The Deserter Page 16

  Indrani pushed herself away, her face suddenly grave. She shushed the baby, rocking it gently until it calmed. Then she brought it over to him.

  ‘This’ – she swallowed – ‘is Flamehair.’

  Stopmouth’s first thought was that this baby (whose hair was almost as dark as Indrani’s!) was far too young to have a name. The tribe decided such things, not parents. Then the significance of what it was called hit him hard, so that he gasped. His mother had been Flamehair too. Indrani had picked a name from his family.

  He reached out a hand, trembling, to the little girl. ‘I have … I have a daughter?’ The signs had been there before Indrani had left for the Roof – all the signs. How could he not have spotted that his woman was pregnant? Had she been bigger towards the end? He was so ignorant he didn’t even know for sure when a women would start to ‘show’, as the wives called it. It just seemed … Well, surely it all took longer than the short time they’d had together. For a baby to grow.

  Indrani looked at the floor, not at him. She didn’t say a word in answer to his question.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. Then it hit him. A cold hand gripped his stomach and squeezed. ‘Oh ancestors,’ he gasped. ‘No … Please no. Indrani, tell me it isn’t true. Indrani …?’

  Once, before he’d rescued her from his brother, Wallbreaker, she’d almost succeeded in killing herself. She had never fully explained why, but the implication had always been that his brother had forced himself on her.

  He tried to pull away, but Indrani held him firm, her face fierce in the Talker’s light. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, this beautiful little girl has your monstrous brother for a father.’

  ‘I can’t … I need to—’

  ‘But it’s not her fault and it’s not mine, you hear me? You hear me, Stopmouth?’

  It was too much. It was too sudden. Indrani spoke the truth, of course. She hated Wallbreaker even more than he did. But Stopmouth was like a pot hung too near to the fire, boiling over with hatred and anger and longing and he didn’t know what else.

  The baby cried again, and eventually Indrani had to let him go in order to shush it. For just a moment he hated it … her. And Indrani too. It was wrong – the ancestors knew how wrong it was. He was breathing hard, trembling, his nails digging into his palms. He saw an image of his own mother in his mind’s eye. She was looking at this new baby with total love. He could hear her utter the traditional saying: ‘The Tribe continues! May she bring us Home!’ He blinked away tears, wanting to go back to the surface now more than anything. But he already knew what the ancestors were trying to tell him: this baby was his mother’s grandchild. It was Tribe. He would keep it and feed it. He’d see it named and maybe even live to see it jump the fire with a husband.

  But he could not love it: Wallbreaker’s child and enemy of his heart. He could not.

  He felt Indrani’s stare against the skin of his back. When next she spoke, it was as if she had read his mind.

  ‘You will come round, poor Stopmouth. And I know you – it won’t take all that long. Come … Come here.’ But Indrani was the one who approached him and put her free arm about his shoulders.

  ‘All this time, dear Stopmouth, all these months, and the only thing I wanted was to have you beside me. I kept dreaming of you – your face when I left you. The gods know it’s true, my heart was ripped open. But we’re together now, and we will leave together as a family. We have to. I won’t find any answers when I can’t contact the Roof.’

  He closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of her body, until sleep came to carry him away.

  11. THE MONSTER

  A HAND SHOOK him out of a vague dream full of mocking laughter. His eyes opened to find Indrani’s face close to his. She held the baby scooped up in one arm, worry written across her features.

  He started to speak, then shut his mouth at once: Indrani might have been in the Roof for months, but she remembered the hunting signs for Silence! and Danger!

  He held still, allowing his ears to work for him. The snores of old people filled the dark little room. And something else too: a tiny little hiss in the background.

  Up! signalled Indrani, her free hand jerking. Up!

  The room smelled of close-packed bodies, with a bitter undercurrent that might have been related to the age of most of the occupants.

  Up!

  He nodded, fully awake now, still searching out the danger that had his woman so worried. Silently she led him to the entrance and pointed at the floor. The hiss was louder here, and so was the bitter tang in the air. A strange smoke was seeping in through a crack near the ground. He bent as if to examine it. Indrani grabbed him by the hair and kept him upright. He bit his lip to avoid crying out, and suppressed the anger the pain had caused him.

  She brought her mouth right up to his ear and whispered: ‘Don’t breathe in that smoke, whatever you do. The enemy are here.’ As she spoke, she kept jiggling the baby up and down, afraid no doubt that Wallbreaker’s child would give them away.

  ‘They’ll have masks on their faces to protect them from the smoke.’

  He whispered back, ‘We’ll take them off, then!’ Indrani smiled so brilliantly that he lost his heart to her all over again. But she put one arm on his chest to hold him back from the door. That made sense. If the fumes knocked you out, the men on the other side would be waiting too, assuming their quarry would soon be helpless in the tiny room. The smoke rose to his belly. Already he could feel it tickling his nose and the back of his throat. Its roiling motion reminded him of something – he couldn’t quite figure out what.

  Stopmouth watched Indrani place the child on one of the high shelves that ringed the room, but the smoke was still rising. He pointed at the door and she nodded, her face determined. They’d fought together before. He could rely on her. Indrani reached through the smoke for the handle and turned it softly. Now he knew what the churning gas reminded him of. The water of the Wetlane that had almost drowned him once upon a time, where pale beasts had fought to pull him under.

  ‘Breathe,’ Indrani told him. And so he did as she yanked the door open – a deep, deep breath.

  A man and a woman, both dressed in black, fell forward onto the floor. They wore dark masks over their faces, but not for long – Indrani ripped them away and shoved her victims down where they coughed and spat.

  The young hunter was already charging past her into the gloom where three other figures waited. They wore uniforms like those of the Wardens, except these ones had bright red lines running up the legs and along the arms. He rammed his fist into the mask of the first. It was made of some soft hide, with clear brittle circles over the eyes that smashed under Stopmouth’s knuckles. The man fell back, scrabbling at his face and mewling like a Hairbeast pup before the knife came down. At least Stopmouth wouldn’t need the mask any more as the hiss of the sleep-smoke seemed to have halted.

  However, the remaining Wardens, a man and another woman, didn’t panic, even when Indrani came out of the room to stand beside her man. It had been a long time since the two fugitives had faced such easy odds. And yet Indrani seemed more afraid than ever. It was the child back inside on the shelf, decided Stopmouth; it must be that. She could have handled these two by herself any time.

  The male Warden, his voice almost too harsh to be real, said, ‘Easy meat for us today.’ Both laughed. Foolish and overconfident like Sergeant Tarak had been.

  Indrani spat. Then her foot flashed at the woman, aiming for the face. The Warden batted the kick away and drove Indrani backwards with a blur of punches she could barely avoid. These were no muscle-bound slowcoaches like Sergeant Tarak, that was for sure.

  But the hunter didn’t have much time to be surprised, for his own adversary came after him now, with a shiny knife like the one he’d seen in the blue men’s pictures. It criss-crossed the air in front of Stopmouth’s face. He could only stumble against the ladder. The knife came again, this time flying past his cheek to slice through a metal rung and embed itse
lf up to the hilt in the wall. The man laughed, and the young hunter realized his attacker had missed on purpose.

  In the background, the woman had finally broken through Indrani’s guard and rained lazy kicks and punches at whatever part of her enemy’s body took her fancy.

  ‘The gas cylinders are empty,’ the man said. Then he and his companion both stepped back a pace and removed their masks. The Wardens were young and wore their hair long. Stopmouth’s opponent rose above his comrade by a head, his cheeks scarred, possibly by a knife like the one he’d thrown.

  Another scar ran right across his throat, a terrible wound that looked as though it should have killed him. He grinned now, his teeth too perfect to be real. Very distinctly he said: ‘Activate.’

  Stopmouth had heard that word before. Sure enough, in the corner of the room near the empty gas cylinder a fist-sized sphere glowed gently: they had brought a Talker of their own.

  ‘This should be interesting,’ said the scarred man. The words sounded cracked and painful in his young throat. He addressed himself to Indrani, keeping a wary eye on Stopmouth in case of tricks.

  ‘You’ve made a mess of my squad, whore. One missing on the surface. Two of my Elite asleep for days, and one crying like a baby over the measly loss of an eye!’ He kicked the fallen Warden contemptuously in the ribs. ‘Oh, shut up! You can grow a new one when the Crisis is over, but you won’t be getting back into the squad, you hear me?’ Another kick, hard enough this time to make the man forget about his eye.

  ‘Dharam has decided to let you and your savage live, Indrani. He might even permit you to stay here in the Roof.’

  ‘Dharam?’ said Stopmouth, remembering the strange man who’d visited him in the white room. Everyone ignored him.

  In the glow of the Talker, Indrani’s face was battered and bleeding. But not seriously, not yet. ‘I don’t know what information he’s after, Krishnan,’ she said. She stood straight, like the heroine in an ancestor story, ready to stand over her children no matter what creatures burst through the door. ‘And I wouldn’t tell you anyway.’

  Krishnan spat. ‘You’ll tell all right.’ He looked at Stopmouth now, and the hunter felt chills all over his body. He’d feared the Roof would be full of men like Varaha, but until now he hadn’t encountered any. Elites, Kubar had called them. No ordinary man could defeat them, and only the arrival of a pack of hungry Fourleggers had saved Stopmouth the last time he’d faced one.

  He found himself taking an involuntary step away. His enemy grinned, but there was something other than triumph in the Warden’s eyes. Loathing, thought Stopmouth. This Krishnan hates me. The man’s scarred face twisted as though the mere sight of a savage made him want to retch.

  ‘The Religious movements are riddled with us,’ said Krishnan. ‘Only this hole remained secret. But Dharam knows what he’s at! He let your’ – that look again – ‘your cannibal run free and pretended to chase him for a bit.’ He grinned. ‘We always knew where he was, though …’

  How? Stopmouth wondered. How had they known? From the first day of his escape from the white room there’d been nobody to tell them where he was except … except …

  ‘Hiresh?’

  He could hardly believe it. His one friend in the Roof. The boy had even volunteered at the end! Or had he?

  Krishnan laughed. ‘You quite won him over, you know? But he was smart enough to keep doing his job.’

  Stopmouth’s look of horror must have been obvious, for both Krishnan and his female colleague laughed again.

  ‘Oh, I think, cannibal, you’ll find the Elites a bit tougher than those Warden amateurs you fought before. They take a few drugs to get bigger muscles and think it makes them one of us! But they cannot twist your head from your neck as I will do if your whore doesn’t co-operate with me.’

  He spoke as if this were a statement of fact, not a boast, and Stopmouth knew enough to believe it. His stomach tightened with fear.

  ‘I don’t even know what information you want,’ said Indrani.

  ‘Oh, you know.’ Krishnan smiled, his scars twisting on his face. ‘There’s no Roofspace in this hole, but you didn’t come straight here – you couldn’t have. You’ll have had access to your memories before you left the Downstairs, time to find it all out. And when you realized how damaging it was to us, you brought it straight to the Rebels. Isn’t that right, whore? They hated you. Why would they take you in if you didn’t have something to pay them with?’

  Indrani was shaking her head. ‘Whatever it was, I didn’t find it.’

  ‘I’m not playing with you, Indrani,’ said Krishnan. ‘I ordered you dead once before. Trust me, if I have to do it myself, I won’t slip up. So … who else did you tell?’

  ‘Look, I said I—’

  He stormed over to her and smacked her across the face. Stopmouth reacted, running at him, but the man sent him back the way he’d come with a twirling kick. Stopmouth found himself bleeding from the nose and clutching the rungs of the ladder for support.

  Krishnan was shouting now, his cracked voice seemingly on the verge of collapse, while his comrade stood well clear, looking afraid. ‘What did you see, bitch? Who did you tell? What did you see when you took that wrong turn on the warship? What?’ He was holding her up by a handful of hair and yelling into her face.

  ‘I … don’t … know … what you want. I was only on the warship once. I don’t remember!’

  ‘Very well, then.’ His voice turned cold and he dropped her. ‘All right. You don’t know. Maybe your savage knows. Your’ – that look of horror again – ‘your cannibal. I’ll ask him the questions and keep asking. Feel free to answer on his behalf at any time.’ He cracked his knuckles and walked towards Stopmouth.

  ‘What did she see, savage? What did she tell you?’

  Stopmouth didn’t answer, but pretended to cower away from the scarred man. He didn’t need to pretend that much. This was something more terrifying than any beast he’d ever fought: this was another Varaha. People always used to say that no human could ever understand an alien. But he realized that was wrong now. Aliens wanted flesh, that was all. He didn’t know what this man wanted; only that he, Stopmouth, couldn’t provide it, that his death at hands such as these could serve no purpose except to waste food and bring an end to his tribe.

  He waited until he sensed the man reaching for him, then he moved as quickly as he’d ever done in his life. He swung round and punched his adversary in the face, once, twice – hard enough to send him staggering, to crunch teeth. Krishnan howled and spat blood, but, miraculously, he steadied himself enough to start blocking the hunter’s attack and, in mere heartbeats, it was Stopmouth who found himself on the floor.

  ‘Loo’ at me, shavage,’ said Krishnan. His mouth was a ruin of blood and splinters. He grabbed the hunter by the shoulders and lifted him easily from the floor.

  ‘Now,’ he whispered. ‘Shpeak. Wha’ did she tell you?’ He pulled Stopmouth close, as though to embrace him. ‘Wha’ did she shee?’

  He started to squeeze. Stopmouth struggled, but couldn’t get free.

  ‘We don’t know anything!’ screeched Indrani. ‘I’d tell you if I did. I swear I would. I swear.’

  The embrace only grew tighter.

  ‘I watshh you all your life, shavage. Your people alwaysh dishgusht me.’ Stopmouth felt a shudder go through the man’s body – almost as though Krishnan were afraid of him, rather than the other way round. It was something to think about, if it weren’t for the fact that he was on the verge of being crushed to death. He found he couldn’t breathe now. His arms lay trapped at his sides and he fancied he could feel their bones rubbing against his ribs. Krishnan held him as close as any mother would her beloved child. He heard Indrani trying to fight her own opponent in the background and losing.

  Somewhere not too distant, the baby had woken on its shelf and was wailing. Indrani begged to be allowed to go to it.

  Stopmouth wanted to head-butt the man as he had Sergeant Tarak, but
he had no room, his skull pressed against the wall, feeling as if it might burst at any moment, cheek to cheek with his attacker.

  ‘Wha’ did she shee, cannibal?’ The scarred man shuddered again. ‘Flesh-eater?’

  Stopmouth’s vision turned red and splotchy. He had just enough air for one more sentence, but all that emerged was a growl. Then he did something he could never have imagined possible for any man. He moved his head slightly to the side and sank his teeth right into the throat of a living human being. There was no hesitation, no holding back. He bit down through throat and tendon and windpipe and flesh. He chewed and savaged and drank the screams even before they could be born.

  A cry of utter disgust and loathing came from the other side of the room as Krishnan collapsed to the floor. This was followed by a loud snap. Indrani had used the horror and the distraction to break her opponent’s neck.

  Numbly Stopmouth watched her run away from him towards the crying infant next door. He heard her shaky coos of comfort.

  He still had blood on his lips. Pieces of flesh in his teeth, and he couldn’t close his jaws without feeling them there. It was wrong to waste, not to swallow. But he felt more like being sick, like screaming. What would Wallbreaker think? he wondered. I’m even worse than him now. By his own hands he’d killed another human being – not a brave volunteer, but a strong, healthy hunter. With his teeth he’d done it. What had he become?

  Indrani came out of the room with his brother’s baby. ‘Wipe … wipe your mouth,’ she said. ‘Please? We need to get out of here at once. The woman you came with – all the other old ones will be sleeping for days. We can’t take them. They must … they must volunteer.’

  He nodded, mouth still bloody, and reached for the rungs. She stopped him, though. She led him to one side and sat him down next to the moaning guard that Krishnan had kicked. First she wiped Stopmouth’s face, as if he was the baby. Then she dressed both of them in uniforms and masks, and this time he knew better than to refuse the boots. The clothing warmed his skin, as though it were a living thing in its own right.