‘What?’ Ben said.
She could not say what she meant, she could only watch. The Limping Man’s stick prodded out of the litter. He followed, stepping down in his painful way. Red robes, yellow flames, tall head-dress: he was the same. She could not see his face through the smoke but had an impression of whiteness and pinkness, of a weak-eyed face, of a trembling body inside the garish robes. It was a lie. She had seen in People’s Square how strong he was. Her own body trembled with fear.
He put his weight on his stick. He limped past the prostrate bearers and the kneeling attendants. The crier rose to his feet. He seemed the powerful one, yet he writhed to a shorter stature as he came to the Limping Man’s side. The Limping Man whispered. The crier listened. Along the wharf, a ship’s length away, Blossom and Hubert waited.
The crier raised himself to his full height. He lifted his sword over his head.
‘Listen,’ he cried. His voice was like a cracking whip. It seemed he could wrap it around Blossom and Hubert and haul them in. ‘Listen to the voice of the Limping Man. Bow down to the Limping Man. Worship him.’
Blossom and Hubert shook their heads slightly, as though some night creature had brushed by and left its odour. They ignored the crier. They spoke silently to the Limping Man. Hana and Ben saw him start and lean convulsively on his stick. The twins’ voice was easy. Ben and Hana heard it too, touching their minds.
There is no worship of people, Blossom and Hubert said.
The crier shrank again to hear the Limping Man’s instructions. Then, at his full height, he bellowed, ‘These vermin of the forests invade our city. Listen all, listen my subjects, you in the streets, come forth and listen. They have sunk my ships. It does not matter. I will build better ones. And I will punish these creatures that slink from the forests. See the man. I will drown him. See the woman. She will burn.’
‘Who’s he talking to?’ Hana whispered.
‘Look,’ Ben said.
The ruined streets beyond the wharves were like caves in a cliff face. Slowly, in ones and twos, people began to creep out. They stopped, they fell back, they started again, as Hubert and Blossom on one side and the Limping Man on the other, fought for control of them. It was, Hana felt, like the sun rising, while the night, shaped like a hand, wrapped its fingers round it and tried to crush its light. Blossom and Hubert said: He is nothing. Free yourselves. The people they had sent away, the wharfmen and cartmen and soldiers, crept out: painful steps, pushing against a huge weight. They crept out.
Come, my people, worship me, said the Limping Man.
‘He’s winning,’ Hana said.
‘He’s stronger,’ Ben said, sliding his knife in and out of its sheath.
The men from the shadows came steadily, like a tide. They rolled across the empty wharf, brown and black and red and white, with their eyes burning and teeth flashing. The bowmen picked up their weapons. The cartmen and sailors fumbled in their belts and drew their knives. Blossom and Hubert fought. They tightened their unity, gripped each other hard, with minds that had learned to jump over mountains and seas and throw knowledge back and forth like balls in a game – and it was not enough. They could not hold the creeping tide. All their strength went into the effort. They had none for the Limping Man.
He struck. There was nothing to see, but Hana was aware of a shadow, a force. It jumped over the heads of the advancing men and landed on Blossom and Hubert like a toad, flinging them apart, throwing them backwards. Their agonised mouths howled at the sky. Then there was nothing to see except their bodies crumpled on the wharf.
Ben gave a cry of anguish. Hana doubled up with pain.
The men surged, with weapons raised and mouths jabbering. They looked as if they meant to tear Blossom and Hubert with their teeth. Shriller than their noise came a piping cry: ‘Stop.’ It was the Limping Man speaking with his own voice. The crier followed with a monstrous bellow: ‘Stop.’ The men stood frozen over Blossom and Hubert, with knives raised and teeth bared.
The crier stooped. The Limping Man whispered.
‘Do you think you can act for yourselves?’ the crier bellowed. ‘Have I told you to slay the vermin? Leave them. They are mine. The woman will burn. The man will drown. And you who forget me and act for yourselves, you will worship me. Now. Down on your knees to the Limping Man.’
The crowd obeyed, some weeping, others shouting their love.
‘That is what I require from you. Obedience. Is there a soldier who will die for me?’
Men sprang to their feet and ran forward. The crier put his hand on one and motioned the others back. The Limping Man raised his stick and beckoned. He whispered to the chosen man, who knelt and placed his forehead on the ground. Then he sprang up – a young man, full of strength – ran to the nearest ship and jumped with a cry into the burning hold.
A single exhalation, a unified breath of satisfaction: no other sound on the wharf until the crier, in a lowered voice, said, ‘That is the love I require.’
The Limping Man turned away. He stepped into the litter painfully, his head stooping, his red and yellow robes curling round his flanks. He drew in his stick. The attendants stepped forward to pull the curtains closed. His pale hand stopped them as the crier knelt. One of the burning ships broke in half. Its bow and stern rose in the air, shedding water. The men around Blossom and Hubert swayed and moaned. Several ran at the twins with bared knives.
‘Hold,’ the crier bellowed. ‘They belong to me, to the Limping Man. You will have your revenge in People’s Square. Go to your homes now. Worship me and I will give you all you desire. I will build these ships again. You will rule the seas. My armies will march. The plains, the forests, the mountains will be yours if you obey me. Go now. Assemble in two days’ time in People’s Square and you will see the man drown and the woman burn. Fetch a cart for them – you and you. The rest, go to your homes while my patienc
e lasts.’
The soldiers drifted away in no order. The workers melted into the dark streets. The cartmen took their horses and plodded along the wharf, except for one and his helper, who stopped beside the bodies of Blossom and Hubert. They took them by the arms and legs and flung them in the cart.
The attendants closed the litter curtains. With the crier marching in front, blowing trumpet blasts, the attendants prancing and the bearers in step, the Limping Man left the wharf. His red litter withdrew like a tongue into a mouth. The cart followed, with Blossom and Hubert motionless in the tray.
Beside the wharf the last of the burning ships rolled on its side.
NINE
Hana and Ben slept curled up in opposite corners of the room. Grief was like a drug, shutting them down.
When Ben woke he climbed down the broken wall for shellfish. Hana opened her eyes to find him eating. He pushed mussels towards her with his foot.
‘I never thought they’d beat him,’ he said.
‘Nor did I,’ Hana whispered.
‘He’s too strong. So . . .’ He cut a mussel hinge and flicked the shell open. ‘That’s the only way to deal with Vosper.’
‘Ben, you’ll never get close.’
He swallowed the mussel. ‘I can try. What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. But Queenie would have told us –’ ‘Queenie’s dead.’
‘So will you be if you try to fight him. What we’ve got to do is find out.’
They argued. Ben was angry and aggressive and Hana stubborn. Although he was afraid, he trusted himself. If he could get close to the Limping Man and make one throw . . . Hana did not believe he would ever get close, and if he did, by some piece of luck, the man had defences that would freeze Ben’s arm. Hers was the only way that had a chance. She wanted to watch him. She wanted to find the secret Queenie knew. What then? Then Ben could throw his knife through the hole she made.
They waited for dark. Across the water the half-sunken ships steamed and flickered. Now and then people came out of the streets to watch but soon drifted away. A haze of smoke lay over the harbour. The sun turned red as it sank towards the horizon. Somehow it reminded Hana of Lo – its quietness, its sinking. She did not believe any help would come from Lo. When Ben thought of him he brooded on what he felt was his father’s failure to trust him. He was also troubled by the fear that Lo had deserted, Lo had gone back to the people.
Dark came quickly. It was too dangerous to go into the streets of Port. They drank the last of their water and tied the empty bottles round their necks. Belting on their knives, they swam quietly to the sea wall and moved along its seaward side. One thing they agreed on, the Limping Man was in his palace. They would go there.
The wall ended. They climbed among the rocks below the cliffs. A thin moon was rising over the mountains. They found the cave they had slept in and filled their water bottles and went on. It was past midnight when they reached the beach. A steep hill, part cliff, rose on their right. That, guarded or not, was their way. They ‘spoke’ clumsily, bouncing and skidding in each other’s heads.
No guards.
No.
The moon threw a pale light, barely enough for them to make out the shapes of trees. They darted from one to the next.
Cliffs.
Can you do it?
She meant, can you climb with only one hand?
He hissed at her angrily. And she was surprised at how nimbly he climbed. By now she should have known what he could do. He used his shortened arm as a lever. He swung his legs sideways and hooked his toes into cracks in the rock wall.
There was a guard at the top. His mind was sleepy. He yawned. He stopped to piss against a rock. The splashing hid the rustle of their feet as they darted into the trees. Again they used their minds, feeling ahead. The gift was new to them, they used it together, helping each other as they moved through scrub along the clifftop. Close to the edge, a squat shape rose in the dark: a building, unguarded.
Ben, it’s the place Danatok told me about. Where the Limping Man feeds his toads.
Empty now.
The door was half open, creaking in the breeze that stirred the trees. They peered inside. In the back wall, over the cliff, was the window where Danatok had spied. Moonlight, pale as water, slanted in the door, showing empty tanks and cages.
He doesn’t use it any more.
Guard coming, Ben said.
They darted inside. Ben slid out his knife.
The man tramped along one side of the building, then the other. He stood at the edge of the cliff. They heard him rattling shell nuts in his pocket and cracking them. They heard him chewing. He came back, stopped at the door and banged it with the heel of his spear.
‘Man, help me prosper,’ he muttered, then trudged away.
Ben sheathed his knife. They waited a moment, then slipped into the trees.
‘You can tell Vosper grew up in a swamp,’ Ben whispered.
‘Keeping toads.’
Quiet, Ben. Speak, don’t talk, Hana said.
They crept from tree to tree. Soon they came to a stone smothered in scrub, with parts rising above the foliage. It was a moment before they understood: this was the hand, carved from marble in the days when Company had ruled. The horizontal stone, lying over the bushes, was a finger pointing west to the land where Company began – where the armies that conquered Belong and the ships that carried them had gathered. The raised stone, shaped like a tree stump, was a thumb. A few paces further on, through wiry scrub, was the place where Hari and Pearl had taken each other by the hand and jumped into the sea. Ottmar’s mansion had stood further back, set in a park. In a later time, Xantee had fought the mother gool deep in a basement under the ruins. And somewhere close, the Limping Man had built his palace. Ben climbed to the base of the thumb, but saw only scrub stretching away. Hana stepped on to the broken tip of the finger, where it lay half buried in low bushes. She turned her head from the edge of the cliff and the dizzy fall into the sea. The moon over the mountains, the water shining with its borrowed light, seemed to make another kind of darkness. Deep pits of shadow lay everywhere. A line of black trees rose beyond the scrub. The palace must be on the other side.
They climbed down silently. Hana followed Ben as he wriggled through the scrub. He was as slippery as a snake. She tried to copy him, using her own skills of moving through broken streets and climbing over rubble without stirring a stone.
Slower, Ben.
They passed through the jagged trees. The ground was damp on the other side. Head-high ferns grew in place of the scrub. They came across slabs of marble in the shape of shells: a ruined fountain, dry inside.
Ben stopped.
Lawn, he said.
Hana did not know what a lawn was. But she knew the thing rising beyond the flattened grass: unlit, low – the Limping Man’s palace.
Guard, Ben said.
They lay still. The man slouched along the back of the building. He reached the corner and waited until a second man appeared behind him. They saluted each other, their leather jerkins gleaming in the moonlight. Then the first man went from sight while the other tramped in his place along the rear side.
They go round and round. There’ll be four, Ben said.
There’s no windows or doors, Hana said.
There’s a door somewhere, unless he can fly.
They backed away from the fountain and went along the line of trees until it curved towards the sea. Scrub, thicker than before, covered everything. Ben had to cut branches and push them aside as he crawled. They came across the ruins of a mansion – perhaps, Hana thought, House Bowles where Pearl had grown up with Tealeaf as her maid. That story, told by Mam, had been hard to imagine. Now, faced with crumbling stone and planks of timber curled about with scrub, it was easier. Pearl had been real. She had faced dangers just as great as she and Ben were facing. With Hari, she had jumped off the cliff into the sea. So she, Hana, with Ben, could fight the Limping Man. But her confidence crumbl
ed then, like the rotten wood under her fingers. What Pearl and Hari had done was in the past. For her and Ben the Limping Man lay ahead.
They crawled wide of the ruins, fearing snakes more than the guards. The scrub thinned out, barely covering them. The ground grew rough with stones, which Hana recognised as broken paving. A road had run here in Ottmar’s time.
They followed it, keeping their cover. In a moment they heard feet and the tapping of a stick.
Wait, Ben said. He crept away.
She followed him. They were too close now for her to be left behind.
The footsteps were a soldier’s as he walked on a path through the scrub. He used his spear as a walking stick as he went along. Where the path curved he met another soldier and started back.
Same thing, Ben said. They don’t turn until they see each other. This path must go down to the city.
They withdrew silently and worked their way towards the cliffs. In a moment the palace came in sight again. It was two storeys high, with a hump on its back. Palace: the word had meant, to Ben, a building rising high, with turrets and towers and statues carved in stone. This was a box. There were no windows. A narrow door, placed midway in the front wall, was flanked with torches burning in brackets. That was all. The moonlight showed walls that seemed to be red, with yellow flames eating them. The Limping Man came from the swamp but he liked fire.
Further off stood a barracks for the guards. Several small buildings rose where the lawn met the scrub.
Ben and Hana watched the guards trudge around the palace. They stopped at every corner, where each made two lazy salutes, one to the man ahead and one behind, before going on.