Uki and the Outcasts

by Kieran Larwood

  With Uki leading them, they headed out of the fortress gates, turning south and making for Syn’s main entrance. The streets were still filled with smoke but were now eerily silent. Small crowds of rabbits stood here and there, that familiar look of bewilderment in their eyes.

  They were almost at the gate itself when a hulking dark shape stepped out of the shadows, blocking their path. Uki recognised the figure of Balto, Necripha’s henchman, in his black hood and robes.

  ‘Pok ha boc!’ cursed Kree. ‘Why is nothing ever easy?’

  Balto took a step towards them, breaking through the wisps of smoke like a slinking serpent through long grass. Something glinted in his paws – a dagger in each, curved and deadly. Uki scanned the buildings all around for Necripha herself, and caught a glimpse of a second hooded figure inside a burnt doorway, keeping back out of danger.

  ‘Do you think you can take him, Uki?’ Jori asked. ‘I still can’t even hold a blade. I took too much potion before …’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Uki. The strength of the spirits still bubbled through his blood, but Balto was at least three times the size of him. And then there was Necripha. Who knew what she was planning to do while Balto was attacking them?

  ‘Climb up here with us,’ said Kree. ‘Mooka can charge through him.’

  ‘Will he be able to take all our weight?’ Uki asked.

  ‘Neek!’

  Taking that for an answer, Uki hopped up behind Kree and the three of them clung together. ‘Hai! Hai! Mooka!’ she yelled and kicked at his flanks. Just as in the challenge on the plains, Mooka leapt forwards, leaving the ground like a speeding sparrowhawk.

  He reached Balto in seconds, barging past the startled rabbit, who didn’t even have time to raise his daggers. Just for good measure, Uki gave him a kick as they passed. He put all of his boosted strength behind it and watched over his shoulder as Balto flew through the air and into the window of a shop.

  The hulking henchman burst straight through the shutters and disappeared from sight. Judging by the cascading, smashing sound, it was a pottery shop. Uki hoped there would be lots of sharp clay shards involved.

  Even more satisfying than the crashing and tinkling was the cry of frustration from Necripha. Uki thought he saw her step into the road and glare after them. There was a flash of those three, red eyes … and then they were gone around the corner, flying through the streets to the gate.

  *

  They found the gate open, with scores of rabbits wandering aimlessly around the fields and farmland. Judging by their packs and bundles, they had been fleeing the fires and the fighting. Now that their minds had suddenly cleared, they were lost and dazed, like startled sheep, like freshly woken sleepwalkers.

  Mooka kept up his gallop until they had left the cities well behind. He took them up the road, on until they reached the crest of a hill, where they all clambered down and flopped into the long grass at the roadside. The air was clear of smoke here, fresh and sweet. To the east, the sky was beginning to lighten as dawn crept across the plains.

  ‘At last,’ said Kree, with a happy sigh. ‘Open air. No buildings squashing you in on every side.’

  ‘And no evil rabbits trying to kill us,’ Uki added.

  ‘For now,’ said Jori. They all sat in silence for a while as Mooka nibbled at the grass seeds and flowers around them. Their paws were shaking, their bodies exhausted. What a night of endless running, fighting and terror it had been.

  ‘So,’ said Kree, breaking the silence. ‘What do we do now? Where do we go?’

  All eyes turned to Uki, who chewed his lip for a moment.

  ‘What happened at the match,’ he began, ‘when I left you behind … It was wrong and I’m sorry. But I did it because I was scared of you all getting hurt. This thing I’m doing … it’s not a “quest” like in the stories. It’s real and it’s dangerous. I don’t have any right to ask you to come along, and you don’t have to. It’s not like you’re my family and I can just expect you to do things for me.’ Uki stopped and rubbed his face. He was tired. So tired, and finding the right words to say was difficult at the best of times.

  ‘What I mean is … I have to go on and find the other spirits now. It will be hard and frightening. Maybe even worse than capturing Valkus was. But I have to finish what I started, even with Necripha and the Endwatch trying to stop me.

  ‘I would love it if you two came with me. But I will understand if you don’t want to. The spirits are out there and I will find them. You both have lives and problems of your own. If something happened to you because of me … I would never forgive myself.’

  Silence fell again and Uki closed his eyes, hoping against hope that his new friends would want to stay with him and dreading it too, a little. Would it be better to have them by his side always, or to never see them again yet know they were safe?

  In the end, it was Jori who spoke first.

  ‘Pretty much everything you just said was completely wrong.’ She laughed. ‘Except for the parts about it being hard and dangerous.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Uki asked.

  ‘Well, first of all, this is our task now, as much as it is yours. Am I right, Kree?’

  ‘By Mooka’s invisible tail, yes!’

  ‘Secondly, you do have the right to ask us because – and here is where you were the most wrong of all – we are family now.’

  ‘Really?’ Uki found tears beginning to pool in his eyes. ‘Family?’

  ‘Of course!’ Kree shouted, giving him one of her bone-crushing hugs.

  ‘Of course,’ Jori agreed. ‘We’ve all lost or escaped or been cast out by our real families. But we have each other. We take care of each other, and worry about each other and protect each other. Isn’t that what a family is?’

  ‘And after everything we went through last night,’ added Kree, ‘we trust each other with our lives. That’s what makes a family. Trust and love.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Uki whispered. Trust and love. Two things he didn’t think he’d have from any other rabbit than his mother. He’d never even considered that a family doesn’t have to be related to you.

  Through the tiredness and tears, he smiled. A great big smile that seemed to stretch out all over his body, filling him up completely.

  ‘And now all the talking’s over,’ said Jori. ‘Does anyone mind if we find somewhere to sleep? I think I might actually die of exhaustion in a minute.’

  With much groaning and stretching, they picked themselves up and looked for a quiet copse of trees to sleep the day away in. The Endwatch might be hunting them, Clan Septys might be hunting them, there were two more spirits still to find … but all those were problems for another morning.

  I might have mixed-up fur and eyes, Uki thought. I might be an outcast. But like Mother said, I have a good heart and kind thoughts. And now I have true friends to go with them.

  And for once, his dark voice could say nothing to disagree.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Endwatch Tower

  The bard finishes his tale and there is a long moment of silence. From the corner of his eye, Rue watches Jori as she stares into the firepit, reliving memories from long ago that have suddenly had a storyteller’s life breathed into them.

  Finally she speaks. ‘Bravo, Pook. Bravo.’

  The bard smiles, as though this praise is as good as any standing ovation.

  ‘Was that really what happened?’ Rue asks. ‘I mean, my master wasn’t actually there, not like with Podkin’s story …’

  ‘Yes,’ says Jori. ‘How did you make such a good account? You knew things that I didn’t.’

  ‘Ah,’ says the bard. ‘The story came from Yarrow, my master. And he spoke at length with you and Uki and Kree, if you remember. I think he might even have travelled Hulstland, searching out all the other characters, before he stitched the story together. He taught it to me when I started my training with him. It was the first tale I learnt.’

  ‘And now you’re passing it on, too,’ says Jori, w
ith a smile. ‘How sweet.’

  ‘Yes, yes, enough of that,’ says the bard. ‘Shall we try and get some sleep? I’m guessing it’s a long walk to this tower tomorrow, and you and I are not young rabbits any longer.’

  Jori laughs again and begins to shovel soil back into the firepit, putting out the flames. For a moment Rue considers asking her where Uki and Kree are now, why she isn’t with them. But then he thinks better of it. She isn’t the bard, after all, and – nice as she seems – she is still a trained fighter. The worst the bard can do when he gets annoyed is to clonk Rue on the head with his staff. No, that question will keep for another day.

  The darkness of the forest comes flooding in, and Rue shivers. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark. When they do, he sees Jori reaching one of her scarred paws out to him. ‘Here, little one. We have to put the fire out, in case the light is seen. But if you sleep on top of the pit, it will keep you warm.’

  She helps him spread his cloak over the patch of earth where the firepit had been. Just as she said, there is welcome heat spreading up through the ground. Rue snuggles into it, while the bard makes himself comfortable nearby and quickly begins to snore. Rue’s eyes are already beginning to close too. The last thing he sees is Jori, sitting against one of the white-barked trees. Her fingers tap gently against the flask on her belt as she stares out into the forest.

  He has a feeling it will be a long while before she joins them in sleeping.

  *

  They wake at first light and break camp. Little is said as they all slept poorly. Rue’s dreams were full of sneaking forest creatures and monsters buried underneath the ground in ancient prisons. The bard must have been worrying about what he will find at the tower. He keeps staring off into the distance and tugging his beard. Things he does when something is on his mind.

  When everything has been stowed in their packs, they take an apple and some cornbread with them for breakfast, munching them on the way. Rue carries the sparrow cage in both paws, trying not to shake the little bird about too much. It cheeps and flutters, peeping out at him with its bright, brown eyes.

  Out of the forest they walk, and begin to follow its edge, up towards the foothills of the Arukh mountains.

  It is bleak countryside. On their right is a stretch of brambly, knotted ground and behind that, the tangled trees of Icebark. On their left, the hills begin to rise. Tufts of grass sprout here and there amongst knobbly lumps of granite. There are gorse bushes and heather scattered about, breaking up the greyness with their yellow-and-purple flowers. Behind them, the mountain peaks block out the horizon. They stare down on them like silent giants, their snowy heads hidden by wisps of mist and cloud.

  Not much grows here and there is no sign of rabbit life, except for a faint path that traces the forest edge.

  They walk in silence for most of the day, each of them flicking nervous glances towards the mountains, half expecting a screaming party of Arukh braves to charge down from them. But there are no signs of life except for the odd eagle, tiny dots spiralling lazily in the distance.

  It is an hour or so after midday that they see it. A black smudge on a misty hilltop: the remains of the Endwatch tower. They stand for a moment, staring at it suspiciously.

  ‘You have the youngest eyes, Rue,’ says the bard. ‘Any signs of life? Wood smoke? Movement?’

  Rue squints at it until his eyes water. As far as he can see it’s nothing but a jumble of blackened stone.

  Just in case, they move closer to the treeline, using the bramble bushes as cover. It makes the going slow. The tower doesn’t seem to get any bigger, and Rue begins to think they’ll never reach it.

  At one point, they startle a group of crows. Fat, flapping things with feathers black as midnight. They burst into the sky in a thunderstorm of caws, making all three of the rabbits jump.

  ‘Well, that’s given us away,’ says the bard. He mumbles a curse under his breath.

  ‘What were they doing here?’ Rue asks. His little heart is hammering against the walls of his chest.

  Jori bends to the ground and holds up a withered carrot top, a hunk of dried orange flesh still clinging to the stalk. ‘Someone made camp here,’ she says. ‘There’s other bits of food, signs of a fire. And the ground is trampled.’

  ‘Can you tell who? When?’ The bard asks.

  Jori shakes her head. ‘I don’t have Kree’s tracking skills. It was a fortnight or more ago at least.’

  ‘Probably just those woods rabbits,’ says the bard.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ says Jori.

  *

  They reach the tower soon after. Hiding in the bushes, Rue peers out at it, his ears trembling.

  Some places seem to have their own character he has noticed, and the character of this one is not good. Cold, desolate, unwelcoming. If it were a rabbit, it would be an evil old hermit living alone in a cave, waiting to jump on innocent passers-by and eat them.

  Made of stocky granite blocks, it juts up from the hillside, three or four storeys high. There are bare, empty windows at the top, and a crudely carved eye stares out above each one. If it had a roof, it has now burnt away and crumbled, just like the other buildings that once surrounded it.

  Rue can see that there used to be quite a settlement here, one that was thoroughly put to the torch. Only jumbles of stone remain to mark walls and doorways. Here and there are pieces of roof framework, reduced to blackened ribs by fire. He shudders at the thought of rabbits that would choose to live here, that and the image of the three-eyed Necripha stalking between the huts and houses with her evil red glare.

  ‘What do you think?’ whispers the bard. ‘Is anyone there?’

  Jori watches for a long time before she shakes her head. ‘If they ever were here, they’re not now. I can’t see or hear anything moving. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here since it burnt down.’

  ‘You did a good job of destroying it,’ says the bard. ‘There’s almost nothing left.’

  Jori flicks her tattered ears. ‘Quite. I can’t see what anyone would want here. Unless we missed something.’

  ‘Shall we go in?’ asks the bard.

  Jori nods. ‘We should see if there are any traces. A quick scout, and then we can get away as soon as possible.’

  Nobody wants to be here, Rue thinks, relieved it’s not just him. In its cage, the little sparrow cheeps, as if agreeing with him.

  Holding their breath, they dash across the open ground to the tower. Rue has convinced himself an arrow or a spear will come flying down on to his head, but nothing happens. Keeping close together, they tiptoe around the tower edge until they come to a doorway.

  A dark, open rectangle in the black stone, it stands amongst a toppled heap of rubble and timbers. The door itself has burnt away, leaving nothing but charred hinges. To Rue’s horror, there are signs the rubble has been cleared, leaving the way open. There are footsteps in the soot and dust.

  ‘Someone has been here,’ says the bard, through gritted teeth.

  ‘And recently, too,’ adds Jori. She bends and points to the prints, still clear and untouched by wind or rain.

  ‘It could be just travellers,’ says the bard. ‘Passing woods rabbits looking for shelter. Children daring each other to go in the haunted tower …’

  Jori draws her sword, making Rue’s eyes bulge. It looks sharp enough to cut through sunlight. ‘Stay behind me,’ she says.

  And they all step inside.

  *

  The air is different in the tower. Damp, freezing, full of the ghostly scent of old fire and mildew. Even with the light from the open doorway, it is hard to see anything. Their feet scuff amongst the dirt and ash on the stone floor.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ says Jori. She unslings her pack and roots in it. Rue hears the rasp of flint and metal followed by a flash of light. A few seconds later, Jori holds up a candle. She lights two more with its flame and hands them out.

  Holding his flickering candle in one paw and the sparro
w’s cage in the other, Rue looks around the room. He sees piles of rubble against the walls, covered with the pale tendrils of weeds and vines. There are empty torch sconces here and there. A broken table, pieces of smashed, burnt pottery. The silent reminders that rabbits once lived here – eating, talking, drinking.

  ‘Look!’ Jori’s voice echoes around the empty room, breaking the ghostly silence. Rue hurries over to the bard, presses as close to him as he can, and feels the old rabbit wrap a protective arm around him. They hold up their candles and peer over to where Jori stands, pointing.

  She is by a staircase leading upwards, the door at the top choked shut with bricks and wood. In front of her a trapdoor stands open, its depths an even deeper black than the inky darkness they are standing in.

  ‘We never knew this was here,’ she says. ‘We did miss something.’

  ‘What’s down there?’ asks the bard, his voice wobbling slightly.

  ‘Looks like some kind of library,’ says Jori. ‘I can see piles of scrolls and books. They’re all thrown across the floor, like someone’s ransacked the place.’

  ‘A secret library,’ whispers the bard. ‘All the knowledge of the Endwatch.’

  Rue hopes that they don’t have to go down there, secret knowledge or not. He looks back towards the entrance, longing for daylight and open air … and spots something on the wall.

  ‘What’s that?’ he says, holding up his candle.

  The bard lifts his too, lighting up the wall in flickering orange. Somebody has been at the books and scrolls, it seems. Pages and scraps of parchment have been stuck to the stone with blobs of candlewax. Some have been circled in charcoal, as if marking them out as important.

  The bard hurries over and begins to read, his eyes darting and lips moving as he translates and deciphers all the different runes and languages. Rue recognises one or two pieces of ogham, but there are many more types of writing. Pictograms and symbols, flowing script and scratches. To him they just look like senseless inky scribbles.

  ‘Prophecies,’ mutters the bard. ‘These are all pieces of prophecies.’