Under Fragile Stone (25 page)

‘But what if he’s all right and he’s already climbing up, looking for us?’

‘What choice have we got?’

‘What if he’s already dead?’

Lorkrin didn’t answer.

‘What about Rug?’ she asked.

‘He’s with Trankelfrith. Or at least he was. Anyway, Draegar’s got to come first. We saw him fall. We know he could be hurt.’

Taya did not want to desert Rug, but she had to agree with her brother. Draegar could not have fallen so far without being injured. They had to find him. The trunk of the tree offered plenty of hand and footholds on the way down and the thick, tangled foliage was as much a support as an obstacle.

As they began their descent, a noise from above made them freeze and they saw something coming down past them. It was the one of the other grunchegs that had attacked them, its rider, a young Reisenick, egging it on downwards. They disappeared into the mist and the Myunans heard the mewing of two of the creatures beneath them. Then the new gruncheg appeared again, with the other male. Between them, they carried Crissabel’s inert form using leather harnesses. The Myunans could not tell if she was alive or dead. Draegar and his saddle were gone. The gruncheg’s body was spirited up to the roof of the forest 
and hauled out of sight. Even more despondent than they had been before, Taya and Lorkrin continued their descent.

The gruncheg’s tremendous weight held Rug down firmly against the branches beneath him, the straps of the saddle preventing him from trying to slide out either side. The darts fired by the three hunters had taken effect and Plessebel had surrendered to the greater strength of the male gruncheg, rolling over onto her back. Trankelfrith had not surrendered. The other rider was already groggy with the effects of the dart and the Gutsnape clambered up behind him to finish the job. He took the knife he was holding between his teeth and drove it up under the other man’s ribs. Then he grabbed the reins and took control of the mount.

Rug felt queasy at the sight of the dead man being pushed off the saddle and into the green depths and he looked away. He patted his pocket for comfort and discovered with a start that his nail was missing. He did not know why it was so important, but ever since he had picked it up, he had not been able to keep his mind off it, and had felt the need to constantly check on it. Now it was gone. It must have fallen out when Plessebel had rolled onto him. Rug panicked. It had to be close by. He twisted his head to try and peer down into the foliage beneath him, but could not see it. If it had fallen through there, he had lost if forever.

He did find the tail of a dart protruding from his shoulder. He pulled it out and looked at it. Draegar had told him about these. The tips were normally dipped in either poison or sleeping draft. Rug went still, waiting for any signs of drowsiness or oncoming death. But he felt fine. Someone
must have forgotten to dip their dart. He wriggled to try and get free of the saddle, straining to reach the buckles that were pressed between his body and the gruncheg’s back. As he did so, he felt something sharp stick into him and,
expecting
to find another dart, he pushed his hand in to get at it. It was his nail. Heaving a sigh of relief, he held it up, looking longingly at its beautiful, rust-coloured shape. On a whim, he held it out above his head where he could get his other hand to it and gently straightened the nail with his fingers. It was easier than he expected. He put it back in its pocket and buttoned the flap down carefully.

Trankelfrith appeared suddenly beside him, giving him a fright.

‘We’ll be havin’ no more trouble from that filthy,
gas-bloated
pond-scum!’ he assured his passenger. ‘Let’s get you out from under there until ol’ Plessebel can right herself, eh?’

The Gutsnape used the captured animal to roll the
unconscious
gruncheg over enough for him to reach the buckles on the straps and free Rug. Then they sat on her belly and got their breath back.

‘Other one went after the one that fell down there with Crissabel,’ Trankelfrith told him sleepily, the toxin from the dart still doing battle with the hajam in his system. ‘
Pox-riddled
sons of a crack rash made off with her somewhere. We’ll have to go after ’em when Plessebel wakes up.’

‘What about Draegar and the children?’

‘They’re down in the underside somewhere.’

‘Shouldn’t we go and help?’ Rug asked.

‘Take too long to climb down, and longer to look for
anybody
. I got a gruncheg to fetch back,’ the Gutsnape replied simply, taking out his lump of weed. ‘Still, Plessebel’s got 
some sleepin’ to do. Let’s see who comes up in the
meantime
. Want some?’

‘No, thank you.’ Rug gazed at the ragged hole in the forest roof, feeling a dull pain in his chest as he thought about the friends who were lost down there.

He patted his pocket and made a decision.

‘I’m going to see if I can find them,’ he said.

‘Have it your own way.’ Trankelfrith spat out some green saliva. ‘But when Plessebel wakes up, I’m gone.’

Rug nodded and slid off the belly of the sleeping
gruncheg
, treading carefully on the path that meandered over the top of the foliage.

‘You’d better crawl,’ the Gutsnape told him. ‘Path’s not strong enough unless you spread your weight some. And mind how yuh go. There’s plenty down in those woods that’ll hurt yuh, or kill yuh, or just plain eat yuh whole.’

Rug raised a hand in a wave, got down on his hands and knees and crawled towards the hole in the forest.

The forest floor was a long way below them and the climb down was slow and complicated. By the time the Myunans had reached the bottom, there was little daylight filtering through the mist and foliage and the grey gloom closed in on them with damp and quiet menace.

‘We need to mark the trees, so we don’t get lost,’ Taya whispered.

Lorkrin nodded. They both took out their knives and, as they walked, they made cuts to mark their passage. They could just see the broken limbs above them where the grunchegs had fallen through, and they walked back and forth across the area 
looking for the Parsinor. The way was blocked with fallen debris and knotted foliage and searching was a tortuous process. Sometimes they were sure they heard somebody calling, but the sound was distant and lost in the trees. When they had made their way from one end of the area to the other and still not found anything, they began to get scared.

‘What if he’s still up in the branches somewhere?’ Lorkrin wondered aloud.

‘It would take forever to find him,’ Taya shook her head and sat down on a moss-covered stone. ‘What do we do now? Climb back up again?’

‘I suppose we’ll have to. Rug and Trankelfrith are still up there somewhere.’

‘If they’re alive. Who were those men? Were they with Ludditch, do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lorkrin sniffed. ‘They might just have been out hunting. You can’t tell with these Reisenicks. That’s going to be a long climb.’

Taya stifled a sob and Lorkrin looked at her in surprise. He sat down next to her and she turned away from him and burst out crying.

‘What are we going to do?’ she sobbed. ‘Draegar could be dead. We don’t know where we are. Everybody’s after us. And Ma and Pa are still stuck under that bloody mountain! I can’t take this. I want to go home.’

Lorkrin put his arm around her and tried to comfort her, but he could feel himself giving in to his own fears. Seeing Taya like this shook him more than he wanted to admit. He could always be brazen about things as long as she was there beside him. But now she was giving in and leaving him on his own. 

‘Hey, come on. It’s okay,’ he said hesitantly, knowing it was a poor attempt at reassurance. He never knew how to deal with emotional people; he normally left that to Taya.

He wrapped his arms around her and she hugged him back, each of them drawing strength from the other.

‘We’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘But we can’t stay here. Draegar could have landed up among the trees somewhere. We’ll climb up and work our way around as we go.’

She nodded and wiped her face. Knowing her eyes would be red from the crying, she willed the colour away, and patted her brother’s shoulder as if to assure him that she was better now. It was amazing how a good cry could clear the air sometimes.

‘Let’s get changed,’ she said.

Lorkrin nodded and took off his pack. It would be
impossible
to search every tree from top to bottom, but they would cover as much area as they could on the way up. It would be harder than their climb down and they would need every advantage they could get, so there were a few improvements they had to make. Unrolling the tools, they started reshaping their bodies. They had to improvise at times, as the kit Emos had started making was not complete, but they managed, even in the sparse light that shone through the thin mist. It felt good to be amorphing again; the familiarity of it was
comforting
and exercising their skills helped restore their confidence.

Every now and again, one of them thought they heard something and looked up, but the woods were still except for the movements of birds and the small animals in the undergrowth. Their new forms soon took shape and before long, they were ready to climb.

Their legs were shortened and their arms beefed up, their 
toes and fingers longer and ending in claws. They had given themselves prehensile tails, which were clumsy, because adding a limb was always difficult, but useful nonetheless. In a moment of inspiration, Lorkrin had suggested giving
themselves
climbing fangs, like the rockrats in the Kartharic Peaks. He tried it first and Taya could not help but giggle.

‘What?’ he asked, his voice slightly distorted by the four huge, hooked teeth jutting from his top jaw. ‘How does it look?’

‘Like you’ve got a bear’s foot in your mouth. You’d better strengthen your neck if you’re going to use those. I’d hate to see you get a grip and then rip the top of your head off trying to pull yourself up.’

Lorkrin smirked. That was the Taya he knew.

The final touch to their new forms was mottled green, brown and ochre camouflage, to hide them as they climbed. They rubbed moss and soil into their packs to help the effect. They were packing up the tools when a new sound made them raise their heads. A shrill, hoarse barking. One voice cried out, and then more answered the call.

‘Hunnuds,’ Taya gasped.

‘They’re still quite far away,’ Lorkrin said. ‘They might not be after us.’

‘Let’s not hang around anyway.’

Slinging their packs onto their backs, they ran to the
nearest
trunk and started climbing.

Emos did not even know what he expected to find. In his aukluk form, he circled the forest around Shindles’
homestead
, wishing there was some way his eyes could penetrate the layers of foliage that hid the ground below him. The 
delay was maddening. They could have reached the cave by now if things had not gone so badly wrong. He was still
baffled
by the behaviour of Ludditch and the Reisenicks.
Something
had set them off and he did not know what it could be. Weariness was starting to set in. He had gone days without proper sleep, but he could not rest until he had done all he could to save Nayalla and Mirkrin. He could only hope that Draegar had found Taya and Lorkrin; he was going out of his mind with worry for them. He had to believe that his friend had got to them.

Swooping lower, he scouted the road ahead – the one that would get them back on to a heading for the cave.
Something
in the brush by the side of the track caught his eye and he wheeled for a better look. Reisenicks, a group of four crouching in the undergrowth, hidden from sight of the road. The clansmen did not hunt on the roads; they must be watching for something. Emos swept over them and flew back to a branch in the road. Could the four men be looking out for the two trucks? Did Ludditch want to catch them so badly? He glided down over the fork in the road and out along it. Not far up the trail, he saw another group, once again hidden from the road, but visible from the air.

Emos gained some height and looked around him. There was another road off to the west, the main one leading along the foot of the Rudstones towards the Gluegrove Swamps. It would have been his chosen route to the cave if they had not run afoul of the clansmen. He turned towards it, already knowing what he would find.

Climbing was tricky, Rug discovered. The bark was slippery 
from the damp mist and the tops of the trees were thin and flimsy. Several times he nearly fell when a limb broke or his feet slipped. Further down, the branches were stronger, but the foliage was thicker and hard to penetrate. He had made it halfway down the first tree he had tried and was now at a loss as to how to carry out any kind of a search. Just getting down this far had seemed to take forever. He could see why Trankelfrith had dismissed the idea. It was getting dark too, and the gloom finished off the job the foliage had started, hiding everything around him that wasn’t within arm’s reach.

‘Lorkrin! Taya! Draegar!’ he called again. But once again, there was no answer.

At times, he heard other animals moving through the trees and more than once he was startled by birds bursting out of the leaves and taking flight as he disturbed them.

He tried calling again, almost ready to give up and climb back to the forest roof, hoping that Trankelfrith had not already left. Somebody called back, and he went still to listen.

‘Down here!’ the voice came again. It was Draegar.

With a fair amount of struggle, Rug followed the sound of the Parsinor’s voice through the maze of branches, twigs and leaves. He found Draegar’s huge feet. The Parsinor was
hanging
upside down, still strapped into his saddle, which was
tangled
up in some branches. He looked thoroughly frustrated.

‘How are you?’ Rug asked.

‘What kind of question is that?’ the map-maker snapped, his dignity already badly strained. ‘Get me up out of this.’