“Did you see that?” he asked Emmie. “Last time I was on the Infested Side, something came from the sky. It wasn’t a nice thing either.”
Emmie looked up. “But you desiccated it, Finn, right?”
“Sort of,” Finn pointed out. “It didn’t work properly. I only half desiccated the Legend. It was horrible.”
“Well, at least I have my bag of tricks here,” she said, sorting through the contents of her backpack. “Although we only have these pineapple things left.”
“Knock-out Boxes,” observed Estravon. “Be careful with those.”
“I’m going to try the scanner again.” As Finn took it from his bag, he looked at Estravon. “Please don’t grab it this time.”
“I always dreamed of going on a real mission,” Estravon sighed. “That dream didn’t include pushy twelve-year-olds.”
The scanner flickered. Finn gave it a small shake and the map solidified. Finn felt a moment of elation. It was working. His sense of triumph didn’t last long.
In the centre of the map, they saw themselves as red dots and around them it was as if an avalanche of luminescent green was flowing towards them, overtaking them. Blip. Blip. Blip. Blip. Unseen Legends at their five o’clock. Three o’clock. Nine o’clock. Almost everywhere o’clock.
“Oh dear,” said Emmie.
“And yet still they wait,” observed Estravon. “We’ve managed to walk this far since the cave and we can hear them out there. When we move, they move. When we make noise, they make noise. But we’ve seen no Legends since. Do you know what the odds against that are? It doesn’t matter. Well, it does, but what matters most is that we haven’t been attacked since the Shapeshifter and – strange as it is to say this – I don’t like that. At all.”
“Why don’t you just count your blessings?” asked Emmie.
“I did. I came up with a grand total of zero.”
Finn was forcing himself to look away from the green dots that were Legends concentrating on the map itself. “The way that bit of the map ends there, just ahead of us, might be where the forest stops.”
Estravon looked at it, nodded. “It’s possible,” he said, “but I’m not sure what it leads to. It could be a cliff. A wall. An acid waterfall. They have those here. Look it up.”
“Hold on,” said Emmie, staring intently at the scanner. “The Legends are the green dots, right?”
“Yes,” confirmed Finn.
“And humans show up as red ones. So we’re the three red dots in the middle,” she continued.
“Uh-huh,” agreed Finn.
“Then how come there are four red dots?”
They each stared at the screen and, sure enough, they saw a clump of three dots, so close together it was hard to distinguish one from the other. And ahead of them, in a clearer area at the very edge, was another red dot.
At which exact point the scanner sparked, causing Finn to drop it. Picking it up gingerly, he immediately confirmed it was lifeless.
In the trees, there were noises, as if the whole forest was craning to see what had just happened.
But Finn, Emmie and Estravon weren’t looking behind them. Or around them. They were instead looking into the trees directly ahead of them.
At the silhouette staring back.
They dashed towards the figure. The ground tore at their ankles, jabbed at their shins, but their eyes were trained on the same sight ahead.
It was a human. A man, it seemed. And his outline suggested he was in Legend Hunter’s armour.
“Dad?”
Finn ran, the legs of his fighting suit bashing against each other. The malfunctioning scanner spilled from his open bag as he dashed into the trees, distracting him so that he lost his footing in the wiry undergrowth and hit the ground.
Emmie passed him, fighting against the weight of the armour on her body.
Finn popped himself up again. Resumed the chase.
Estravon had followed, but jumped back to pick up the dropped scanner. As he did, the forest closed in on him a little. Hesitating, he abandoned the idea of grabbing the scanner and instead loped after Emmie and Finn, finding them quickly by the sound of clanking metal.
“Something strange is going on back there,” he said as he overtook them.
“There he is!” shouted Finn, pointing at the figure moving away from them. “Dad?”
“For crying out loud, don’t cry out loud,” hissed Estravon.
The figure looked back, then stepped behind the wide girth of a tree and out of view.
It took them maybe twenty seconds to reach the point where the man had stood. Presuming he must have moved further ahead, Finn started running again, until the trees were gone and he had burst into a clearing, a sudden emptiness in the world, where the hard earth was replaced by black, pitted stone.
He kept moving, searching for the figure, steadily realising that his view was no longer obscured by trees, but by a black mist that grew thick around him.
“Finn?” he heard Emmie call, but he had already pushed further into the murk.
Finn had spotted the figure, a dark shape swallowed by the gloom. He had noticed a light too, a deep reddish glow hovering above the ground. But, when Finn reached the spot he thought it might have been, he found nothing and could see nothing.
“Emmie?” he called meekly.
“I’m here,” answered Emmie, standing so close it gave him an almighty scare.
“I’m here too,” announced Estravon, frightening both of them so that their fighting suits wobbled with shock.
The three stood in the swirling cloud, trying to calm the thump of their hearts.
“Where is he?” asked Emmie.
“I don’t know,” said Finn, breathless. He couldn’t even be sure which way they’d come in or which way was out.
“Was that your dad?” she asked.
“I think so,” said Finn, peering into the fog. “I don’t know. It had to be.”
“Maybe he was part of a rescue party,” suggested Emmie.
“Then why did he run away from us?” asked Estravon. “That’s hardly the standard approach to being rescued.”
Nobody had an answer for that.
They could hardly make out anything more than a few steps ahead. Soil had given way to rock – flat and pockmarked, covered in stones and slabs as if this part of the Infested Side had once been pulverised by the fist of some awesome giant. Which wasn’t necessarily out of the question.
“I’ve never wandered into a trap before,” said Estravon, “but I’m sure this is how it would feel.”
They moved forward, halting at the sound of a dull phwoosh from somewhere away to their right.
Crack.
Silence again.
They walked on, but soon stalled at the sound of another phwoosh accompanied by a dim flicker of light in the fog. Then, almost close enough to scorch Finn’s left elbow, a phwoosh of flame leaped from a small gouge in the ground, and just as quickly dropped and disappeared.
“It’s not fog,” said Finn. “It’s smoke.”
“The odds worsen with every step,” said Estravon.
They hunched over and carefully examined the bite in the rock from which the flame had jumped. The rock here was frazzled, long ago distorted by fire.
From somewhere deep in the smoke they heard another phwoosh and a crack a moment later. Then another. Again a muted smudge of flame burned and died before the unnerving crack of a rock hitting the ground beside them caused each to jump away.
“I feel like we’ve walked into a barbecue,” Finn said to Emmie. She managed to raise a smile.
Phwoosh. A rock hummed past Finn’s ear, hitting the ground right beside them.
“We could use the scanner if you hadn’t dropped it,” said Estravon, sounding jittery. “Why it wasn’t affixed to your fighting suit in the proper manner, I don’t know.”
“So, you just left it there?” said Emmie, placing a hand over her mouth to stop herself coughing in the throat-scraping smoke.<
br />
“I would’ve picked it up except that I think I’d have lost a limb if I’d done so,” said Estravon.
“Shush,” said Finn.
There was a new noise, close by, but whatever was making it was invisible in the smoke. It sounded like a whimper.
They swung round to face it. Emmie rummaged through her bag and pulled out something that looked like a green bottle with the fronds of a pineapple attached and waved it in the general direction of the whimpering.
Estravon carefully reached across to the device and turned it the other way round in her hands. “It would help to point it in the right direction,” he whispered.
Phwoosh. A purple flame shot up from the rocks between them. Its heat singed the edges of Emmie’s skirt. Finn stepped round it as it died away, just about dodging another jet of fire ahead of them. His fighting suit rattled like a string of cans behind a newly-weds’ car.
Phwoosh. More flame a little distance away, then a crack as another large piece of rock hit the ground near them.
“Any thoughts?” asked Emmie. “Sooner or later the flames are going to burn us or one of those rocks is going to land right on us.”
Phwoosh.
“A few thoughts,” said Finn. “No good ones, though.”
Crack.
“How about we retrace our steps and go back the way we came?” Emmie said.
“Which way was that?” asked Estravon, peering into the thick wall of fog surrounding them. “It’s not like we left a trail of breadcrumbs.”
“Quiet,” said Finn because, at that moment, becoming a walking barbecue was suddenly less of a priority.
He had heard a voice. In the fog. Close.
“Sausages,” the voice said. “Sausages.”
“What is that?” Emmie asked.
“Sausages,” the voice said.
“And why is it saying sausages?”
“Sausages,” the voice repeated.
“Is it Hugo?” asked Estravon.
“Definitely not,” confirmed Finn.
A flame phwooshed just behind them.
“Sausages,” the voice shouted impatiently.
“I think it just wants sausages,” said Finn, leaning into the smoke.
“Of course he does not want sausages!” snapped a second, unseen voice. This one was strained, higher pitched. “He wants your help.”
This was followed by a long, pained dog howl cutting through the almost suffocating gloom.
Above, the smoke stirred briefly, accompanied by the same sound of whipping canvas that Finn had heard in the forest. A wing, it cleared a pocket of air along the ground just long enough for them to see a creature ahead.
It had a wet nose and a long snout. Its meaty muscles occasionally twitched under a sleek dark coat. Its front teeth protruded through a gap in its thin lips. And its tail was trapped beneath a flat rock.
The smoke closed in again.
“It’s a dog,” said Finn.
“It’s not a dog,” said Estravon.
“You saw its nose,” said Emmie. “It’s definitely a dog.”
“It might look like a dog,” said Estravon. “It might howl like a dog. It might roll over and have its tummy tickled like a dog for all I care. But consider this: in the millennia since the canine was domesticated by humans, is there a single recorded instance of a dog talking?”
“Sausages,” said the dog.
“Except, I grant you, for the occasional dog who can bark the word sausages.”
“Humans,” said the second voice, still out of view, but strained and uncomfortable as if it were being sat on. “He knows you are humans. He calls you sausages because you smell of sausages. You humans always smell of sausages. Now help us.”
Emmie had lifted the pineapple-like device above her head in readiness.
Finn made up his mind. Dog or not, a trap or not, this creature seemed to need their help and he hated to think of a living thing in pain.
“I can’t just walk away from a suffering animal,” Finn said, stepping forward.
“Yes, you really can,” Estravon sighed. Emmie lifted the weapon a little higher.
Just to the left of them, the phwooosh of another flame and the crack of a rock propelled upwards were close enough to make them all jump a little.
Finn stopped just short of the Legend, able to make out the dog but nothing else. “Where’s the other one of you?” he asked.
“You are looking at us,” said the second voice. “You just cannot see me.”
“Are you invisible?” asked Emmie, arriving alongside Finn.
“No, I am not invisible,” said the strained voice. “I am trapped under a rock. Look, how about we have a big discussion after you free me?”
“How can we trust you?” said Finn.
“Human,” said the trapped voice.
“It keeps saying that,” said Estravon, “as if it thinks we don’t know what we are.”
“We will bring you to him,” the voice clarified. “We will bring you to the human.”
Phwoosh. An ignition deep in the smoke, like lightning from a distant storm. Crack.
Finn and Emmie looked at each other, eyes widening at this new possibility. Estravon opened his mouth to complain, but the other two had already stepped forward through the murk and cautiously worked their way round the Legend at a safe distance.
It looked like a dog, huge, and tough, even curled up the way it was. At the rear, they saw that its tail was wedged under a large slab of stone that must have been propelled there by one of the flames. The base of the tail, where it met the dog’s backside, was just visible: a glimpse of vivid green, a surprising shock of colour in a world so muted.
“It could be a Shapeshifter,” Estravon warned.
Finn looked at the large animal. It appeared so vulnerable there, unprotected against attack. Its mouth hung open at the sides, its teeth resting on drooling lips. It seemed to him to lack something he had seen in other Legends: murderous intent.
So, tugged by sympathy he couldn’t resist, Finn stepped closer. The dog shifted, tried again to pull its tail from under the rock.
“Ouch,” said the tail.
The three of them flinched at that, but Finn worked up the courage to walk round and peer under the large slab. Poking out from the far side was the arrow-shaped head of a snake. Thin. Bright green. Its scaly body led back under the rock until it appeared again on the other side to merge with the furry stump at the dog’s backside.
The tail was a snake. The snake a tail. Whichever way around. And it was surprisingly talkative.
“Stop it, you hairy lump,” demanded the snake-tail as the dog whimpered and shifted again. “I will not have a scale left if you keep pulling like that.”
The dog moved again. The snake-tail complained again.
“You’re a dog,” said Emmie, “with a talking snake for a tail?”
“If you are just going to point out everything you see, things will get boring very quickly,” responded the snake-tail.
Estravon snapped a picture with his camera.
“You saw the human?” queried Finn, suspicious now.
“Yes,” responded the snake-tail. “He asked us. To guide you.”
“Describe him then.”
“He had flesh. Some hair. Metal skin. Sausages. You all smell of sausages.”
Emmie wrinkled her nose in derision at that vague description.
Finn squinted at the dog end of the Legend. “We need more if we’re to trust you,” he said and walked away again, bluffing a bit, half hoping the Legend wouldn’t let him go.
“You!” the snake-tail shouted. “The human looks like you. Not these other two. You.”
Finn considered that, then walked to the rear of the dog and began pulling at the rock. It was too heavy. Emmie helped too, but the rock refused to budge off the snake-tail trapped beneath.
“Fantastic,” said Estravon. “You’re both actually convinced by that.”
Clearly unhappy with
circumstances but out of options, Estravon finally came to help. He grabbed the rock firmly to pull hard on it while the other two pushed from underneath. It took another couple of goes, but eventually they forced the heavy stone aside.
The dog part of the Legend immediately whipped its tail forward and began licking and scratching at it with its huge paws. This would have been relatively normal, even for the Infested Side, if the tail hadn’t immediately complained very loudly about the whole thing.
“Stop it!” the snake-tail commanded. “You will break the skin.”
When the dog did finally cease scratching and licking, and the snake-tail was released to hang back between its legs, Finn, Emmie and Estravon couldn’t help but gawp at the sight.
“You should take a step back,” said the snake, flicking its forked tongue laconically.
Neither Finn, Emmie nor Estravon took a step back.
“Now,” insisted the tail.
They stood back and, a moment later, a phwoooosh of flame leaped from the spot on which they’d stood, shooting a piece of rock upwards and away. The heat prickled the skin on Finn’s face. The threat of burning suddenly seemed a little too real.
“You are in the Fire Spits. If you want to get out of here unharmed, you must follow our trail. We understand this world. We were born of it, share a royal bloodline going back as far as the great Masters of the Seven—”
The dog cocked its leg to pee.
“No splashing!” said the snake-tail, pulling itself up and out of the way. “No splashing!”
There was splashing.
“Every. Single. Time,” the snake-tail said forlornly.
“If you know this place so well,” said Finn, “how come you ended up trapped like that?”
“We know the way through,” said the snake-tail. “That is different from knowing where every rock is going to land. We would not even be in here if the other human had not asked us to wait for you.”
“Thanks,” said Finn.
“Thank us when we get out of here in one uncooked piece,” it said sniffily. Then the dog moved off, the snake-tail’s eyes trained on the trio of disbelieving humans standing in the smoke as the dog part walked away. “Well, come on then,” it said. “Follow me or get roasted. Or squashed.”
Into the Infested Side Page 10
