Chapter Six
Niam’s Run
Niam’s feet pounded the earth as he tore through the forest, leaping over fallen trees and nimbly dancing around briar thickets. Behind him, the rough voices of Bode’s gang followed. Echoes of the brutal things they were going to do to him rang through the trees.
Niam ducked beneath a low branch and turned sharply to the right. If he planned his direction right, he should be just on the outskirts of Pirim Village. If he could make it to the right spot, he could easily disappear.
“I’m going to kill you this time you little weasel!” Bode roared in fury. This was met by raucous laughter.
“Yeah,” one of his friends—Jalt, maybe—barked in a reedy voice, “Nobody’s around to save you, either.”
Another voice sang out, “Hope you’ve said your last prayers, Maldies!”
This time, Niam knew it was Card.
Niam danced through the vines snaking over the straw covered ground and prayed he wouldn’t get tripped up. If he did, he had no doubt Bode would try to make good on his threat this time.
For once, Niam thought he might have gone too far.
As he launched through the last of the dense foliage, he burst out into the open. A wide expanse of Pirim Village filled his sight. He was atop the low hill that sat humped just beyond the main bridge running over Havel River, which barely kissed the edge of town before it turned and flowed northeast toward Old Flood. Niam’s stomach sank like a stone as he skidded to a halt. This wasn’t good. He had overshot the place he wanted to be. If he entered here, the wide sidewalks and even wider streets offered no places to hide, unless he ducked into a shop, and then all Bode had to do was wait him out.
Behind him, the raucous voices bayed like a mangy pack of dogs. Bode Grimmel’s gang consisted of four of Pirim Village’s worst troublemakers. Card was one of the most despicable people Niam had ever known. He had nearly been driven out of town after the blacksmith caught him forcing the apothecary’s boy to his knees as he undid the ties holding up his trousers. When the man saw what was going on, he took a board and beat Card until he bled. When apothecary heard, he almost finished what the blacksmith started. Whatever had gone wrong with Card had gone wrong above and below his waist. The right side of his forehead bore a permanent scar where the apothecary beat him within an inch of his life.
Jalt was another of Bode’s minions, and the rooms within his skull seemed to lack mental furnishings. His expression was always bored, as if the only thing he ever found interesting were the kinds of things he did at Bode’s behest.
Aside from Bode, only Salb scared Niam…really scared him.
He was quiet, but his quick eyes reflected a cunning intelligence. His father was in the Pit in Kalavere for beating his mother to death. Salb had gotten himself sent here to stay with an aunt and uncle who soon wanted nothing to do with him. Like two magnets that should never be set side-by-side, he soon fell in with Bode, and the two of them were constantly seen around town together. Though he never said anything to Niam, there was something disturbing and predatory in his eyes. They held the unsettling glint of a person without a conscience.
The loud crackle of twigs snapping and vines pulling free from branches announced that Bode’s gang was having a hard time moving quickly through the woods.
Good. That brought him a little time. But only a little.
The narrow road he had hoped to take was too far away to reach safely. Bode was simply in better shape and could easily run him down. By choosing to leave the woods, Niam had lost his advantage. But that didn’t matter anyway, because only so much forest covered the hilltop.
Below, the road leading into Pirim Village curved gracefully around the hill below, where it became a wide main boulevard skirted by sidewalks of smooth cobblestones. First, it crossed over a bridge. The river beneath it gurgled at the bottom of a twenty-five foot drop-off. Niam knew he had only once opportunity to hide, and it was a choice that made him queasy.
“Where are you, freak?” Bode spat from somewhere in the dark wall of trees. “It doesn’t matter where you hide,” he jeered, “because I’m going to find you!” As the footfalls of Bode’s gang grew more distinct, Niam heard one of them call out, “I think he’s gone that way!”
Quickly, Niam descended the slope, falling back, allowing gravity to slide him down the loose gravel of the hillside. As soon as he stopped, he didn’t pause to listen; instead he struck off, sprinting to the point where the bridge began to stretch across the steep drop to the water below.
The severely angled ground allowed him to duck beneath the bridge’s lip. Thick wooden supports had been driven at angles into the nearly vertical walls of the chasm. They formed a tight crisscrossing pattern that extended part of the way down and were supported by the three tall cement columns with wide bases that reached several feet into the stream’s muddy bed.
Bode’s voice was louder now and came to him clearly across the small distance from the hilltop. That meant they were almost out of the woods. It also meant he only had seconds.
Niam ducked down and peered into the gloom where the bridge held its shadows like a greedy thief. Unconsciously, Niam’s hands clenched onto the lip of the bridge top. With an effort, he forced himself to let go and hooked an elbow around a support. Quickly he slipped completely beneath the bridge, and just in time. Only . . . he had hated the water ever since his sister had been found floating like a limp rag-doll in Siler’s Lake.
“Come out, come out, come out!” Bode and his gang chanted from the hilltop. Niam heard the sound of loose pebbles tumbling as the four of them began sliding down the hillside.
“He’s run into town!” one of the others shouted.
They were coming his way and it wouldn’t be long before they were on top of him!
Niam knew he had to wedge himself further into the bridge’s structure if he didn’t want to be seen. But the water twenty-five feet beneath him sang a death-song as it flowered over the rocks hidden within its dark, agitated surface. Niam’s knees trembled. Safety lay just another fifteen feet farther under the bridge. But to Niam’s mind that fifteen feet stretched out. The distance might as well have been infinite because the water below him called, its voice was like the dark words of the grave itself. Come to me, and you will find rest. Come to your brother and sister. To Niam the river resembled the black blood of a hideous beast, its shallows like ravening jaws and its depths a hungry gorge. Niam swallowed hard. A lump in his throat had formed as he looked down. The water is shallow, he told himself, shallow and not like the deep water of the Siler’s Lake.
Yet even shallow waters hid deep holes, and who knew, in the bottom of the stream bed there might be fissures that opened into yawning caverns where eyeless fish and long and ropey flesh-eating eels—like the ones of his nightmares feeding on his sister’s eyes—teemed in seething mats. Even in shallow water his sister had floated just a few feet above the lakebed and just a few feet from the lakeshore. Even in shallow water. Not in the depths.
Sucking in a breath, Niam stepped over to another beam, refusing to look down. Then, carefully, he stepped across to another, and began monkey-crawling his way deeper into the shadowy heart of the bridge’s gantry-like bowls. When he reached the center, he lifted his legs up behind himself and spread his arms out, pressing them against two joists. Grunting silently, he raised his body to the underside of the bridge and flattened himself out as much as possible. If anyone peered into the shadows below, they shouldn’t be able to spot him.
From above, he heard the thud of plunging feet as Bode and his friends ran to the bridge.
Niam pressed himself harder against the wooden planks. If it were possible to grow into wood, he would have. Beneath him, the water gurgled hungrily. The clunk of feet on the wood above
made Niam draw in a silent breath.
Bode growled. “Where did he go?”
“He must’a gone into town,” Card’s garbled voice said.
Bode snarled, “The weasel is fast, but not that fast, and he’s not got the wind in him to make it like we do. He’s somewhere and we’re just missing it.”
“Well maybe he doubled back into the woods on top of the hill.”
“Hmmm . . . maybe.” Silence fell over the menacing group above. As it drew on, Niam forced his breathing to come slowly and evenly. His stomach gave a sickening lurch when Bode suddenly barked his next order. “Card, go look under the bridge.”
“But . . . that’s . . . it’s a long way down, Bode!”
“Why do you think I’m not doing it?” he asked, his voice surly and annoyed. “Go, or I’m not certain you’ll be in with us later!”
Niam heard Card walk off of the bridge and the crunch of his feet in the dry autumn grass. Slowly, he peered past the x-patterned joists, but kept his head up and his profile low. Card’s form, silhouetted in the bright midday light, appeared at the foot of the bridge.
Niam held himself rigid.
“Nothing,” Card reported with a shaky voice.
“Look harder, Card!” Bode growled.
“But it’s steep here,” Card whined. He continued to look back and forth along the bridge’s under-structure, but after a few quick moments, he straightened up. “Nothing,” he said, and hoisted himself onto the solid bridge from where he stood.
“Coward,” Bode spat.
“I’ll do it,” Salb said contemptuously. Niam heard him step down and watched as his silhouette appeared where Card’s had been moments earlier.
“I don’t see anything either, but it’s too dark to seen anything. He could be there.”
“If I could get away with burning the thing,” Bode said impatiently.
Suddenly, Salb spoke up in soft and menacing words. “We don’t’ need to do that.” His voice contained an eagerness that Niam did not like. The next sound Niam heard from Salb’s location was the soft, serpent-whisper of metal dragging across leather.
“Oh Good idea, Salb!” Bode said gleefully. “If he’s down there, he won’t be for long!”
Niam silently cursed the fact that he could not see what Bode and his gang were up to. As he pushed against the joists, the wood felt cold and grainy beneath his fingertips. He had really done it this time.
And then, as his mind worked feverishly to imagine what Salb was up to, a sword blade suddenly plunged through a narrow gap in the planks above. Its sharp, rusty edge was just a few feet from his face. Niam’s eyes crossed as he focused on it, and his heart gave a sudden lurch in his chest. He held his breath and dared not make a sound. Quickly, the sword was jerked up, and Salb moved a few feet over, preparing for the next plunge. Niam looked around desperately for a way out, galvanized by terror. He knew Salb would be on top of him any time.