Nondula (The Waifs of Duldred Book 2) Read online

  As they neared the fort Oy began talking nervously: ‘I know the Felluns are half blind, but you’d think they’d have seen me by now. Clair said they got no imagination. They only see what they’re expecting to see, and they ain’t expecting to see me. Still, I wish they would come down and take me, because I ain’t got the courage to go much closer.’

  The grass became worn and sparse and the ground was pitted with hoof prints. A rubble strewn yard was the only thing left between Oy and the gate. The kingfisher settled briefly on his shoulder and touched its head to his cheek. Then it flew away northwards. As Oy watched it go a watch-cockerel came strutting across the waste, pecking among the stones for slowmice and rock snakes. It had a bald neck and Oy could see the snakes struggling in its throat. The cockerel’s chequered eye split the yard into a thousand images. Oy stood lost and awkward in one of them.

  The bird threw its head back and crowed. ‘Arut-aroooooo,’ looped around the yard. It gulped and gagged on the snake, even as it ran. Within moments a great warmth of feathers came breasting towards him. He was hemmed by scaly legs, wobbly wattles and mad-rolling eyes. A beak, heavy as old furniture, clubbed him on the temple. Oy’s mind whitened and he went down. The cockerels stood on him. Crusty claws gripped his limbs. Beaks clashed around his eyes.

  ‘What you got there?’ The guard beat the cockerels aside. ‘Some sort of pixie fella?’ He rubbed the base of Oy’s thumb. ‘No stamp. Well don’t lay there shuddering. You’d better get up and say what you’re about, or feel the weight of this.’ The guard slapped a cudgel into his hand. ‘What you doing straying around Fellund as though you had the freedom of the place?’

  Oy had forgotten how to speak.

  ‘You answer in three breaths or you won’t have a fourth.’ The man raised his weapon.

  Oy held and held his third breath. Everything that had happened since leaving the Affland bakery flashed through his mind. He saw Linnet; he remembered how she had taught him language, and how to laugh and shout. A word exploded on his breath.

  ‘Oy!’

  ‘I’m warning you, boy. Give me your name and tribe, now!’

  ‘Oy. Oy Yew.’

  ‘Alright, that’s enough games; you’re pulp and powder.’

  ‘Oy Yew is my name, sir.’

  The guard pulled him up. Oy shot into the air, his lightness unexpected. ‘My spit’s denser than you.’ The guard spat to prove his point.

  Another man approached. ‘What you got there, Trof?’ he asked.

  Trof shielded his nose from the reek of the other man. He spoke from behind his hand.

  ‘A runt what ought to have been left out to shrivel,’ said Trof. He ain’t worth keeping. A day’s labour would kill him. I’ll boot him into the dog pens.’

  ‘No,’ Oy protested, ‘I’m... I’m the last healer in Nondula. She... the Fellona’s looking for me.’

  ‘Now why would she be looking for you?’ said Trof.

  ‘She’s sick and I’m...’ Oy felt the blow to his head. A moment of his life disappeared. He sat dazed on the gravel.

  ‘Men have died for saying less than that,’ said Trof. ‘You can’t call the Fellona sick. Sick looks like you. The Fellona has more blood in her finger than you’ve got in your whole body. Dog meat’s all you’re good for.’

  The other man rubbed his chin. ‘Might as well get some use out of him first. I’ll give you something for him – bag of liver do you?’

  ‘Not if we’re talking turkey.’

  ‘Wild cat?’

  ‘Boar’s liver and he’s yours.’

  Purchased with a bag of offal, Oy followed the stinking man through the gates and into the fort. From out to in, the walls got higher and thicker, the gates got heavier and the slams more final. He was in and there would be no out. The chill passed through his smock, but the worst type of cold was the other type: the people he saw were without kindness, without feeling.

  At the last gate they stamped his hand with needles. The pain woke memories of a forgotten dream: huge ugly faces leaning close to his, heavy hands on him, harsh voices. He felt sick. The man swabbed his hand with a stinging liquid and the pricks came up as bumps in the shape of an N.

  ‘That ain’t N for Nondul,’ said the man, ‘It’s N for nobody, ’cos that’s what you are from now on. I’m taking you to the pits with me. You can live with the animals, like a proper nobody, and you can help with the feeding. I can’t trust the Chee, they’d be feeding themselves. But you Nonduls don’t eat meat. Is that right? I can see it just by looking at you.’ They crossed a square and entered a passage. He nodded to the doors on either side of him. ‘This is where the Chee slavies live. Saltway coming up.’

  The Saltway ran on stilts through a cavern. ‘Below the walkway, Chee were breaking rocks of salt and shovelling it into giant mortars to be crushed. The salt gave off heat as more of it was exposed to air. The saltface was lit by yellow light. The black hair of the Chee was crusted with salt and their eyes were red and sore. Oy could feel a burning in his nose and throat.

  ‘Carnate salt,’ said the keeper. ‘It’s how we feed the masses. Beastlunders won’t eat an animal’s innards. Hearts, lights, liver, entrails; they won’t have none of it. We take it off their hands and ship it in. That’s where the salt barges come in. Put old meat in carnate and it gives it another life. The top nobs get all their meat fresh from the pits. Down here, then we’re home.’ They left the cavern via a tunnel draped with black pods.

  ‘Bet you don’t get dungpod over in Nondul land,’ said the man, rustling the growths. ‘Fresh air kills it.’

  Oy had both hands over his nose. The man knocked them away. ‘Take a deep breath. This is what you’ll be breathing from now on. A few years of this and fresh air will make you light-headed.’

  The tunnel opened into another cavern. On either side were filthy stables. All kinds of hooved animals stood in mire their heads hanging low. Some nosed at nets of straw. Everything was rotting, crumbling, mouldy and strung with dirty webs and dungpod. ‘This is Murkbarn,’ said the keeper, ‘which runs into Fowlscop.’

  The fowl pens and bird cages were caked in green guano. The birds hid themselves in the corners of the cages and kept their eyes closed. Beyond Fowlscop lay cratered miles of misery. ‘Home,’ said the keeper, ‘otherwise known as The Pits. Get your nose in here.’ He took a long noisy inhale. ‘Now that is what I call full-bodied air.’

  The air was thick with animal smells, neglect and fear. Lining the walkways were grille-covered pits where the animals paced out their boredom or lay in matted dejection.

  ‘Watch where you put your feet,’ said the keeper. ‘Slip and you’re small enough to go through the bars. There’s things down there that would be happy to take your leg off.’

  Oy trod cautiously at first, then, as he looked into the pits and cages, he forgot his fear. I’m not here to hurt you, he thought. I’ll be locked up just like you, but if I can ever free you I will. The cats had their own smell. Black cougars with jewels for eyes, flowed and slunk like oil. The next pit held a furious ball of spitting, scratching wild cats. When there were more yeowls than snarls the ball fell apart. The cats crept to the sides of the pit, their bellies low to the ground. They licked their paws and passed them over scarred faces, torn ears, and fur wet with blood.

  ‘Give ’em a minute and they’ll be back at it,’ said the keeper.

  A regular thudding sound came from the next pit. Oy looked down. A stag with fractured antlers butted the wall again and again. The jimps were the only animals to take an interest in Oy. Their long fingers wrapped around the grille as they pulled themselves up. When Oy smiled at them they turned their lips inside out showing square brown teeth.

  The cavern narrowed. ‘Bear Passage coming up,’ said the keeper.

  The passage was long and hot and smelly with the heat of dusty pelts. At the far end were disused pits, with crumbling walls and broken troughs.

  They came to a pit that seemed empty, then Oy saw a dark pil
e of fur laying in a corner. Flies buzzed around its head and rear. Oy was filled with pity; he lingered for too long. A great black head reared just below his feet. Oy stood panting, unable to move. The bear gave a low, threatening growl.

  ‘Old Bruin, if he wasn’t ailing he’d punch that grille out,’ said the keeper. ‘That’s the first time he’s moved in days. The scent of you has made him curious.’ The keeper took Oy by the shoulders and held him close to the grille. ‘Here, is this what you want? He wouldn’t make more than a mouthful for you, bones and all.’ Oy pulled back and the keeper let him go. ‘He’s scary the first time you see him, but he’s all posturing these days. He’s the granddad of most of these other bears. The Fellona’s saving him for something special. I can tell you now, by the time he goes for slaughter, Bruin’s blood will be near black: all that age and rage building in him. A warrior drinks that blood and his own is fired with meanness. The prize will be the liver. Do you know why they call it liver? Because a good one, a good angry liver, lives on after you spring it from under the rib cage. Bruin’s will be black and glossy and frothy with black blood; yes, slippery and flipping with anger like a gasping fish it will be. That liver would send a Berd looking for his sword. My guess is it will go to the next husbind. See inside my mouth.’ The keeper gaped at Oy. ‘I’ve got a warrior’s mouth. That’s from eating liver. I get more than my share down here. Blackmouth Burf they call me.’

  Burf moved on but Oy lingered. He looked into the bear’s eyes and something happened. Ede had showed him how to talk to animals but he wasn’t very good at it.

  ‘Look into the eyes,’ she had said, ‘now look behind and behind, and look behind again. Do you see?’

  This time Oy saw, and caught his breath. He saw the bear’s real nature; behind its fear, its misery and its anger he saw its wild heart. Its nature was seamless with mountains, pines and rivers, and for one moment it was seamless with Oy. And they took you away and boxed you up, thought Oy. The bear growled again, but this time it was higher, gentler, almost questioning. It tilted its nose and stepped closer, its feet shuffling in the straw far below. It stretched its matted neck and chest as high as it could, and very delicately sniffed.

  ‘Keep movin’,’ said Burf. ‘He can’t reach you, long as you don’t slip.’

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ Oy whispered to the bear, ‘wild and strong and beautiful. I’m honoured to make your acquaintance.’

  ‘Come on, you lily,’ called the keeper. ‘Stop looking down or you’ll never get past him.’

  The next cavern was full of pigs.

  ‘A snorter pit will do for you,’ said Burf. He swung the lamp side to side and Oy could see speckled pigs in the shallower pits. ‘Here’s an empty one.’ He lifted the grate, dangled Oy over the pit and dropped him.

  Oy landed on straw clotted with pig dirt. When his eyes got used to the dimness he sat down in a corner with his arms around his knees. After a while he got up and walked around the cell. There was nothing else to do. Again the strange pictures came into his head, like waking nightmares. Again the nausea and the sadness of loss. Towards evening the keeper dropped a flask and a bag of seed through the bars. Oy chewed on the seeds which were hard as pebbles, then he sorted the cleaner bits of straw and made a bed. The floor was cold and knobbly. Whichever way he lay a knuckle of stone pressed against his spine or ribs. It was worse than the bottomest basement. The animals shuffled, turned in their beds or paced the night away. Oy did the same.

  The next day Burf let him out, blearily gave him instructions and went back to bed. Oy carried buckets of swill and greens from one pit to the next. He heard things while he worked – animal sounds of panic and fear, answering calls from other animals, the thud of lifeless bodies. And he saw the slorterboys emerge from the pits with the dead slung round their shoulders like capes.

  As the days passed the animals came to know Oy’s light step. He went down into the pits and stroked and comforted them. But the boars and big cats he left alone. Burf poked and prodded them without mercy. He branded them with glowing metal, he dusted them with itching powders, he teased them with live food hung just out of reach. He did it so their organs would be bloated and blackened with anger. Oy dropped the food through the grilles; it was not safe to do anything else. The only place Oy did not go was Bear Passage. Burf said it was too dangerous. Oy was proving useful. He did not want to lose him.

  Time went on and Oy began to feel foolish and ashamed. How vain to think the Felluns would take notice of him, and that he could help where wiser heads had failed. Now he must live out his days, coffined in stone and stink, locked away from daylight, far from his friends. Far from his friends – that hurt the most. Only the animals made it bearable. They were his friends now.

  10 Kith and Kin

  When Oy had been gone for seven days, Alas spread a map on the dining table. He pointed to the Aul Forest. ‘This is where he said he was headed. I’m going to look for him.’

  ‘That’s a big wood,’ said Gertie. ‘How’re you going to find him?’

  Alas did not answer. Ede was coming towards them. She placed a letter on the table. ‘It’s from Oy,’ she said. ‘He left it with Linnet’s next batch of medicine.’

  Gertie opened it out and read:

  Dear Alas, Gertie and Gritty, I have gone to Fellund.

  ‘Damn it.’ Alas slammed his hand on the table. The scholars around them looked up. Gertie began again:

  I have gone to Fellund. You know why. Because I’m the last healer. That means I’m the last chance for the Kith or else the Felluns will move in. I’m a poor last chance for anybody but I got to try. Linnet is getting better, but that was Clair’s doing. I haven’t been a lot of use to her. Don’t tell her where I’ve gone, less you have to, and then say I’m sorry. Say I’ll try to come back. Alas, I know your hot head will want to come after me. Don’t. You got another job to do.

  I never thought to have friends like you,

  Oy

  Alas stood abruptly. ‘The Felluns will use him for a nose-wipe.’ He strode off with Gertie and Gritty hurrying behind. They passed a scholar preparing to eat. ‘Eat it – it don’t improve by staring,’ Alas snapped.

  After that he didn’t greet or even see the people he passed. He stopped at Emberd’s office, went in and shut the door in Gertie’s face. As the girls opened the door Alas’s voice sounded across the library. Wincing they slipped inside and closed the door behind them. Emberd sent for the elders. Only four could be found. They came without hurry and listened calmly until Alas ran out of words. They were sad to hear about Oy. It was noble of him to sacrifice himself for the sake of the Kith and they agreed it was their responsibility to bring him back. They said they would scour prophesy and precedent. All other reading would be suspended till the answer was found.

  Alas looked at Gertie and spread his hands in despair.

  Gertie stepped forwards. ‘Prophesy and precedent are very big sections,’ she said.

  ‘Cards 8021 to 9933,’ said Emberd.

  ‘That’s an awful lot of reading,’ said Gertie, ‘and if you’ll pardon me for saying, not that helpful. What you really need to read is adventure books.’

  ‘Adventure.’ Benet pondered the word.

  ‘Adventure stories were popular with juveniles before the Kith was set up,’ said Emberd. ‘We hold a small collection.’

  ‘Ah – long regarded as useless,’ said Deven.

  ‘But,’ said Gertie, ‘to teach you about action there’s nothing better. And because we have a system we know exactly where they are.’

  ‘Archive 5002,’ Emberd said with a satisfied smile.

  Gertie ran off, filled a trolley with books and handed them out to the scholars.

  Alas was sceptical.

  ‘At least it gets ’em on the right track,’ said Gertie. ‘It will teach ’em our language, then when we come up with something they’ll be prepared to follow.’

  In the evening the waifs went to see Linnet. Her recovery had b
een a show. With Oy gone she did nothing but sleep and shrink. The bed seemed to grow bigger as she grew smaller. At first it looked empty; it was a shock to notice the pitiful wisp under the covers. Everyone’s hope had been that Oy would come back with new herbs. That hope had gone now, but Linnet needn’t know. It would do no good.

  ‘I wonder how Oy’s getting on,’ said Gertie, brightly.

  ‘Weather’s fine for camping,’ said Gritty.

  Linnet’s small face hardened. Her voice was surprisingly strong. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t feed me stories. Do you think I don’t know where he’s gone? He’s gone to give himself up to the Felluns, so’s they’ll leave the Kith alone. It was the right thing to do.’

  ‘Silly,’ said Gritty, ‘what makes you think that?’

  ‘I haven’t got time or strength for lies,’ Linnet answered.

  ‘She’s got a right to know,’ said Alas.

  ‘But Oy said...’ Gertie protested.

  ‘What did he say?’ said Linnet.

  ‘He left a letter. He didn’t want you worrying.’

  ‘Tell me everything.’

  So they told her. ‘We ain’t giving up on him,’ said Gertie. ‘The Nonduls are fired up.’

  ‘Fired up,’ Alas mocked.

  ‘Ready to act then,’ said Gertie. ‘We just got to teach them how.’

  ‘With adventure books,’ said Gritty. ‘They’re getting through them really fast.’