by Steve Feasey
Behind the pile of animal pelts he spotted Dotty. She was attached to an ingenious device: a long pole with a hole running through the length of it, through which a rope had been passed. One end of the rope was a loop that could be passed over a creature’s head and pulled tight from the other end. In this way the creature could be led anywhere with no possibility of attacking the pole-bearer. The noose-pole was firmly staked into the ground now that the men were away, but it would be an easy matter for Rush to loosen that loop around Dotty’s neck and free her. If he did it now, they could use what daylight remained to put some distance between themselves and the mountain men. His heart beating faster in his chest, he made his mind up and started to creep towards the clearing. A voice from behind him barked, ‘Stop where you are and do not take another step.’ He froze.
‘Put your hands up, youngster. When you’ve done that, turn round real slow. Don’t get smart. That is, unless you want my brother here to put a bolt in your big friend’s head.’
Rush slowly lifted his hands, palms out. Turning, he was confronted by two of the hairiest men he’d ever seen, one of whom was aiming a crossbow straight at Brick. He hadn’t heard a sound as the pair had crept up on them. They moved like ghosts. As well as every visible inch of skin being covered in hair, they were draped in the skins and furs of assorted animals. Their hair and beards were plaited into long, dirty braids, at the end of which were small, bleached-white animal skulls. The one pointing the crossbow at Brick gave a little whistle, and two more hirsute men appeared from behind trees, both similarly armed. One had a splint on his leg and wore a necklace of animal paws. The similarity in the men’s faces left Rush in no doubt they were all from the same family.
The one who’d addressed Rush was missing a hand. In its place a vicious looking three-pronged fork, like a trident, had been bound to the scarred stump. He jabbed towards Rush with this crude implement. ‘Well, look at this pretty one, boys! Hell, he could almost pass for a city dweller.’ He took a sniff. ‘But you’re Mute all right. You smell of mutant.’ He paused as if waiting for Rush to disagree. ‘Care to tell me what the hell you two were doing creeping up on our camp?’
‘You’ve got something that belongs to us,’ Rush said, doing his best to sound brave as his eyes moved from the crossbow to the fork-hand and back again.
‘That so? And what would this “something” be?’
‘My rogwan.’
The man paused. ‘What the hell is a rogwan when it’s at home?’
‘The animal you have in the noose over there.’
‘That thing?’ Forkhand raised his eyebrows, then nodded at the nearest of his brothers. ‘There, now we know. It’s a rogwan.’
‘She’s mine. I don’t know what you’re doing with her, but if you’d give her back we’ll be on our way and –’
The man cut him off with a cruel laugh, looking round at the other three, all of whom joined in. ‘You hear that? Just give the thing back and they’ll be on their way!’
‘Why is that funny?’ Rush asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.
‘Well, first of all, that critter was caught by us out here on our mountain. Me and my brothers trap all manner of creatures up here, and we are not in the habit of just giving them away. No, siree.’ He shot the boy a menacing look.
‘But –’
‘Secondly, you and your friend are in no position to “be on your way”.’ Forkhand leaned forward, giving the boy a ghastly, black-toothed grin. He smelled terrible. ‘You see, the pair of you are also on our mountain, and that makes you fair game too.’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘Now it just so happens we were on our way to Logtown to do a little business, and it appears as if our stock has increased by two.’ He nodded to himself as if deciding on a course of action. ‘Bo,’ he called out to the man with the damaged leg, ‘get two more noose-poles – the longest ones we got.’
The man hop-walked into the camp and came back with the devices.
‘Now stand still while my brother puts this loop over your head, and tell your friend to do the same,’ he instructed Rush. ‘We wouldn’t want any crossbows accidentally going off, now would we?’
Knowing he couldn’t make a run for it, Rush did as he was told, gasping as the rope at the other end of the pole was pulled tight and knotted, the knot jamming up against the far end of the pole to secure the noose. Brick was instructed to stand and was likewise leashed. Finally the trappers tied their prisoners’ hands behind their backs.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rush said to Brick as the two were led to the camp and pushed to the ground.
Dotty went crazy at the sight of them both, hurghing like mad and pulling violently against her restraints. Eventually one of the men went over and gave her a vicious kick, ordering her to ‘calm the hell down’.
Rush saw Brick shake his head angrily and a low rumbling sound came from his chest as he glared at Dotty’s assailant.
‘All right, Brick. Calm down,’ the youngster said in a low voice. ‘I’ll figure out a way to get us out of this, I promise.’
The next day they were awoken with kicks and shoves, told to get to their feet and prepare to move out.
‘We wanna get to Logtown before sundown,’ Forkhand said, nodding in the direction they were to take. ‘They have a tournament every Friday night, and your rognam, or whatever the hell you call it, is going to be putting in an appearance. If he’s half as mean as he seems, he might make me ’n’ my brothers some serious tokens.’
Rush glared at the trapper. ‘He is a she. And she’s a rogwan.’
‘Like I care,’ the man said, with a dismissive wave. ‘Let’s get goin’. Any funny business and I might just let my brother Bo, who’s feeling pretty angry after having his leg all mauled up, take out his frustration on your stupid friend here.’ He said this in a matter-of-fact way that left Rush in no doubt that he meant it.
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘You shouldn’t have come on to our mountain,’ said Forkhand, as if this was an answer.
With their hands tied behind them, it was difficult to walk up the mountain slopes, some of which were scattered with loose rock fragments that were treacherous underfoot. Brick, his leg still not right, slipped and fell on a number of occasions, eliciting curses and blows from their captors. He took the beatings without a sound, shaking his head in Rush’s direction whenever the young mutant began to protest.
The entire party, trappers and their captives, were exhausted by the time they reached the summit. There was a huge sunken crater at the top of the mountain, its caldera full of garishly coloured water. It was wonderful and eerie at the same time. Sunlight played on the surface of the vivid green lake, but there was no sign of life, and the rotten egg smell the pair had encountered in the mountain’s interior wafted up at them from the vast hollow.
‘We need to rest.’ Rush said to Forkhand.
‘No rest. We keep going. I told you that.’
‘Brick has an injured leg.’
‘So has my brother, thanks to that beast of yours. We don’t stop until we reach the other side of this crater.’ He turned to the two men bringing up the rear. One of them held the noose-poles, the other a crossbow. ‘Keep these two moving. If they stop again, hit the big guy. Hard. Got that?’ He marched off again, kicking and shouting at Dotty to get up, after she too had flopped on the ground.
The going around the crater ridge was tough, and at times it felt as if the noose-poles were the only thing stopping Rush falling to his death. The trappers had clearly made this journey before. Eventually Forkhand came to a halt, peering down the slope ahead of him until the others caught him up.
Rush and Brick took in the view ahead. If the lake had been a sight to behold, the landscape they now surveyed was a wonder. This side of the sierra, the one facing the wind, was verdant, with no similarity to the arid scrubland they’d left behind. Rush thought the mountains must act as a barrier to the moisture in the air, straining off all the goodness before it
hit the parched wasteland beyond. Trees had taken root on these slopes. Indeed, a small forest had established itself in the nutrient-rich soil of the volcano’s flanks. It was the first sight of so much foliage either of the young mutants had ever seen, and the pair simply gawped in awe as the harsh sunlight painted the top of the bright green canopy, transforming it into something magical-looking.
‘I like the trees,’ said Brick in an almost reverential voice.
‘Me too.’
A number of large, black-feathered birds with saw bills flew out of a tree below them, protesting loudly as they took to the skies.
‘Look, Brick,’ Rush said. ‘That’s it.’ The birds and the trees were forgotten as they focused on a vast shape visible on the horizon, the sunlight reflecting back off metal and glass walls and the many structures that made up City Four. It was still too far off to properly make out any details, but that it was their final destination neither of them had any doubt. Nor could there be any doubt about the immensity of the place: a vast metropolis with impossible towers that thrust upward into the sky. Rush tried to imagine how many people must live in a place like that. Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? However many, it was more than the young mutant could envisage. He wondered what it was like inside its walls, and what incredible sights there might be to see there. He knew that Mutes weren’t allowed inside, of course, but even so, he was excited even to be this near to it.
When Rush looked at Brick again, he saw his friend’s attention was no longer on the vast, glinting metropolis. Instead he was staring at a settlement at the foot of the mountain. It was surrounded by water on all sides, a lemon-shaped islet linked to the mainland at its south and north by what appeared to be large rafts.
‘Logtown,’ Forkhand announced, flashing those blackened teeth again. ‘A man called Kohl runs the place. You’ll be meeting him soon enough.’
Brick nudged the boy at his side, gesturing with his chin.
Not far from the largest building on the small island, trees were being hauled out of the water. Long chains were wrapped around their trunks, and animals, four or five of them linked together in a leather and rope harness, were dragging them towards a large building with a spinning waterwheel on the side.
‘What are they?’ Rush asked their captor.
‘The critters? They’re boarnogs. Some half-pig, half-dog things the loggers breed. Strong they are. Mean too.’
‘They’re what you want to fight Dotty against, aren’t they?’
The mountain man gave the boy a ghastly grin. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Tia
Tia watched in frustration. The marmoset had stopped for a third time – sitting on top of the steel cable, gripping it with her feet, her prehensile tail wrapped around beneath it just in case. The animal was still only about two-thirds of the way up the twisted metal rope that stretched from the ground to the mast above the massive wall that, even at this distance, loomed over the ramshackle shanty town.
‘Don’t stop again, Buffy,’ Tia said under her breath. She knew from her cameraman – who’d seen and filmed the monkey climb the cable on that first occasion – that it had taken the marmoset about seven minutes to reach the mast. Buffy had already taken at least four times that long. The animal seemed nervous about something, but Tia had no idea what.
Tia looked about her, hoping again that Buffy’s presence had not been noticed. Despite being on the edge of the sprawling slum, there were still people about, and any commotion about a monkey on the wire would almost certainly bring the situation to the tower guards’ attention. At the same time, Tia also had to take care not to behave suspiciously in case the cameras mounted on the ramparts should decide to swing round to find out what she was up to. Anybody seen loitering for any length of time this close to the no-man’s-land that separated the edge of the slums and the wall would inevitably call attention to themselves, and since the mutant rallies had started, the guards seemed more trigger-happy than ever.
She glanced at her watch.
Eleanor would already be at the guard station. She’d planned a surprise visit, hoping that her presence would fluster the watch commander and his troops enough for the monkey to slip inside the city unnoticed, but with Buffy taking so much time to make her way back on this occasion, Tia hoped Eleanor could keep up the charade without the guards beginning to suspect the reason for her presence.
The camera nearest to her began to swing round in her direction, and she ducked into the shadows of the nearest ramshackle hovel, telling herself it was nothing more than a routine sweep. Through the thin walls she could hear a woman inside shouting at her children, telling them not to fight with each other while she was getting their dinner ready. The dwelling – it could hardly be called a building – was typical of the vast majority of places the people here lived in. Inside there would only be the one room, and it would be used for eating, sleeping, playing and everything else. In parts of the shanty town these homes were packed so closely together, jammed up against each other with no space between them, that it was impossible to see where one hovel ended and another began. There would almost certainly be no toilet inside, and if there was it would not be plumbed in any way. A bucket often had to be used by all, emptied regularly to keep the flies at bay. If they were fortunate, there might be a communal latrine somewhere nearby that could be shared by as many as twenty or thirty families. If that was fully occupied when the shack’s inhabitants needed to go, they would have to use the stench-filled gutters that ran through the streets. No wonder disease and infection were rife in the slums.
Tia’s head whipped around when she heard the unmistakable high-pitched trills of a marmoset’s distress calls. Looking up at the wire, she could see Buffy was still on top of it, her little head oscillating wildly back and forth as she appeared to scan the skies above.
‘What’s the matter now, Buffy?’ Tia whispered. Then she saw it. The hawk turned lazily in the air, banking on the thermals as it took in the tiny figure below it.
‘Run for it, Buffy, run!’
Tia watched the little monkey start to scamper further up the cable, its tiny hands and feet a blur as it tried to get to the top as fast as possible. The hawk had disappeared, and Tia craned her neck, frantically searching the heavens for sight of it. Then, in a flash, she saw it. It came in low from the right at great speed, wings folding at the last minute, hooked talons outstretched. There was no way the marmoset could avoid the raptor, and Tia held her breath as she waited for her little pet to fall into the clutch of those deadly spurs. Just as the hawk was about to grab the monkey in a last fatal embrace, Buffy jumped high into the air, twisting acrobatically and lashing out at the aerial killer’s wings with small hands and feet as the predator passed beneath. The marmoset’s efforts might all have been in vain because Tia was certain her pet would plunge to its death, but at the last second Buffy managed to grab hold of the cable again with her tail, swinging about underneath like a circus performer, before pulling herself up. With a quick look left and right, the monkey scurried up the remainder of the wire and into the metal skeleton of the mast, where she was at least safe from further aerial attacks. Tia heard the cry of frustration from the unseen hawk before it flew off in search of easier prey.
Tia breathed a huge sigh of relief, only to realise that everything could still go horribly wrong. While the marmoset was on the mast, she was in most danger of being spotted by the guards in the observation post right next to it. Tia prayed that Eleanor was still inside, doing her best to keep them distracted, but Buffy needed to get moving again. Instead, the little animal was cowering among the struts and supports that made up the tall aerial, no doubt shaken to the core by her near-death experience at the claws of the raptor.
‘Go, Buffy. Get a move on!’ Tia urged under her breath.
Almost as if the monkey had heard and understood, the creature shook itself down, jumped on to the top of the roof and disappeared from sight.
Tia gave a little c
lap of delight and turned round, startled to find she was being observed, not by a CCTV camera, but by one of the children from the shack behind her.
The youngster smeared his running nose on his cuff and stared up at her from eyes of the deepest blue Tia had ever seen (without surgical or genetic enhancement, anyway). Those eyes were beautiful; the rest of the face, covered as it was with coppery-red growths, was not. The child was a victim of Rot, a terrible disease that in the last few years had swept through the Mute communities based around each of the Six Cities, killing many thousands. Tia’s father suspected the disease might have been engineered by Melk’s people, but had, as yet, been unable to prove it.
‘What you up to?’ the boy asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Yes, you were. You was watching that fing climb over the wall.’
‘What thing?’
‘The one what the bird nearly got.’
Tia didn’t say anything.
The child sniffed, his eyes tracing the cable up to the mast and the guard tower beside it.
‘How many of you live here?’ she asked, gesturing towards the shack.
‘Six.’
‘That’s a lot of mouths to feed.’
‘We was seven, but Uncle Gorp died last month.’
‘How would you like some food coupons?’
The child’s eyes regarded her suspiciously. He scratched at his face, then quickly took his hand away, as if it was something he’d been told not to do. ‘How many?’
‘Two?’ She saw the child’s interest dwindle a little. ‘They’re gold star tickets,’ she added.