Mutant City (13 page)

‘Get up,’ Silas said to Creep, half dragging the man to his feet. He held a hand out, palm up. ‘Return the things you made her steal.’

Mumbling under his breath, Creep dug the money out of his pocket and handed it to Silas, who replaced it back in the discarded wallet.

‘That didn’t all come out of there.’

‘Shut up and get out of here,’ Silas said to the man.

‘You’re letting me go?’ Creep stared at him incredulously. ‘Just like that?’

‘Go to Steeleye and tell him he has exactly two hours to release our friend. He can take her to the Dog and leave her there. Tell him that failure to do so would not be in his best interests.’

‘Are you insane?’

‘Tell him what I said. Word for word. Now go.’

The man needed no further invitation. He turned on his heels and hurried away. When he felt he was at a safe distance, he paused and called back to Silas, ‘You are a dead man! You hear me? A dead man!’ With that he scurried off.

Turning to the girl again, Silas knelt down so he could be closer to her level. She was beautiful. Reddish blonde hair hung halfway down her back, and her blue eyes looked out from a delicate face whose cheeks were bedecked with tiny freckles. ‘You won’t remember me, Flea, but we’ve met before.’ He smiled at her and handed the wallets over. ‘Do you think you could use your gift to give these back to the people they belong to? Without getting caught?’

The girl shrugged and nodded as if it would be the easiest thing in the world.

‘Good. You go and do that. I’m going to wait here for you. When you come back I’d like to take you to a place where you’ll be safe. Then Jax and I are going to find Lana and bring her back there too. Would you like that?’

The girl smiled for the first time. She nodded and beamed up at Jax.

‘OK.’ He smiled as the girl disappeared, a blur that moved too swiftly for his eyes and brain to register properly.

Alone again, the two men faced each other.

‘Do you think Steeleye Mange will just give Lana up?’ Jax asked.

‘I doubt it. Men like him are used to getting their own way, and they tend to get pretty ticked off when people spoil their plans.’

‘So what are we going to do?’ Jax asked, but the smile on his face suggested he already knew the answer.

‘I think we’ll have to pay our friend a visit.’

Rush

Much to his dismay, there was no sign of the mountain men or of Dotty when Rush came across the camp they’d clearly used the night before. The group had already packed up and moved on. Alone, Rush would easily have caught up with them, but despite the big guy healing faster than the younger mutant believed possible, Brick’s leg was still causing him considerable pain. So Rush scouted ahead, using the hunting skills Josuf had taught him as a young boy, and when he returned he was satisfied he knew in which direction the men had gone.

‘There are at least two of them. There might be more but it’s hard to tell,’ he told Brick. ‘They’re not travelling particularly quickly, probably due to Dotty slowing them down.’ He nodded encouragingly at his friend. ‘We’ll catch them. And we’ll get Dotty back.’

They set off together. Rush had become so used to having the rogwan at his side, it felt wrong to be travelling without her. In her absence he realised how very fond of the ugly little creature he had become. After three hours of monotonous walking, they spotted a clearing where the trail stopped and the men had made a new camp. Putting a finger to his lips and pointing, Rush signalled for Brick to halt. They’d agreed on a simple plan: find the men, wait until dark, creep into their camp and free the rogwan. Watching the encampment from behind a bush, Rush thought he might not even have to wait for nightfall; the men were off somewhere, probably hunting or collecting wood for a fire. There was a big pile of animal skins on a wooden sledge device. The men must be trappers, the skins merchandise to be sold.

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.