Skrimsli, page 20
Itmis had hatched a plan for the fights in the amphitheatre, that was the opportunity. But the twins coming back was somehow going to spoil it. Which meant they were coming back very, very soon.
Imminently.
This was information that he had to get to Kal. Even a desperate escape attempt was worth it in the face of this approaching doom. But how? How?
A sudden crashing sound from the scullery made Owl almost jump out of his skin. He thought for a moment it meant that Itmis had crept in and started throwing crockery about. Owl rushed from the bedroom in a panic. But the front door was still locked. The sound was not so much a crashing now as a scraping, confused sound, like something trapped or floundering. Fearfully Owl peeped around the scullery door. A huge silhouette flopped about against the skylight, high up on the ceiling. Vast wings and huge talons scratching on the glass. It was an eagle, and it was trying very hard to get through the skylight! What was it doing?
Its yellow eyes blazed down at him, and it cried out again, its voice almost sharp enough to shatter the glass in the skylight. It wanted to tell him something, Owl was sure. He wished he had that easy ability that Ead and her family had so he could just slip into its mind and understand what it was trying to say. But perhaps he could open his mind so that the bird could get in, the way Skrimsli and Blit and Karu could. Owl stood very, very still and looked back at the bird. It stopped screeching and sat still too. There was a tingling feeling in Owl’s head, and then a picture materialised there. The image sparked with the bird’s complicated feelings – like a painting drawn and redrawn with more and more detail every second, as the bird’s mind fed in all the detail from its eyes. It took Owl a few seconds to adjust to this unfamiliar way of perceiving and then he saw what the bird wanted him to: a pair of windows, high in a wall; windows covered in bars. Owl recognised the building as the amphitheatre. In the dark space behind one of the windows was Kal’s face, looking up as if from the bottom of a well, but clearly recognisable.
But it was the face that looked from the other window that really mattered to the eagle. It belonged to the woman Owl had glimpsed on the day he and Skrimsli had been captured. The one Itmis thought was the Yuderan Queen. She was a queen to the bird that was certain; the picture in the eagle’s mind was suffused with fierce love. This was his mistress, the force that steered his life: his whole life. It was she who had sent the bird to Owl!
If she had sent the bird to him, then he could send it back with a message! Owl sensed that the eagle had more to communicate to him, but Itmis might get back at any moment, so whatever it had to say to him he had a more important message. Kal must be warned that the twins were on their way.
Tell her the twins are coming, Owl thought. The eagle gave no sign of having seen the picture of the twins that Owl had tried to make in his head. Kal had to get this message and it would not get through like this. He had to try something else.
‘Wait,’ he told the eagle. ‘Please wait!’ And hoped that it would.
Owl dived back to Itmis’ bedroom. There wasn’t time to write anything; in any case he didn’t know how to write and guessed it was not something you could teach yourself in a panicked half minute. Owl grabbed the yellow note and the least crumpled of the sheets strewn under the desk. Then he gave the rest of the paper pile a small shove and it toppled onto the floor in a storm. He hoped Itmis would assume that the note was somewhere on the floor with the other rubbish.
He ran back into the living room and dragged one of the chairs across the floor into the kitchen. The eagle was still there, showing no sign of taking off. Standing on tiptoe Owl reached the handle that opened the skylight. With his whole weight almost hanging from it, he got it to turn. The skylight opened wide and the eagle poked in its head though the narrow gap. Its yellow eyes blazed again it made a series of high-pitched chittering sounds like the working of a creaky hinge.
Owl spread the yellow message inside the larger sheet of paper and, very carefully, folded them together into one shape.
One summer season when the circus had spent a month in a field outside Pokov City, Kobret had engaged a young man who performed with trained green crickets. He made them paper darts which the crickets piloted all over the Big Top. Owl had loved it, but the audience were not so sure; it was clear that the man was a Listener because how could anyone train an insect? In the capital, Listeners were falling out of favour, so at the end of the summer the boy and his insects had vanished. But not before he taught Owl to make very good paper darts.
It was the best dart Owl had ever made; fast and accurate.
Owl stared into the eagle’s eyes, like looking straight at the sun, and willed it to understand what he told it.
Take this to your mistress, Owl told it. Take it now. It’s really important.
Then he aimed the paper dart up at the skylight. It flew true and straight up through the open skylight, sailing past the watching bird into the air beyond. The eagle’s foot flashed out and grabbed the dart, then its wings spread, and it flapped away.
22
Skrimsli
The Pirate Princess
Kobret’s cub smelled bad. Skrimsli’s nose prickled with the rankness as he looked up to where Itmis stood, at the barred roof light of his cell. There was a new tone in his voice too, like a sinew stretched to breaking. A sickness was in him. Skrimsli hoped it would prove fatal.
‘No more play fighting now, Stripy,’ the man said. ‘You’ll be up against a real opponent. Not a stupid beast like you. A human. A pirate princess. And she’ll be the end of you.’
The cub heard the hate, the triumph, the desire for revenge in the voice but the exact meaning of the words floated past, off into the chilly, night air.
I will kill you, Kobret’s cub, Skrimsli thought.
He imagined leaping up, flying though the bars and straight at Itmis’ throat.
The satisfaction of it distracted Skrimsli from the thought that, in all this time, he had not found a way to get out of this terrible place.
As he trotted down the tunnel to the pit, he could hear that the crowd was larger than the night before. More noisy too. Skrimsli’s nose wrinkled at the smell of them. Blood. Blood. Blood. That’s what they wanted. Skrimsli hated them for it.
The gate to the pit slid open and he stepped into the bright, white light. He glanced up. There was Itmis with Owl beside him. The boy was always nervous when Skrimsli entered the pit, but now he was terrified; even at this distance Skrimsli sensed the child’s attempt to reach out to him, to warn him. What was going on?
A sudden rush of air, then searing pain! The crowd erupted in a roar that was deafening. Blood. Skrimsli was hurt. A wound to the outside of the left upper leg. His body leapt to high alert, sweeping the pain aside, delivering information and dictating his response. In less than a second, he had taken in this new, unexpected opponent: not the red ape or one of the gorillas or a bear, but a human female. She was square and solid, well-muscled, and her stance showed that her balance was excellent. Like all humans she lacked the inbuilt weaponry of teeth and claws, but she had a metal tooth and she had thrown it at him. The dagger stuck out of Skrimsli’s body, he grasped it in his teeth and flung it out of reach. She had another weapon, a long, curved blade that she gripped in her left hand.
There was no time to wonder what it was that made her fight; no time to wonder if she might have a mind that was open to his reaching thoughts; time only for surviving her fierce assault. She rushed towards him, her sword raised, fearless. Her intent was real and obvious: she meant to kill him. Skrimsli felt his body arm itself still further, hardening muscles, sharpening senses, speeding up thoughts and reactions.
Her reach with her sword would be longer than the reach of his paws. If he leapt at her, she would have time to place her sword and make it bite him, fatally. She was fast, as her current pursuit showed, and he could not stay out of reach of her sword indefinitely. He could try to get close, so close that using her sword would be awkward. But humans were clever with their hands, so that was too risky. He needed to separate her from the sword; without it, she was no threat.
To do that, Skrimsli would have to risk being within the perfect striking range. Even only a fraction of a second could prove fatal. First, he needed to know more about this fighter. How fast could she move and turn? Were there any weaknesses he could exploit?
She was close now: still running hard, and roaring. He stood head on, presenting the smallest target, and looked at her. She was well protected; her clothes looked tough and would probably resist his claws once, perhaps twice. Her run was springy, suggesting a good ability to manoeuvre and leap. She was not large for a human but adult he guessed, or nearly so. Perhaps like him, an almost full-grown cub. She held the sword in her left hand so if he came at her from that side, she would have to reposition to make a strike.
Closer still now. Close enough to smell and yet she smelled of very little except – what was that word that Owl had used? Ocean, she smelled of ocean! How did a human smell of a water that stretched as far as the eye could see?
That was close enough! Deftly, giving no hint in his body or his eyes that he was about to do it, Skrimsli jinked to his right, so the left arm and the sword lunged past him. She was close enough to touch. He tapped her moving left foot with his right paw, and stepped back to give her space to fall, ready to jump on her and pin her to the ground. But she barely stumbled. Her balance was marvellous. She swivelled on her right foot and wheeled around, at the same time thrusting upward with the sword. Skrimsli threw back his head and swatted under her raised arm with his left paw. The leather of her jerkin split into three long slashes, and she gasped. Still, she didn’t miss a step and Skrimsli had to leap aside to avoid the downward slice of her weapon.
They stepped back from each other, circling and watching, their breath billowing into the cold air. This was indeed a real fight. The possibility of death stood very, very close. Skrimsli had thought that the weeks of wrestling with the other creatures had taught him how to fight. Now he knew he had not learned nearly enough. But just as he had trusted his instincts to find rabbits in the snowy forest, he felt his deep tiger-self take over. He growled.
The sound of the roaring crowd was somewhere very far away. All that existed in the world was the sharp experience of his own body, the zing of every sense, the awareness of how his shape and size and movement met the ground and air. And this human, intent and purposeful.
She stepped from side to side, transferring her weight from foot to foot. She was bleeding where his claws had reached the skin beneath the leather, but she took no more notice of it than he took of the wound she had inflicted with the throwing dagger. Her hair was pale, her eyes too, and there was a long scar under her chin; a bad cut that would have been. Once more that smell that made his paws tingle: ocean. It was distracting him. Or was it something else, something entering a corner of his mind, creeping in?
The millisecond of distraction almost cost his life. She had crossed the space between them, and her sword was moving through the last few inches, its point aimed at his chest. Skrimsli folded close to the ground and pushed himself forward in a low lunge that she clearly had not foreseen he could execute. He hit her legs hard and sent her plunging headfirst onto the ground. She did not lose the grip on her sword but that didn’t matter now because Skrimsli had twisted, tail swirling, to stand on her back. His back legs pinned her thighs, and his front legs pressed her upper arms and shoulders into the ground. He turned his head a little so as to be able to get the whole of the back of her neck and base of her skull between his jaws. His canines would cut the vital channels from head to body. She would be dead in moments.
Stop!
She stepped openly into his mind, out from the corner where, he realised, she had been lurking.
No.
He pushed her thought aside and then saw that he too stood in this inside-head space. It was shared, the way he shared a space with Owl! Curious.
Stop, she said again, appearing bigger, brighter, older than the figure prone now beneath his paws.
Why? Skrimsli demanded.
She was surprised.
You have words! she exclaimed.
Irritated, Skrimsli started to close his jaws.
Please. Please, she said.
He let go a little.
Yes. I have words. Many words. What words do you want? he said.
Words that tell me why you want to kill me? she replied.
Because you want to kill me! Skrimsli told her, although that was quite obvious. He knew humans sometimes needed to put obvious things into words.
I do not, she said.
You do!
That was ridiculous. She had thrown a dagger at him before he’d even looked at her. She wriggled underneath him, and he pressed her flat.
Not now I know you have words, she said.
That made Skrimsli angry. She was just like the roaring crowd for whom anything not human had no value.
Because words make me human?
That is not what I meant, she said.
Then use better words, Skrimsli snapped. She lay still, thinking. Skrimsli waited, curious.
We are prisoners, both, yes? she said.
Yes. Skrimsli agreed.
Then let us try to work together to get out.
Skrimsli considered this. It was just the proposition which he had presented to Silverback and the others. And a human collaborator was what he needed, what they all needed to escape. But could she be trusted, this human that didn’t smell like a human?
Why do you smell of ocean? he asked her.
Because I am a seafarer, she replied. But those words meant nothing to the cub.
What is seafarer? Skrimsli did not expect the reply she gave, or how it would tingle and sing in his mind.
I live on the ocean, she said. In a ship … like this.
And she gave him a ship: its picture glowed in Skrimsli’s mind; a shape like half a fish, but with giant white wings moving over endless blue. Like the things he had seen moving upon and down the river but so much bigger, so much more thrilling. Skrimsli’s mind fizzed, like the bubbles in the cauldron of a waterfall. His whole being lost itself for a moment in that ‘ship’, that ‘blue’. Then the woman did what Owl did when he was very happy, or playing: she laughed.
You have never seen a ship or the sea and yet I feel you love them. That is strange! You are a strange being, tiger, very strange!
She pushed him off her back and he let her. They sat staring at each other inside and outside.
I am Ekar, she said.
And I am Skrimsli, said Skrimsli.
But their introduction was interrupted. Around them the booing of the crowd rose to a horrible crescendo.
Kill, kill, kill.
Two doors into the pit opened with their unmistakable scrape. Two more humans entered. Two men, not tall but broad and muscled: one old, one young. The younger one carried a short sword and a dagger, like the one the woman had thrown away; the older one carried an axe.
‘We have come to kill you, Ekar!’ the older one cried. ‘We have come to finish the job we began!’
‘I should have killed you and thrown you into the sea with your mother,’ said the younger one.
‘I’m going to have a stripy coat to keep the wind off my back,’ the old one added.
They showed their white teeth, in that thing that humans did, that smile thing that could mean something good or something bad.
Quicker than a single thought in either of their minds Skrimsli and Ekar shared useful knowledge.
They would work together to defeat these men. Skrimsli would take the old one, who had a small weakness in his right leg and smelled of great fear in spite of his big voice; Ekar would take the younger one because, of the two, he made her angriest.
The only outcome could be two deaths, their own or the men’s.
Once again, Ekar was fearless. In his short life, Skrimsli had smelled human fear often and knew it well, but Ekar carried not the slightest trace of it. Even her anger vanished as she began to fight. Her thoughts lined up, just like the pebble-thoughts that Skrimsli moved around in the stillest place inside himself. She made him curious.
But now, he must fight. Really fight. Think fast, move faster and do the greatest damage possible whenever he could. He put Ekar and everything to one side to confront this man, dark-haired, squat, and quick eyed. The right arm better muscled than the left. The right leg also. The axe was heavy. He would swing it with great force. Any blow that struck Skrimsli could be the end.
They wheeled round each other. The man’s fear was now a little less. What did this man see? An animal, that’s what he saw. Something less than himself. An animal not full grown, stupid with inexperience, stupid with not being human. A beast, easy to outwit, easy to kill.
Well then, Skrimsli would be what he expected. He loosened his body, took the fire from his eyes. Stared at the man dull, slow. Opened his mouth and panted. Stopped moving and allowed the man to get a little closer. Waited. One heartbeat. Two. The man licked his lips, shifted the grip on his axe. Skrimsli turned his head very slightly, as if his attention had wandered to where Ekar was fighting her battle.
That was all the man needed to trigger his assault. Sure of success, he leapt towards Skrimsli. He swung the axe with terrible force and power. If Skrimsli had allowed it to go where the man intended, it would have all but sliced off his head.
But he did not allow that. At the last possible moment, when the man was completely committed to the move, braced for the impact on the solid body of a tiger, Skrimsli shifted. It was only a small movement, but fast and precisely timed. Just enough to make the man miss. He wasn’t light on his feet like Ekar, and he had been so sure that his blow would hit the mark. His entire weight and the force of the leap and missed blow was channelled into his leading leg, his right, where the weakness was. Skrimsli hardly needed to tap him with a heavy paw to bring him down. Sprawled and helpless, he was quick to kill.
