North! Or Be Eaten (19 page)

Two Stranders appeared and dropped the family’s packs to the ground.

“Old Nurgabog told us to put everything back,” one of them said.

“Our thanks,” Podo answered.

The Stranders left the Igibys free to sit around the fire and inspect their packs. Janner found his old book, his tinderbox and matches, his folding knife and his bow, his dried meat and mirror. As far as he could tell, his belongings were all accounted for.

“It’s all here,” Nia said. She turned to her father. “You never told me you ran with the Stranders.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Tink asked.

“Because it’s not somethin’ I’m proud of,” Podo said. “Just because it makes for a good story doesn’t mean I wouldn’t go back and change it if I could.” He looked at Nia. “There’s much I ain’t told ye, daughter, and much I don’t mean to ever tell.”

With that, Podo lay down with his hands under his head and closed his eyes, and soon, beside a warm fire under the cool stars, they were all fast asleep.

Janner woke to a world shrouded in fog.

It draped the ground, creeping up from the river and collecting in eerie pools around tree trunks and depressions in the land, coursing between the rickety buildings that made up the settlement of the clan of the East Bend. The structures were made of planks and shutter boards, leftovers from the ravaging of Skree at the end of the Great War. They reminded Janner of Peet’s tree house, but unlike Peet’s castle, these buildings were shabby and unkempt, constructed without imagination or care. Stranders slept in or near the shacks, nothing for their beds but dirt, no pillows but their dingy hair and dirty arms. Beyond the shacks, deeper in the fog, squatted the cages.

Janner could see nothing inside them, and the iron gates hung open. The Strander children had been so timid when they approached the camp the night before.
May we come near?
the girl Maraly had asked, and they hadn’t approached until Claxton gave his permission. Why were the children so careful around the adults? And where were their parents?

Then he realized Tink was gone. The rest of the company lay fast asleep by the ashes of the fire, but Tink was nowhere to be seen. Janner scrambled to his feet.

In the trees to his left, he heard voices, then a giggle. Tink appeared out of the fog at a trot, holding a leather ball under his arm. Janner breathed a sigh of relief and waved. Tink waved back, put a finger to his lips, and vanished into the fog again.

Janner tiptoed away from the fire and followed Tink into the fog. Before he had taken two steps, Maraly materialized out of the mist like a ghost. Janner gasped and braced himself for a fight—the girl had a wild, mean look in her eyes.

Out of the fog flew the ball Tink had been carrying. It smashed into the side of Maraly’s head, and she staggered sideways, scooped up the ball, and disappeared into the fog again, whispering, “Kalmar! I’ll get you. You can’t outsmart Maraly Weaver.”

Janner shook his head in disbelief.

Sounds of struggle came from the left, and he followed them through the fog until he found Tink and Maraly tumbling about on the ground, struggling for the ball that lay just out of reach. Janner strolled over and picked up the leather ball, and instantly found himself in the middle of the fight.

Maraly Weaver fought dirty. She clawed and hissed, snapped her teeth and punched. She socked Janner in the gut, and he doubled over, gasping for air and angry she had turned a friendly game into a fight. But he wasn’t in Glipwood anymore. This was the Strand, and if he didn’t want to get a little hurt, then he shouldn’t play.

Neither of the Igiby boys matched Maraly for meanness, but they got used to dodging her attacks. The three played tackleball until the fog lifted and the camp awoke. It was the most fun Janner and Tink had had since that last zibzy game with the Blaggus boys on the morning they explored Anklejelly Manor.

Podo stoked the fire and prepared a breakfast of oatmeal and diggle strips. Janner plopped on the stump beside him, winded, wounded, and filthy from tackleball.

“Good morning!” Oskar said with a puff of his pipe. Janner’s old book was open in the old man’s lap, and beside him on a stump were a few pieces of parchment and an ink bottle. “I’ve been working on this since I woke. The language isn’t so different from Old Hollish after all. Look.” He held out a piece of parchment on which he had scribbled several lines.

“What does it say?” Janner asked.

“A fine question, lad. A fine question.” Oskar’s face fell. “I’ll have to ask your mother. I can’t remember much of Old Hollish other than the look of the letters. All I’m doing is sorting out the new letters from the ancient ones. Once I have a page finished, your mother and I will set to work translating it.”

“Made a friend, have ye?” Podo asked as Tink sprinted past the fire with Maraly at his heels.

“I guess so,” Janner said. “Tink has, at least.”

“We’ll eat some breakfast and then tread on. Every day we’re out here, the Fangs have more time to widen the search. It’s taken us longer to get to Dugtown than I thought it would, and the Ice Prairies aren’t gettin’ any closer.”

Leeli and Nia returned from the river, their hair and faces dripping wet.

“The shoal was safe, then?” asked Podo.

“No daggerfish, and it was right where your old sweetheart told us it was,” Nia said.

Podo rolled his eyes. “Nurgabog gave me this.” He held up Claxton’s pone medallion.
“Said if we ran into any more trouble from Stranders between here and Dugtown, the pone would give us safe passage. Claxton’s a feared man, she says.”

“Feared by everyone but Tink,” Leeli said.

“Aye, lass. He did good last night, didn’t he?”

Tink lurched past, hugging the ball to his chest while Maraly clung to his back and pounded on his ribs.

“If we don’t run into any trouble,” Podo said, “we’ll reach Dugtown by dark. Nurgabog told me where to find a river burrow.”

“What’s that?” Janner asked.

“A Strander hideout. We can stay there while we make arrangements in Dugtown to get past the Barrier and up to the Ice Prairies. The Stony Mountains’ll be too cold for Fangs and too rugged for travelers. All we’ll have to fend from will be the snickbuzzards.”

“And the bomnubbles,” Oskar said.

“Aye, and the bomnubbles.”

“They’re a terrible breed,” Oskar said. “Nigh impossible to kill. I remember reading in Pembrick’s
Creaturepedia
that—” He broke off at a glance from Podo. “Er, I’m sure we won’t see any. Probably not real anyway.”

When the smell of oatmeal and diggle strips reached Tink’s nose, he dropped the tackleball without a word, plopped down at the fire, and smacked his lips.

“Boys, wash your hands,” Nia said, and she told them how to find the safe shoal.

The brothers squatted at the sandy shore and dipped their hands in the water. Before them the Mighty Blapp slipped past on its way to Fingap Falls; the opposite shore was lined with the trees of Glipwood Forest.

“I like Maraly a lot,” Tink said.

“She’s, uh, nice, I guess. A little rough, don’t you think?” Janner asked.

“Not
that
rough.”

They washed in silence for a moment.

“She told me I’d make a good Strander,” Tink said.

Janner laughed. “You’d make a terrible Strander. You’re too smart for them. Besides, you’re no thief. You’re no killer, either. You’re the High King of Anniera, remember?”

They walked back to the camp in silence.

Y
ou need to leave,” Nurgabog said. “Things have changed.” She stood before Podo, her freckled hands folded over the handle of the cane. She pursed and unpursed her lips so that her whiskery chin bobbed up and down like a cork in the water.

“Is Claxton awake?” Podo asked, wiping a dollop of oatmeal from his lip.

“No, ye fool. Claxton’s curled up in his shack like a sick kitten. The Fangs are comin’.”

Podo dropped his bowl and leapt to his foot. “Where? When?”

“From the North Road. The Barrier’s not far from here, and one of our scouts said he seen a gang of ‘em comin’ this way. They weren’t due for several days yet, and now we’ve got to scramble to get ready for ‘em. You need to scat. Take the River Road. Ye’ll see Stranders aplenty but no Fangs. Things are gonna happen in the East Bend that neither you nor your family should see.” Nurgabog smiled a crooked smile. “That kiss last night was the closest me withered heart will find to goodness before I meet the Maker and all his wrath, I fear.”

With a tap of her cane, Nurgabog declared the conversation over and hobbled away. The Stranders were busy strapping on their sheaths and sharpening daggers. They cast nervous glances at a road that stretched north toward the wooded hills. The Strander children, including Maraly, were nowhere to be seen.

“Something bad is going to happen,” Leeli said.

Podo sensed it too and dumped the grease from the skillet and thrust it into his pack without wiping it down. “Janner, Tink, get ready. Hurry!”

Oskar passed the old book to Janner and gathered his ink bottle and parchment, careful not to smudge the fresh ink. Janner’s and Tink’s packs needed only to be strapped shut and swung over their shoulders. As soon as Nia finished gathering the bowls and cups from breakfast, Podo took a last look around the fire and nodded.

“Keep up, lads and lasses. You too, Oskar. We’re gonna be off at a trot for a while, and it won’t be fun.”

“Wait!” Tink said. “I need to say good-bye to Maraly.”

“No time for that, lad,” Podo said.

“But—”

“No time!”

Podo struck off in the direction of the river, and the others did their best to follow. “Maraly!” Tink cried over his shoulder. “Good-bye, Maraly!”

But neither Maraly nor any of the Strander children were anywhere to be seen—just filthy men and women who poured out of the camp with daggers drawn and nefarious smiles stretched across every face.

As they descended the slope to the river and the camp of the East Bend disappeared, Janner heard a final, chilling cry ring out from Nurgabog Weaver: “
READY THE CAGES
!”

Conversation was a waste of precious breath, so they moved in silence. If Leeli ever had reason to miss her dear Nugget, it was now. Podo moved at a merciless pace along the road that followed the river. He looked back occasionally to be sure the children were keeping up, but he never slowed. Leeli hopped along with her crutch faster than Janner had ever seen. Her wavy hair rocked back and forth with every lurching step, and she stumbled often, but she needed no encouragement to get away from the Strander camp as quickly as she could.

Oskar didn’t run, exactly. He shuffled along with his arms pumping and his belly bouncing, but his feet never quite left the ground. His flap of hair had given up altogether on covering his baldness and trailed behind like a sad wisp of smoke. Oskar hadn’t had this much exercise in years, but he was determined not to slow down the company.
Wshhh-a-heeesh-a-wshhh-a-heeesh
went his breathing, like the sound of someone sweeping a floor.

Janner was so unsettled by the Stranders at the camp, the strange disappearance of the children, and the coming of the Fangs that he was afraid to look back. The sea dragon’s warning came to his mind:
he is near you
. What if Podo was wrong and the dragon was telling the truth? Gnag the Nameless could be slithering into the East Bend even now. The hair on the back of his neck rose.

If Tink felt the same fear, Janner couldn’t see it. After his call to Maraly went unanswered, Tink’s face had darkened. He ran beside Janner without taking his eyes from the muddy road.

The rise and fall of the land gradually settled into a flat, grassy bottomland, a wild green in contrast to the muddy road and the gray-brown course of the river. After hours of running, helping Leeli to her feet, running again, slipping in the mud, and so on, Podo stopped so suddenly that Nia thudded into him.

“Down!”
he hissed, motioning for them to duck. They were too tired to question it and plopped into the mud like a slop of wheezing hogpigs.

Podo didn’t appear winded in the least. “Stranders ahead,” he whispered, pointing at a stand of trees in the distance. “They’ve not seen us yet, but they’re bound to any minute. Nia, I hoped to put this off as long as possible, but it’s time to put on our disguises.”

“Disguises?” she repeated.

“Leeli, you too. It’s got to be done.”

Podo scooped up a handful of mud and smiled. Nia’s eyes shot from the mud to Podo’s face and back to the mud, and before she could stop him, he smashed it into her hair. She sputtered and struggled for words but none came. Podo, Oskar, and the children didn’t bother to hide their enjoyment as they covered her from head to toe with mud. Leeli came next. She clamped her eyes shut and grimaced while they smeared her with the muck, but in the end she was laughing. When Nia and Leeli looked as grimy as any Strander, Nia had her revenge on Podo, smiling savagely as she caked his face and hair.

When Podo was satisfied the company was sufficiently filthy, he nodded. “Now you lot just keep quiet. I know how to speak like one of ‘em, and besides, as ye saw yesterday, it’s usually the clan leader who does most of the talkin’. Just stay behind me and try to look mean.”