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The panther squealed and turned a sharp ninety degrees away from Harkat. It scraped at its eyes with its left paw, wiping the mud away. As it was doing that, Harkat grabbed the lower half of his broken club and jammed the splintered end into the panther’s ribcage. The club penetrated the panther’s body, but only slightly, drawing blood but not puncturing the panther’s lungs.
That was too much for the panther—it went berserk. Even though it couldn’t see properly, it threw itself at Harkat, hissing and spitting, swiping with its deadly claws. Harkat ducked out of the way, but the panther’s claws snagged on the hem of his robes. Before he could free himself, the predator was on him, working blindly, its teeth gnashing together in search of Harkat’s face.
Harkat wrapped his arms tight around the panther and squeezed, trying to snap its ribs or suffocate it. While he did that, I leapt on the panther’s back and raked at its nose and eyes with another cactus head. The panther caught the cactus with its teeth and ripped it clear of my grasp—almost taking my right thumb with it!
“Get off!” Harkat wheezed as I clung to the panther’s heaving shoulders and scrabbled for another cactus.
“I think I can –” I started to shout.
“Off!” Harkat roared.
There was no arguing with a cry like that. I let go of the panther and slumped to the ground. As I did, Harkat locked his hands even tighter together and spun, looking for the pit through the green blood streaming into his wide left eye. Finding it, he clutched the struggling panther close to his chest, stumbled towards the pit—and threw himself in!
“Harkat!” I screamed, reaching out automatically, as though I could grab and save him. The picture of Mr Crepsley falling into the pit of stakes in the Cavern of Retribution flashed through my head, and my insides turned to lead.
There was an ugly thud and an agonizing screech as the panther was impaled on the stakes. No sound came from Harkat, which made me think he’d landed beneath the panther and died instantly.
“No!” I moaned, picking myself up and hobbling towards the edge of the pit. I was so worried about Harkat that I almost toppled into the pit myself! As I stood on the edge, arms swinging wildly to correct my balance, there was a low groan and I saw Harkat’s head turn. He’d landed on top of the panther—he was alive!
“Harkat!” I shouted again, joyously this time.
“Help … me … up,” he gasped. The panther’s limbs were still twitching, but they no longer presented a threat—it was nearing the final stages of its death throes and wouldn’t have had the strength to kill Harkat even if it wished to.
Lying on my stomach, I reached down into the pit and offered Harkat my hand, but he couldn’t reach. He was lying flat on the panther, and although the creature – and the baboon underneath – had taken the worst of the stakes, several had pierced Harkat, a few in his legs, a couple in his stomach and chest, and one through the flesh of his upper left arm. The wounds to his legs and body didn’t look too serious. The one through his arm was the problem—he was stuck on the stake and couldn’t raise his right hand high enough to clutch mine.
“Wait there,” I said, looking around for something to lower to him.
“As if … I could go … anywhere!” I heard him mutter sarcastically.
We didn’t have any rope, but there were plenty of strong vines growing nearby. Hurrying to the nearest, I sawed at it with my fingernails, cutting off a two metre length. I grabbed it tightly near both ends and tugged sharply to test it. The vine didn’t snap under the strain, so I returned to the pit and fed down one end to Harkat. The Little Person grabbed it with his free right hand, waited until I’d got a good grip on my end, then yanked his left arm free of the stake. He gasped tightly as his flesh slid off the piercing wood. Grasping the vine tight, he swung his feet on to the wall of the pit and walked up it, pulling on the vine at the same time.
Harkat was almost at the top when his feet slipped. As his legs dropped, I realized his falling weight would drag us both down if I held on to the rope. I released it with snake-like speed, collapsed to my stomach and clutched for Harkat’s hands.
I missed his hands, but my fingers closed on the left sleeve of his blue robes. There was a terrifying ripping sound and I thought I’d lost him, but the material held, and after a few dangerous, dangling seconds I was able to haul the Little Person up out of the pit.
Rolling on to his back, Harkat stared up at the sky, his grey, stitched-together face looking even more like a corpse’s than usual. I tried to get up, but my legs were trembling, so I flopped beside him and the two of us lay there in silence, breathing heavily, marvelling inwardly at the fact that we were still alive.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_17f0c8cd-0c68-5225-bb36-85a06fee4424)
I PATCHED Harkat up as best I could, cleaning out his wounds with water from the stream, slicing my jumper into strips to use as bandages. If I’d been a full-vampire I could have used my spit to close his cuts, but as a half-vampire I lacked that ability.
The wounds to his face – where the panther had clawed him – should have been stitched, but neither of us had any thread or needles. I suggested improvising and using a small bone and animal hair, but Harkat waved the idea away. “I’ve enough stitches,” he grinned. “Let it heal as it likes. I can’t get any uglier … than I already am.”
“That’s true,” I agreed, and laughed as he swatted me round the back of my head. I swiftly grew serious again. “If infection sets in…”
“Looking on the bright side as usual,” he groaned, then shrugged. “If it sets in, I’m finished—no … hospitals here. Let’s not worry … about it.”
I helped Harkat to his feet and we returned to the edge of the pit to gaze down at the panther. Harkat was limping worse than normal – he’d always had a slight limp in his left leg – but he said he wasn’t in much pain. The panther was a metre and a half in length and thickly built. As we stared at it, I could hardly believe we’d bested it in the fight. Not for the first time in my life, I got the feeling that if vampire gods existed, they were keeping a close watch on me and lending a helping hand whenever I strayed out of my depth.
“You know what worries me … the most?” Harkat asked after a while. “Mr Tiny said the panther was … the least of our worries. That means there’s worse ahead!”
“Now who’s being pessimistic?” I snorted. “Want me to go down and get the panther out?”
“Let’s wait until morning,” Harkat said. “We’ll build a good fire, eat, rest … and drag the panther … up tomorrow.”
That sounded good to me, so while Harkat made a fire – using flinty stones to create sparks – I butchered the deer and set about carving it up. Once upon a time I might have let the deer go, but vampires are predators. We hunt and kill without remorse, the same as any other animal of the wilds.
The meat, when we cooked it, was tough, stringy and unappealing, but we ate ravenously, both aware of how fortunate we were not to be the main course that night.
I climbed down into the pit in the morning and prised the panther off the stakes. Leaving the baboon where it lay I passed the panther’s carcass up to Harkat. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds – the panther was very heavy – but we were stronger than humans, so it wasn’t one of our harder tasks.
We studied the panther’s gleaming black corpse, wondering how it would tell us where to go. “Maybe we have to slice it open,” I suggested. “There might be a box or canister inside.”
“Worth trying,” Harkat agreed, and rolled the panther over on its back, presenting us with its smooth, soft stomach.
“Wait!” I shouted as Harkat prepared to make the first cut. The hair on the panther’s underside wasn’t quite as dark as elsewhere. I could see the stretched skin of its stomach—and there was something drawn on it! I searched among our makeshift knives for one with a long, straight edge, then scraped away some of the hairs on the dead panther’s stomach. Thin raised lines were revealed.
“That’s just scar tissue,” Harkat said.
“No,” I disagreed. “Look at the circular shapes and the way they spread out. They’ve been carved deliberately. Help me scrape the entire stomach clear.”
It didn’t take long to shave the panther and reveal a detailed map. It must have been gouged into the panther’s stomach many years ago, maybe when it was a cub. There was a small X at the extreme right of the map, which seemed to indicate our current position. Towards the left an area was circled, and something had been written within the circle.
“Go to the home of the world’s largest toad,” I read aloud. “Grab the gelatinous globes.”
That’s all it said. We read it a few more times, then shared a puzzled look. “Any idea what ‘gelatinous’ means?” Harkat asked.
“I think it’s got something to do with jelly,” I answered uncertainly.
“So we’ve got to find the world’s … largest toad, and grab globes made out of jelly?” Harkat sounded dubious.
“This is Mr Tiny we’re dealing with,” I reminded him. “He makes jokes out of everything. I think our best bet’s simply to follow the map from here to the circle and worry about the rest once we get there.”
Harkat nodded, then set about the panther’s stomach with a sharp stone knife, cutting free the map. “Here,” I stopped him. “Let me. I’ve got nimbler fingers.”
As I carefully cut around the edges of the map and sliced the panther’s flesh away from its insides, Harkat strolled around the dead beast, mulling something over. As I peeled the map free of the panther and wiped the inside of it clean on a patch of grass, Harkat stopped. “Do you recall Mr Tiny saying he’d … thrown in a clue to my identity?” he asked.
I cast my thoughts back. “Yes. Maybe that’s what the message within the circle means.”
“I doubt it,” Harkat replied. “Whoever I was before I died, I’m pretty … sure I wasn’t a toad!”
“Maybe you’re a frog prince,” I giggled.
“Ha bloody ha,” Harkat said. “I’m sure the writing’s got nothing … to do with me. There must be something else.”
I studied the dead panther. “If you want to root around in its guts, feel free,” I told Harkat. “I’m content with the map.”
Harkat crouched beside me and flexed his stubby grey fingers, intent on ripping out the panther’s insides. I shifted away, not wanting to be part of the messy task. As I did, my eyes flicked to the panther’s mouth. Its lips were curled up over its teeth in a frozen death snarl. I laid a hand on Harkat’s left arm and said softly, “Look.”
When Harkat saw what I was pointing at, he reached over to the panther’s mouth and prised its stiff lips entirely clear of its fangs. There were small black letters etched into most of the creature’s teeth—an A, a K, an M and others. “There!” Harkat grunted with excitement. “That must be it.”
“I’ll hold the head up,” I said, “so that you can read all the –”
But before I’d finished, Harkat had grasped one of the panther’s largest teeth with his fingers and attacked its gums with a knife held in his right. I saw that he was fixed on extracting all the teeth, so I left him to it while he hacked them loose.
When Harkat was done, he took the teeth to the stream and washed them clean of blood. When he returned, he scattered the teeth on the ground and we bent over them to try and decipher the mystery. There were eleven teeth in all, host to a variety of letters. I arranged them alphabetically so that we could see exactly what we had. There were two A’s, followed by a single D, H, K, L, M, R, S, T and U.
“We must be able to make a … message out of them,” Harkat said.
“Eleven letters,” I mused. “It can’t be a very long message. Let’s see what we can come up with.” I shifted the letters around until I got three words – ASK MUD RAT – with two letters left over, H and L.
Harkat tried and got SLAM DARK HUT.
As I was juggling them around again, Harkat groaned, pushed me aside and began rearranging the teeth purposefully. “Have you worked it out?” I asked, slightly disappointed that he’d beaten me to the punch.
“Yes,” he said, “but it’s not a clue—just Mr Tiny … being smug.” He finished laying out the teeth and waved at them bitterly—HARKAT MULDS.
“What’s the point of that?” I grumbled. “That’s a waste of time.”
“Mr Tiny loves playing with time,” Harkat sighed, then wrapped the teeth in a piece of cloth and tucked them away inside his robes.
“What are you hanging on to them for?” I asked.
“They’re sharp,” Harkat said. “They might come in useful.” He stood and walked over to where the map was drying in the sun. “Will we be able to use this?” he asked, studying the lines and squiggles.
“If it’s accurate,” I replied.
“Then let’s get going,” Harkat said, rolling the map up and sticking it inside his robes along with the teeth. “I’m anxious to meet the world’s … largest toad.” He looked at me and grinned. “And to see if there’s any … family resemblance.”
Laughing, we broke camp quickly and set off through the trees, eager to leave behind the clouds of flies and insects gathering to feast on the corpse of the defeated lord of the jungle.
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_d12af9e4-a7a7-5b53-a2a8-5236db39f7fc)
ABOUT THREE weeks later, we came to the edge of a huge swamp—the area marked on the map by the circle. It had been a relatively easy trek. The map had been plainly drawn and was simple to follow. Though the terrain was tricky to negotiate – lots of wiry bushes to cut through – it didn’t present any life-threatening problems. Harkat’s wounds had healed without complications but he was left with three very noticeable scars on the left side of his face—almost as if he’d been marked by an especially eager vampaneze!
A foul smell of putrid water and rotting plants emanated from the swamp. The air was thick with flying insects. As we stood and watched, we spotted a couple of water snakes attack, kill and devour a large rat with four yellow eyes.
“I don’t like the look of this,” I muttered.
“You haven’t seen the worst yet,” Harkat said, pointing to a small island off to our left, jutting out of the waters of the swamp. I couldn’t see what he was talking about at first – the island was bare except for three large logs – but then one of the “logs” moved.
“Alligators!” I hissed.
“Very bad news for you,” Harkat said.
“Why me in particular?” I asked.
“I wrestled the panther,” he grinned. “The alligators are yours.”
“You’ve a warped sense of humour, Mulds,” I growled, then stepped back from the edge of the swamp. “Let’s circle around and try to find the toad.”
“You know it’s not going to be … on the outskirts,” Harkat said. “We’ll have to wade in.”
“I know,” I sighed, “but let’s at least try and find an entry spot that isn’t guarded by alligators. We won’t get very far if that lot get a whiff of us.”
We walked for hours along the rim of the swamp, without sight or sound of a toad, though we did find lots of small brown frogs. We saw plenty more snakes and alligators too. Finally we came to a section with no visible predators. The water was shallow and slightly less pungent than elsewhere. It was as good a place as any to wet our toes.
“I wish I had Mr Tiny’s … Wellington boots,” Harkat grumbled, knotting the hem of his blue robes above his knees.
“Me too,” I sighed, rolling up the bottoms of my jeans. I paused as I was about to set foot in the water. “I just thought of something. This stretch of swamp could be full of piranha—that might be why there are no alligators or snakes!”
Harkat stared at me with something close to loathing in his round green eyes. “Why can’t you keep stupid thoughts … like that to yourself?” he snapped.
“I’m serious,” I insisted. I got down on my hands and knees and peered into the still waters of the swamp, but it was too cloudy to see anything.
“I think piranha only attack when … they scent blood,” Harkat said. “If there are piranha, we should … be OK as long as we don’t cut ourselves.”
“It’s times like these that I really hate Mr Tiny,” I groaned. But since there was nothing else for it, I stepped into the swamp. I paused, ready to leap out at the first hint of a bite, then waded ahead cautiously, Harkat following close behind.
A few hours later, as dusk was lengthening, we found an uninhabited island. Harkat and I hauled ourselves out of the swampy water and collapsed with exhaustion. We then slept, me sheltered beneath the deer blanket I’d been using these last few weeks, Harkat beneath the fleshy map we’d stripped from the black panther’s stomach. But we didn’t sleep deeply. The swamp was alive with noises—insects, frogs and the occasional unidentifiable splash. We were bleary-eyed and shivering when we rose the following morning.
One good thing about the filthy swamp was that the water level remained fairly low. Every so often we’d hit a dip and one or both of us would slip and disappear under the murky water, only to bob up spluttering and cursing moments later. But most of the time the water didn’t reach higher than our thighs. Another bonus was that although the swamp was teeming with insects and leeches, they didn’t bother us—our skin was obviously too tough and our blood off-putting.
We avoided the alligators, circling far around them whenever we saw one. Although we were attacked several times by snakes, we were too quick and strong for them. But we had to remain on constant alert—one slip could be the end of us.
“No piranha so far,” Harkat noted as we rested. We’d been working our way through a long swath of tall reeds, full of irritating sticky seeds which had stuck to my hair and clothes.
“In cases like this, I’m delighted to be proved wrong,” I said.
“We could spend months … searching for this toad,” Harkat commented.
“I don’t think it’ll take that long,” I said. “By the law of averages, it should take ages to locate anything specific in a swamp this size. But Mr Tiny has a way of fiddling with laws. He wants us to find the toad, so I’m sure we will.”
“If that’s the case,” Harkat mused, “maybe we should just … do nothing and wait for the toad to … come to us.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I said. “Mr Tiny’s set this up, but we have to sweat to make it happen. If we sat on the edge of the swamp – or if we hadn’t marched west when he said – we’d lose touch with the game and would no longer be under his influence—meaning he couldn’t stack the odds in our favour.”
Harkat studied me curiously. “You’ve been thinking about this … a lot,” he remarked.
“Not much else to do in this godsforsaken world,” I laughed.
Flicking off the last of the seeds, we rested a few more minutes, then set off, silent and grim-faced, wading through the murky waters, our eyes peeled for predators as we moved ever further into the heart of the swamp.
As the sun was setting, a deep-throated croaking noise drifted to us from the middle of an island covered by thick bushes and gnarly trees. We knew at once that it was our toad, just as we’d instantly recognized the panther by its roar. Wading up to the rim of the island, we paused to consider our options.
“The sun will be gone in a few … minutes,” Harkat said. “Perhaps we should wait for … morning.”
“But the moon will be almost full tonight,” I pointed out. “This might be as good a time as any to act—bright enough for us to see, but dark enough for us to hide.”
