11.

THE LONGTONGUE

In Centre Square the smoke fires had burned down to the embers. He removed Indrani from his back to get a good look at her. She blinked slowly through drooping lids and didn’t respond to her name when he softly called her. White flecks of foam speckled her chin and glittered in the low light of the ancestral fires in the Roof.

He didn’t know what to do. He’d only gone to Wallbreaker’s house to see her, to talk to her and suffer her scorn. Looking at her now, he realized that if she wasn’t already dying, his stupid rescue had surely condemned her. And himself too.

Unless…He couldn’t believe the idea that settled in his mind just then. As if the ancestor of an enemy had wormed its way into his head and whispered: Sneak back into the house. Murder Mossheart. Murder Wallbreaker on his return. He shook off the alien thought, knowing no human was capable of such a thing. No, he’d find another way. He wasn’t as clever as Wallbreaker, but he’d think of something.

He took Indrani into his house and built a fire. He found a cloth to wipe her face, then ruined his good work spooning broth into her mouth. For a while he just watched over her, expecting Wallbreaker at any minute. But her rasping breath drew first his pity and then his eyes. He found he couldn’t look away. Sometimes when she spoke, full of excitement, she clenched her teeth behind open lips, fiercely, but fierce in the way a child is fierce; all innocence and enthusiasm. That look never failed to make him smile. She wore it now in her illness and he imagined her standing proud before the enemy ancestors that assailed her, wishing he could be with her.

He touched a hand to her damp forehead. Without meaning to, his palm slipped down to cup her face and passed from there to play idly with her perfectly black hair.

‘Indrani. P-poor Indrani…’

He wondered again how long it would take for Wallbreaker to come back. The first place he was likely to search would be here.

When the broth was gone, Stopmouth packed up his weapons and two empty water skins. He wouldn’t be able to carry much more if he had to take Indrani as well. He hefted her onto his shoulders and went out into the night-time streets. His shuffling steps echoed off the walls as he stumbled towards an empty building near the new perimeter. The windows here had been blocked, of course, but one particular barrier had been made weaker than the others so that it could be easily removed from the inside.

He heaved Indrani up onto the windowsill, climbed past her and pulled her down after him. He made no effort to close off the barrier again: he doubted whether it was even possible. Besides, he wanted any pursuers to think he’d gone towards the now empty streets of the Hairbeasts.

Half the night had passed and Indrani got heavier with every step he took. Her breathing rasped in his ear and her drool soaked into his shoulder. He still had a long way to go before he could rest. He circled the old perimeter until he came to a house that had been prepared for himself and Rockface on the Flim side. If the Armourbacks and their allies had chosen to attack from newly conquered Flim-Ways instead of Hairbeast-Ways, the two men would have hidden here rather than the place they’d used for stealing the Talker.

He stepped round the traps on the stairs, which hadn’t been disturbed, and found with relief that no one had touched the food caches either. There was so much flesh from the great battle that nobody had yet needed to come for it.

He laid Indrani down on the old skins that had been left here. Then he curled up in a corner and was asleep in an instant.

Stopmouth woke with a knife against his throat. The glare from the Roof was so strong that for a moment he couldn’t see who held it.

‘He promises he’ll give an extra wife to whoever brings Indrani back,’ said Rockface. ‘What do you think of that? And me a widower, hey?’

Rockface gave off a foul odour–his teeth were going bad, and for the first time Stopmouth realized that the bigger man might soon lose his great strength. Nor did he look like a person used to a good night’s sleep: his eyes were bloodshot and baggy. Soup caked the sides of his mouth.

‘I was s-s-sorry about W-W-Watersip and Q-Quicksmile,’ said Stopmouth. ‘They s-still had a th-thousand days left in them.’

‘Yes,’ said Rockface sadly. ‘Yes, they had.’ He put away the knife. ‘The men are already checking in our old hide, the one we used for stealing the Talker. It was sneaky of you to leave by the Hairbeast route, but they’ll come here next. This is not a good place for you.’ He studied Indrani, his bloodshot eyes blinking slowly. ‘You should move to another building, hey? I’ll help you carry her, although she looks ready to volunteer no matter what you do for her now.’

They took Indrani and the blankets to another house nearby. Then they carried over the food and Stopmouth’s few weapons. As they left, Stopmouth triggered a trap on the stairs by lobbing a rock onto the appropriate step. Half the roof collapsed. He didn’t want any of his old friends setting it off by mistake. Besides, they’d use up more time wriggling through the rubble to get to the rooftop.

‘Stopmouth?’ said Rockface. The younger man nodded and waited. Rockface was always so easy to read. Right now his face had screwed up as if he’d found a particularly tough knot of gristle in his broth. ‘Wallbreaker thinks you and I are in league. He tried to have me followed this morning. And…and there’s something else…Wallbreaker said…Well, it’s a message, I suppose. He said that if you come back to the Ways without her…If it’s just you by yourself, he’ll forgive you. He’ll deny the rumours that you took her and say she ran off alone. He even told the others they were only looking for her. He’s letting on she’s feverish and doesn’t want to volunteer.’

The two men turned to look at Indrani. She’d gone way beyond feverish. She burned under the attack of an army of enemy ancestors. And yet Stopmouth remembered how well she’d taken care of him when people had wanted him volunteered. He could do no less in return.

For some reason this thought cheered Rockface. Maybe he needed the distraction. ‘Oh, you’re always getting me in trouble, Stopmouth! But it’s the type of trouble that’s good for a man, hey?’

Rockface didn’t leave immediately. ‘I almost forgot! They found Crunchfist.’

‘The b-b-body?’

‘No! That’s the amazing thing. He’s alive. All his pack were killed by Armourbacks in Flim-Ways and they damaged his leg so he couldn’t run. But he managed to hole up there, and even with all his wounds, he caught a few to keep him company while he healed.’

‘W-W-Wallbreaker?’

‘Oh, he locked him up in the old wedding tower. He’s within his rights, hey? Crunchfist is a failed candidate. But people aren’t happy about it and Wallbreaker won’t be able to trade him until food gets really short.’

Or maybe, thought Stopmouth, Crunchfist would eat a few mossbeasts. The unloved chief couldn’t afford to keep a living hero around for long. Especially one as dangerous as Crunchfist.

Rockface clapped the younger hunter on the back and left the way he’d come.

Afterwards, loneliness swept over Stopmouth. He grew angry at his brother and then cried because he’d lost him.

He spent the rest of the day building a shelter on the roof. Sometimes he saw hunters pass by, human or Clawfolk. Once he even saw a pack of Bloodskins. He wanted to shout the alarm, but couldn’t. Nor did he dare light a fire to warm Indrani when they ran out of soup.

He looked up to where a pair of Globes floated almost directly above him. It was strange how there always seemed to be at least one of them near Indrani. The Roof darkened, its panels turning from searing blue to grey and then black, the grid of tracklights slowly brightening. The Globes never moved the whole time. Finally he turned away to examine the supplies.

They had eight strips of dried flesh between them. Each strip could sustain a hunter for a day. He tore off a chunk of it and chewed and chewed until his aching jaws had turned it to pulp. He mixed this with water in the base of a Flyer skull and poured it into Indrani’s mouth.

‘We’re done for,’ he said as he massaged her throat. ‘We can’t go back, and yet where else can we go?’

Then again, if Wallbreaker were to die somehow…

That horrific thought again. How could a human kill another when everyone needed everybody else? When the Tribe had been so far reduced as to hang on the verge of extinction? Humans didn’t kill their own kind unless to put them out of their misery. From time to time the chief could simply order a hunter to volunteer for the good of the Tribe. In this way even adulterers and other criminals contributed to everyone’s survival.

Stopmouth knew he couldn’t murder Wallbreaker, not even this new Wallbreaker who could look at a brother and not see him. Nobody else was sharp enough to save the Tribe; nobody else could come close.

A terrible smell distracted Stopmouth from his musings. Indrani had soiled herself. He cursed and realized he should have thought of that earlier. At least it was a sign of life.

Over the next few days his meat supply dwindled. Hunting parties still passed in the streets below, but they were looking for flesh and not criminals. By now Indrani had ceased foaming at the mouth and her body rarely spasmed as it had at first. They both needed flesh. Stopmouth could think of little else, even though he knew he had no right to live.

When night fell, he took his spear and sling, a supply of stones and a water skin. He spent a few minutes studying the streets from roof level before setting out. He’d never hunted alone before. In the Tribe, only Crunchfist had survived such stupidity more than once.

He headed for the Wetlane, always keeping to shadows, ducking into doorways if he thought he heard any movements. Then he did hear something: human voices. He stayed stock-still and waited, hoping a gurgle from his stomach wouldn’t give him away. A trading party was coming back from Claw-Ways. Three of the creatures accompanied the humans, but the beasts couldn’t have been volunteers for they weren’t bound and they even carried weapons embedded in their hook claws. So Wallbreaker had used the Talker to make an alliance! Stopmouth changed direction to avoid getting too close to the group.

He decided to head for Flim in the hope that a few Armourbacks or Hoppers might be left there. If nothing caught him, he could at least scout out the area and return the following day.

He reached the Wetlane at the Clawfolk end of the old perimeter, but stayed on the human side until he came to a place in the forest where an old tree had fallen over it. Both humans and Flims had used the trunk in the past as a route into each other’s territory. Now Stopmouth crossed it and sneaked through the woods until Flim stretched before him like a curtain of black moss. No fires brightened the night and the towers appeared unguarded. Nevertheless, because both his life and Indrani’s depended on it, he ran hunched over towards the first buildings, as if thousands of eyes were searching the night just for him.

He’d covered no more than fifty strides when a light brighter than the Roof exploded into the air around him with almost physical force.

He dropped his weapons and fell to his knees, pawing at his eyes. ‘I’m blind!’ he screeched, heedless of who or what might find him. He lay down and wept for hundreds of heartbeats, palms pressed against his face. When finally he pulled them away, garish spots danced in front of his eyes. But at the edges of the spots his vision was clearing. A short time later he could see well enough to run over to the first wall, panting with terror. Only then did he begin to question what had happened.

The old people had spoken of something like this. What was it? What? Then he grinned. He couldn’t believe his luck.

‘Of course!’ he whispered.

In the past, whenever a species had been hunted to extinction, new victims appeared to replace the old. Enough new creatures would arrive to fill every room of every building in the area. Those numbers would decrease very quickly until the new arrivals learned to defend themselves. But as long as their ignorance lasted, every nearby species would be sending hunters to profit from the bonanza.

Stopmouth decided not to bother sneaking in through a window, and ran instead for the main gate. He wouldn’t have to fear other hunters with so much easy flesh to be had.

The streets of Flim-Ways lay silent and empty before him. Good, he thought. Good! New beasts were always said to arrive in their sleep.

He entered a street containing only ruins. But near an intersection, three houses stood together wholly intact.

‘Mustn’t get greedy,’ he told himself. Depending on their size, the weight of an adult might prove too much for him and he didn’t want to risk hanging around to butcher a corpse. No, what he needed to find was a family. He could spear the young and bring back enough flesh to keep himself and Indrani alive for weeks.

The first house of the group of three had no hide curtain across the door. Stopmouth approached cautiously and peered into the hallway. He couldn’t see a thing. He poked the spear inside.

‘Stop wasting time!’ he scolded himself. Just this once he was on a hunt with nothing to be afraid of. His mouth was watering at the thought of new flavours. It was almost too much to bear. He stepped into the darkness of the hall. Away from the tracklights he could see very little apart from two shadowy openings. He was about to enter the first of these when his spear-tip encountered something soft and yielding that seemed to be stretched across it.

He was reaching out a hand towards the strange substance when a noise from the street stopped him cold. He turned towards the doorway, trying to bring his spear to bear. It took several heartbeats to work loose. By that time he could already see the Hopper charging in through the main door at him, a knife in its hands. The spear came free, but he dropped it when the Hopper cannoned into him. Its knife cut a red line up his left arm. Its body knocked him flying back into a wall, winded, helpless.

Stopmouth couldn’t see the creature’s face clearly in the dark. He wondered if its eyes were filled with triumph and hatred for the humans that had brought doom to its race. It raised its knife for the killing blow.

And paused.

The creature seemed to be straining against something, its breath coming in quick little wheezes. It lifted its second hand to the first, which held the knife over its head as if waiting for one of its fellows to take blood from its armpit. Now its whole body shook. When it raised powerful legs from the ground so that its full weight hung in the air, Stopmouth thought he was dreaming. The Hopper jerked and spasmed before the young hunter realized that the creature was caught in something so thin it couldn’t be seen in this poor light.

Stopmouth decided to make a run for it. Whatever beasts lived here, he no longer felt the urge to hunt them. He tried to sit up, but he sprang back against the wall, held by some kind of stretchy moss that stuck to his skin.

Meanwhile, in spite of its struggles, both the Hopper’s legs were now entangled too. It stopped all movement for several heartbeats until its breathing had slowed slightly. Then it renewed the assault, more determined than ever. In the end, even its head became entangled.

Stopmouth decided not to struggle as the Hopper had done, yet he had no idea how to free himself. So far, the sticky substance had only caught the skin of his back, and perhaps part of his loincloth. He stretched a little, testing the bounds of his trap. The floor didn’t stick to the soles of his feet. That was a start. He stretched a little more. His left foot brushed against something on the floor, something that rolled away from him. His spear! To reach it he had to lean back further into the sticky moss that held him. It welcomed a whole shoulder into its embrace and didn’t let go again. His ear became stuck, as did strands of his hair. Panic rose within him. He wanted so badly to pull away. His breath came quicker and quicker until he and the piteous Hopper kept perfect time.

Stopmouth tried to will himself to calm down. His left foot touched the spear-shaft again. He dragged it towards his free hand, leaning more and more into the moss. It covered his eyes now, gluing them shut. It was all he could do to keep his mouth free of the stuff.

In another part of the house, something began to stir, something that scratched and skittered. The Hopper heard it too and renewed its useless thrashing.

Stopmouth shifted the spear round until he had the Armourback-shell point in his hand. He was frightened to cut into the moss in case the blade got stuck too. Instead, ever so slowly, sticky strands parted under the edge until he’d freed the lower half of his face and most of his right arm.

The skittery-scratchy noise came closer. Whatever kind of creature it was, it had left the front room of the house and seemed to be climbing the walls.

The Hopper screamed once. Then again. Warm liquid splashed across Stopmouth’s back. Every instinct told him to tear himself free. Instead, he kept on sawing. His hand shook under the spear-shaft while something squelched and slurped behind him. More skittering, closer now. Stopmouth cut the last of the strands from his eyes and face. He jerked himself violently away, ripping hair from his head, leaving the loincloth behind him with its weapons belt.

A shadow clung to the roof where the Hopper had been. Dark skin glistened in the poor light of the hallway, but the beast’s shape remained vague. Stopmouth held the spear up in front of his face. A powerful blow hit the centre of the shaft, almost knocking him back into the moss. Another strike and the wood snapped in his hands.

The young hunter was breathing heavily, trying to choke back his fear. He was about to die and the only question was how brave a fight he could make of it. He threw the bottom half of his broken weapon to one side in case he slipped on it. The moment the shaft struck the floor, a long part of the creature lunged after it, striking repeatedly. Stopmouth prayed he wasn’t misreading the situation and took a gamble. He flung the rest of his spear up at the roof behind his head. It stuck to the moss, bouncing up and down. The beast scrambled towards it and Stopmouth ran for his life.

The creature came charging after him. It must have struck at him because he felt a light, burning touch on his shoulder. Then he dived through the door and rolled onto his feet. He turned to look behind him, but the monster had drawn back into the shadows of the doorway.

Heaving and sweating, Stopmouth wanted only to run home and throw himself on his hides to sleep. A squeal stopped him. Looking down the street, he saw a Bloodskin leaning halfway out of the window of a nearby house. It had got itself caught in something and Stopmouth had a good idea what that might be. His skin crawled and he felt sorry for the beast. Creatures must be coming from all over now in search of easy prey, but they were becoming prey themselves.

Flesh, thought Stopmouth. Indrani would need flesh and he’d be in no condition to get it for her over the next few days.

So he turned back to the Bloodskin trapped in the window. It was probably pleading for help, its snarl of teeth clacking together rapidly. But Stopmouth heard other Bloodskin cries from within the building and guessed that no aid would be coming any time soon. He snapped the creature’s neck quickly. From the room beyond, he heard thrashing and guessed there was at least one more beast in there that would have been glad to have its neck broken round about now. But Stopmouth didn’t have time to worry about that. He stole a bone knife from his victim’s belt and began carving strips of red flesh from its arm. Then, he heard the skittering-scratch of the new beasts as one of them entered the room beyond. The last Bloodskin renewed its struggles until an impact like the smack of a drum brought them to an end.

Stopmouth’s time was running out. He was halfway through an elbow joint when the knife, and the rest of his kill, were jerked into the darkness of the house. A spray of warm liquid drove him back from the window. Then a black, shiny-skinned head pushed outside. It had eyes, but they stayed closed and Stopmouth wondered if they could open at all. A round, toothless hole made up the rest of the head while the body remained invisible. Stopmouth kept himself out of what he thought of as arm’s reach. The head swayed from side to side on the end of a rigid-looking tubular neck. Oh, how he wished for a sling!

‘There’s no m-more flesh for you here tonight,’ he said.

The mouth opened even wider. Instinct drove Stopmouth to the ground. The air whistled above him as a black line, like a spear, shot out of the creature’s face and impaled the air above his head. The tongue shot back as fast as it had emerged. Stopmouth lay transfixed for many hundreds of heartbeats before the new beast pulled back into the building.

He grabbed the two poor handfuls of Bloodskin flesh he’d been able to cut and staggered back to the gate of Flim-Ways just as the Roof was beginning to brighten with morning.

He walked across the moss to the trees and from there went to the fallen trunk across the Wetlane. He heard human voices coming the other way and hid himself. He was surprised it had taken his people so long to send a hunting party to the new beasts, and wondered if this was perhaps the second or third. He hoped not: the Tribe couldn’t afford many losses.

They passed him in single file, six hunters, from veterans down to boys. All wore tattoos from the recent fighting. Stopmouth felt wretched. His muscles tensed–not for running away, but for leaping out to join those who should have been his comrades. Only with great effort did he hold himself in check.

Most of the men wore a tool-belt and a loincloth of supple grey Flim hide, marvellous material, cool against the skin and gone from the world now for ever. The hunters chatted almost gaily, excited and unafraid of the still innocent flesh that awaited them in old Flim-Ways.

When they’d wandered a good thirty strides up the track, Stopmouth shouted after them.

‘Wait!’

They turned towards him and almost jumped out of their skins when they saw who it was.

‘N-n-no c-c-closer!’ said Stopmouth. He hoped they’d remember his fame for speed and wouldn’t see any point in pursuit.

An older man named Trapsetter, who was surely the hunt leader, dropped his spear and stepped forward a pace.

Stopmouth was relieved to see how little interest they had in him. If anything, they shuffled their feet and kept glancing towards Flim. Trapsetter calmed them until they’d heard Stopmouth out. The fugitive’s nerves and stumbling tongue tried their patience and even his own. Every moment he spent with them increased his chances of being captured. Yet he couldn’t bear to see these men he’d known all his life stolen from the Tribe that needed them.

At last his message seemed to get through. Trapsetter sighed and scratched his balding head.

‘I cannot believe these…these Longtongues are as dangerous as you would have us believe, young man. They are blind, you say?’

Stopmouth agreed.

Trapsetter scratched some more and finally nodded. ‘We will be careful, Stopmouth. More careful than you have been at any rate.’

Some of the group sniggered until Trapsetter glared at them. ‘If I thought we could catch you, we would. We’d take you straight back to your brother. The Tribe is in sore need of volunteers. But we will hunt for you another day, I think. For now, I’m grateful for your advice and if it proves useful, I will speak out for you when you are captured. But you are wrong to make us waste good hunters chasing you. Nobody can survive on his own, Stopmouth.’

The hunters turned for Flim without quite so much bounce in their step as before. Even as they passed out of sight, Stopmouth heard Trapsetter ordering silence.

The man had told him the truth. No one could survive without the Tribe. His experiences that night had proved it. With a heavy heart he sneaked back into the hideout he shared with Indrani.