The Harvest Tide Project (16 page)

Hilspeth was beginning to enjoy the ride with the Vusquid. It had taken her some time to accept that they were not going to slam into a rock or a wall at high speed. The creature guided itself with incredible accuracy. They were going so fast she did not have the sensation of being trapped that had always haunted her in caves and tunnels. She could have done without the rubbish though.

They had been cruising along for some time when the Vusquid had picked up a bucket. Then it had snatched a broken shovel. Then a couple of mouldy cloth sacks. It hardly slowed to make these pick-ups, and Hilspeth and Draegar found themselves at the centre of a growing pile of refuse. When it seized a wagon wheel, Hilspeth began to worry that they would be crushed under the stuff, and her claustrophobia started to reassert itself. Her breathing
quickened
and she clenched her hands against her eyes and tried to block out her fears. Pulling a vial from one of her many
pockets, she opened it and breathed in the scent of
mountain
air in spring. This particular concoction did wonders for melancholy and travel sickness, but it proved little use against the fear induced by hurtling down a tunnel at
breakneck
speed as part of a pile of garbage.

‘Yeehaaaa!’ whooped Draegar.

Daylight broke over them and they were in a high-sided gorge. The light changed Hilspeth’s mood in an instant, and she burst into relieved laughter. They coasted down the river towards a beach on their left. They were still moving very fast.

‘Ah,’ said Draegar, partly muffled by a threadbare blanket that had covered his head. ‘This might hurt a little. Keep your arms and legs tucked in, and your chin on your chest. And watch you don’t bite your tongue.’

Hilspeth had little time to gather what he meant before they were skidding up the beach, thrown from the Vusquid’s grip and out of the water. The rubbish and debris scattered around them as they tumbled up the slope and flopped breathless in the mess strewn across the beach. Draegar climbed to his feet and brushed himself down.

‘Not the most dignified way to travel, but they can
certainly
cover some ground those Vusquids,’ he panted, checking his equipment.

Hilspeth rolled onto her belly and stared up the beach through matted, sandy hair. It rose from where they were to a V-shaped gap in the rock face, over the space of about forty strides. The sand was white, as was the rock along the base of the gorge. It was a beautiful spot, or would have been had it not been for the rubbish scattered everywhere.

‘This all came from the tunnel?’ she wondered aloud.

‘This is only a fraction of what you’d find in there,’
Draegar
rumbled. ‘It’s amazing what people will dump into rivers. Rivers that others have to drink out of. It doesn’t all go to waste though.’

Above them, figures were clambering down the gap towards the beach. Hilspeth sat up. They were dog-people. So named because they hung around like strays. Scavenging from bins and rubbish heaps, these tribes lived on the
outskirts
of towns and villages, and were despised by
townspeople
. Hilspeth considered herself more open-minded than most, but even she had to admit a revulsion at the sight of these scavengers.

‘Was ist dis?’ one cried as he saw the two travellers. ‘
Tunnel
dung chucked frum the river-dog den?’

‘Check your respect for the wrecked says I,’ Draegar growled. ‘Open hearts from the start if there is to be no vexed parting of the parties here.’

The dog-man rocked back on his heels as he heard this. He stood quiet while he measured Draegar and Hilspeth up, eyes sharp beads in his small skull. Hilspeth took the
opportunity
to study him. He had a tiny head, half the size of a normal man’s, with a long hooked nose and protruding teeth. His scalp was bare and flaking, and his skin a yellow colour mottled with pink. His clothes were a patchwork of leather, cotton and linen with bits of metal and wooden beads sewn into them, and more made into necklaces and bracelets. He was about the same height as her, helped by a long neck rising from narrow sloping shoulders. His arms were thin, but looked to have a wiry strength to them, and he had large hands and feet. His feet were wrapped in straps of solid rubber-like gum, and when she caught a glance at
the soles she saw that they had sharp stones embedded in them as grips for the homemade shoes. His six friends were dressed much the same as he was. He spoke again, this time more cautiously:

‘Travelling tunnelways, clutch of the Vusquid you?’

‘Clutch of the Vusquid, aye,’ Draegar nodded. ‘Rush with the Vusquid hustling northways Noran-bound. Any
Clatterers
view you?’

‘Clatterers, aye,’ the dog-man replied. ‘Clattering
northways
. On way to Noran and yonder. Clatterers hand and finger one and smoketails on all.’

He says there is a convoy heading this way,’ Draegar told Hilspeth. ‘Hand and finger one … they count in fingers … one hand means five vehicles, and finger one makes six. Smoketails mean they are all oil-powered. I think that’s our boy. Taya and Lorkrin are bound to try something
somewhere
around here. Plenty of places to hide.’

‘Has he seen them?’ she prompted him.

‘Pinch hand pups view you?’ he asked the dog-man. ‘Myunans tags and bags for kit?’

‘Pups nul, but Myunans hood for good when sought,’ the scavenger said, obviously pleased with the conversation. Hilspeth supposed he rarely met other people who spoke their language.

‘He says he hasn’t seen any, but he pointed out that Myunans are adept at hiding when they know they are being hunted. As if I needed to be told.’

Hilspeth was watching the dog-people picking among the rubbish, pointing, digging and talking excitedly as they worked. She shook her head at the sight of it.

‘Don’t be so quick to judge,’ Draegar warned her. ‘The
Gabbits are an ingenious race. They can make use of things that normal people think of as useless. The townsfolk around here will probably end up buying back some of their garbage in some form or other. Watch those two over there.’

Sure enough, two of the dog-people, or Gabbits as
Draegar
had called them, were attaching the cart wheel to an axle, then bowls, boards and the blades from shovels to the rim of the wheel. Holding it out over the river, they dipped its edge into the water, and Hilspeth saw it turn like a mill wheel. That movement could turn a grindstone or wind a winch. They had done this in the time that she and the
Parsinor
had been talking to the dog-man. They took it apart again and began packing it up. All around them, the Gabbits were nodding and chattering about objects that Hilspeth would have considered fit only for burning.

‘Gabbits are offended by waste,’ Draegar went on. ‘To them it is a mortal sin. They don’t just use garbage because they want to – they are obliged to; it is in their nature to make use of what others discard. To allow things to go to waste is an insult to their gods.’

‘A very noble philosophy,’ Hilspeth said, diffidently.

‘Yes, but it does give them a unique smell.’ Draegar smiled down at her. ‘Let’s go and find those wagons.’

12 H
OW THE
F
ERRY
G
ETS
F
ED

Deep in thought, Emos regarded the gouge in the mud. It smelled of Taya, but the mark in the earth had been made by a creature with a beak-like face, and was shaped as if the animal had fallen from a height. She and Lorkrin had learned to fly. That was why their trail on this hill had disappeared. It meandered back and forth, as if they had been running about, then it vanished.

A strong wind was beginning to gust across the hill, and the Myunan closed his eyes and drew in a breath. He had found their trail again in Hortenz (he was not sure he believed that they had tangled with skacks, as Neblisk had claimed). They had joined up with a woman who smelled of … well, many things. He knew that Draegar had found them, which had offered the Myunan some comfort, but the pair had escaped his friend in some cornfields. They had been following a Noranian convoy that had set out from the town, a convoy that Neblisk had told him carried the Prime
Ministrate
and another man, a botanist, someone who was
important
to the Noranians. This seemed to be the man Lorkrin and Taya were after. Did they know who he was and what
he was working on? Did he have some kind of connection with the dead man that Murris’s crew had pulled up on their anchor? Emos did not want to think about what would happen to them if his niece and nephew crossed the
Noranians
. He was becoming more and more convinced that Rak Ek Namen was trying to start a war between the Karthars and the Braskhiams, a war only the Noranians would win. He was sure they would go to any lengths to make sure it
happened
, even leaving a man to suffocate to death at the bottom of the esh … or killing two Myunan children.

Standing there in the breeze, watching ornacrids play on the hillside, he was reminded of the time his niece and nephew had come to visit during Harvest Tide. The esh had swelled and swept over his land, covering it in a wispy carpet of sessium. Taya and Lorkrin had been spellbound, scooping up handfuls of the gas and letting it drop, watching it sink slowly back to the ground.

Floating in on the Harvest Tide were the seed pods or bules which gave it its name and Emos wondered if it was these that the Noranians were after with their strange
experiments
. This gas-bound crop was collected by people along the Braskhiam coast, and the bules strained for their oil. Bule oil was used for everything from cooking to fuelling
vehicles
. The tide had only come up to his ankles that year, but it had still left behind on his land enough bules to buy a new horse. The children had wanted to ride it every day.
Following
the trails of the ornacrids down the hill, he thought back on what he had discovered of Taya and Lorkrin so far.

The military vehicles were bound for Noran. It was a fair guess that his nephew and niece were headed in the same direction. He could not track them while they flew, but he
could find the convoy. Unrolling his tools, he started to
fashion
feathers over his skin.

Groach was beginning to get the hang of Pengence now. He was still nowhere near Rak Ek Namen’s standard, but the Prime Ministrate was no longer having to explain rules at every turn. He rotated the castle as he considered his next move. Namen had most of the territory, but Groach was still holding onto the ballroom and the kitchens, two courtyards and the dungeons. This meant that he could stop the Prime Ministrate from linking his territories and winning the game. He was just planning an attack on one of the Prime
Ministrate’s
shield maidens when the coach started to slow down.

The window behind Groach opened and the driver called in: ‘Approaching the crossing, Prime Ministrate.’

‘Good!’ Rak Ek Namen clapped his hands together and smiled at Groach. ‘A chance to get out and stretch our legs.’

Groach smiled back, but did not comment that sitting in the plush cabin of the coach was far preferable to lying on bare boards in the back of a gaol wagon, as he had been two days before. He was quite happy to go on sitting there,
playing
Pengence for some time yet. Outside, he could see that they were travelling alongside a river with high banks,
surrounded
by thick vegetation. The coach slowed further and then turned out onto a pier built on some kind of rocky
outcrop
. They rolled to a halt, and Cossock jumped down off the back, the vehicle lifting considerably as he did so.

After a cautious survey of the dock, and a quiet word with the scouts that had driven ahead of them, he opened the door of the coach. Rak Ek Namen stepped easily down from 
the cabin, followed less gracefully by Groach, who leant over the wooden railing and gazed out at the wind-ruffled water. They were standing on one side of the pier, on which all six vehicles were now parked, its floor composed of heavy beams bolted to the reddish grey rock. A stunted, reptilian-looking man scampered towards them. He had bright green scaly skin, and unblinking orange eyes above a flat, wide nose. His long skull extended over his hunched back and into a striking yellow crest. His clothing was made from heavy sacking stitched with twine. The soldiers let him through, and he slid to his knees at the Prime Ministrate’s feet, bowing so low his nose touched the boards.

‘An honour to have you aboard, once again, Prime
Ministrate
,’ he muttered, his face pressed against the ground. ‘You grace us with your wondrous, stately presence. I deeply, deeply hope you have the most pleasant of journeys with us. What an honour this is.’

‘The Prime Ministrate is in a hurry,’ Cossock said in a voice like a grindstone. ‘Enough boot-licking. Get us under way.’

With a snivel, the little character backed away, then jumped to his feet and jogged back up to the end of the pier. Two more men of the same race were detaching mooring chains where the pier joined the bank. The first man picked up a large net full of fresh fish and attached it to one end of a long pole. Lodging the pole into a mounting on a turntable, he swung the fish far out over the end of the pier. He then picked up a sledge hammer that was leaning against the mounting and began beating the rock at his feet while screaming at the top of his voice.

Watching this with fascination, Groach looked quizzically at the Prime Ministrate:

‘Is that how he calls the ferry?’

‘In a manner of speaking, I suppose, yes,’ was the reply.

Groach started as he felt the ground move beneath his feet. Staggering to keep his balance, he noticed some of the guards had moved to the railings, and were peering over into the choppy water, although more out of interest than surprise. He looked back towards the little reptilian man, and his eyes bulged at the enormous head that rose out of the water, attempting to reach the net full of fish. It was the same colour and texture of the rock the pier was built on, and almost as wide. It dawned on him that this pier was not built on rock, but on the back of a bexemot. These huge creatures lived in deep lakes and rivers. He had read about them but never seen one, though he had heard there were some in the river Gullin, running through the centre of Noran. He watched as the small man dangled the fish just out of reach of the monster’s jaws, and teased the creature into moving forward into the river. By turning the pole, he was able to steer the creature right and left, and Groach
realised
that this
was
the ferry.

He was woken from his reverie by two of the guards beside him. They were flicking the safety catches off their crossbows, and one was taking aim at something above them. Groach gazed skywards, and saw two birds circling above them. The bexemot was moving upstream, and the birds seemed to be following them. When they came a bit closer, he noticed they looked more like bats, but with long, sharp heads. The soldiers did not know what they were, and wanted to shoot one down and have a closer look at it. Groach considered this a slightly barbaric way of gathering information, but he had always been a little scared of
soldiers, and the previous few days had not helped improve matters. He stayed quiet.

‘I’ll hit it in one, you watch,’ one said to the other.

‘I’m watching. I still say they’re too far up. You don’t have the range.’

‘You watch, I’ll do it.’ He aimed and shot. The bolt flew nearly faster than the eye could see, shooting towards its target. It almost appeared to make it, but it slowed down and the bat thing flipped athletically out of its path. The creature dipped down and dived at them at a steep angle, dropping ever closer.

‘Castig!’ the Whipholder who commanded the convoy roared. ‘Who gave you permission to take pot shots at birds?’

‘We just wanted to see what it was, sir,’ Castig, the guard holding up his crossbow, protested.

‘If I see you loose off another shot from that weapon
without
orders to do so, you will be back shelling ornacrids in Westermare so fast, your feet won’t touch the ground.’

‘Yes, sir. Understood, sir.’

Just at that moment, the creature beat its wings and pulled out of its dive. A light, yellow rain fell on the guards, and Groach wrinkled his nose as a faint, but unmistakable odour drifted towards him.

‘I can’t believe you did that!’ Taya gaped to hide her smile as Lorkrin climbed back up towards her, fighting the stiff breeze.

‘You just can’t believe you didn’t think of it first,’ Lorkrin replied, smugly.

Groach watched the bat, or bird, join its companion and an uneasy feeling squirmed in his gut. Memories of sewers and skacks and shape-changers flooded back to him. He was afraid that there was a reason that nobody knew what kind of creatures those were. He was afraid that that kind of
creature
did not exist at all. He turned his attention to the Prime Ministrate. The Noranian leader was reading a parchment, and appeared deep in thought.

He had an aura, the Prime Ministrate. Groach knew he had been very young when he had won power in Noran, over ten years ago now. Prime Ministrates were normally middle-aged, but Namen had outwitted many people in his rise to leadership. There were stories of savagery and
assassinations
, treachery and the exiling of his opponents; but Groach knew that there were always people who would try and blacken the name of the leader of an empire. To him, Rak Ek Namen seemed an intelligent, warm, civilised man. The weight of his responsibilities showed in the lines of his otherwise young face, but Groach felt privileged to be in this man’s company, and was thoroughly enjoying himself.