Uki and the Outcasts

by Kieran Larwood

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Spirit of War

  J ust breathe.

  And move.

  And do them both really quietly.

  The beam was about thirty centimetres wide, made of heavy oak, stained black with centuries of smoke and soot. It was rough and uneven, with bumps and dips that made Uki feel like he was constantly about to slip and tumble to the longhouse floor.

  That’s because you are, said his cruel voice.

  Be quiet, he told it.

  He could hear the mumble of speech from below growing louder with each shuffle. The fire snapped and hissed as if it was hungry for him to tumble into it.

  One paw forward, then another. You’re back in the Ice Wastes. You’re walking across the top of a dam. You’ve done this hundreds and hundreds of times.

  The vial of poison was clutched – very carefully – between his teeth. If he did fall, he would probably bite into it. He wondered what would kill him first: the fall, the fire, a mouthful of poison, or the spears of the guards. Such a wonderful range to choose from.

  You can do it, he told himself. This is your one chance to catch Valkus. Think of all the rabbits whose houses are burning right now. Think of your friends. They all need you.

  How strange life is, Uki marvelled. A few days ago nobody but his mother cared that he even existed. Now, two whole cities were depending on him.

  Breathe.

  Move.

  He chanced a look down, trying to ignore the sudden dizziness he felt at how far away the floor seemed. It felt like he had crept a mile or more, but it was only twenty paces. The good news was that he had reached the fire. It was time to drop the poison.

  Trying to lift his paw from the beam was almost impossible. It was as if it had been glued there, his mind telling him that moving it would instantly tip him off, into the flames. With a push of willpower, he managed it, taking the vial from his lips with trembling fingers.

  Down below, Mayor Renard was still talking to his men. Snatches of words drifted up to Uki, such as ‘crush’ and ‘attack’. It was hard to focus on what they were saying when he kept seeing glimpses of Valkus overlapping the figure of Renard. A ghostly shape, winding round and round upon itself like a nest of thorny snakes. If it happened to look up and spot him …

  As quickly as he dared, Uki tipped the vial up and shook it, watching as the blue powder trickled down into the flames. There was a tiny hissing noise as it hit the fire and Uki held his breath – against the smoke, and in terror that one of the rabbits would notice it.

  He had half expected a billowing cloud to burst out, filling the hall with toxic fumes, making the guard rabbits choke and retch. The flames sparked a few times where the powder landed and then … nothing.

  Uki chanced a look over his shoulder, back to where Jori waited. He waggled his eyebrows, trying to signal her without speaking.

  ‘Is that what’s supposed to happen?’ he wanted to ask, but all he could see of Jori was a slumped shadow at the window. It looked as though she had finally passed out. Now he really was on his own.

  He looked back down at the guard rabbits and Mayor Renard. None of them had fallen over yet. In fact, nothing at all had happened.

  What do I do now? he thought. He could feel the panic beginning to swell, his breathing getting faster and faster. Shall I jump down anyway? Shall I try dropping a spear on Renard’s head?

  Everything he thought of sounded stupid. He was on the verge of crawling back to Jori, shaking her awake and asking her what to do, when he noticed one of the guards put his paw to his mouth and yawn.

  Uki bit his lip. He stared down, watching the rabbits below so intently he was surprised they couldn’t feel his gaze burning into them.

  The guard yawned again. And so did the other one.

  ‘Am I keeping you fools awake?’

  Renard’s raised voice was loud enough for Uki to hear it clearly. The image of Valkus blazed into view: a mass of spikes jutting out in anger, red eyes burning.

  One of the guards mumbled something and then stumbled, almost falling into the fire. The other one was leaning heavily on his spear, but the poison didn’t seem to have affected the Mayor.

  Perhaps the spirit inside him makes him stronger, Uki thought. Like Iffrit does to me.

  ‘What is wrong with you idiots?’ Renard/Valkus shouted. ‘I’ll have your heads for this! Guards! Arrest these rabbits!’

  Uki’s heart almost stopped beating. If more soldiers came, he would never get to Valkus. This was it. Now. This very instant. He had to do something.

  Mother, help me, he prayed, hoping she was somewhere, looking down on him, protecting him.

  Without even a scrap of a plan, he jumped to his feet and ran along the beam, trusting his balancing skills to keep him from stumbling.

  As soon as he was clear of the fire, he leapt, heading for the hard floor below and relying on Iffrit’s strength to stop his leg bones from shattering when he landed. His stomach seemed to remain up on the beam as he fell, as graceful as a bellyflopping badger, to land just a few paces away from Mayor Renard.

  Thump!

  His feet hit the floor and he tumbled, leaping up as quickly as he could.

  Thank the Goddess, he thought, realising all his limbs were still intact, and fumbled behind his head for a spear. The mayor – or his body, at least – turned to face him. But Uki couldn’t see any trace of the portly, ginger-furred rabbit. His vision was filled by the bristling shape of Valkus, rearing up like a cobra, spikes jutting out all over in a fan of prickly fury.

  He’s not really there, Uki told himself. He’s just a speck of light somewhere inside the mayor’s head. The blades and spikes – that’s just what he wants you to see.

  ‘You!’ Valkus shouted. ‘I saw you at the match! You stink of Iffrit, that cursed fire spirit! And what is that on your chest?’

  Valkus stared at the crystal in Uki’s buckle for a moment before shrinking back in terror. He realised what it was, what it meant.

  ‘Gaunch? You’ve captured Gaunch?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Uki. He grasped a spear and drew it from its sheath, thankfully avoiding getting it tangled in his ears. ‘And I’m going to capture you too!’

  ‘No!’ Valkus writhed. His jaws gnashed, razor-blade teeth striking sparks from one another. ‘It’s not possible! You can’t stop me now! You’re just a child! Where is Iffrit? Let him show himself and face me!’

  ‘I am Iffrit!’ Uki shouted back, sounding much braver than he felt. ‘And he is me! We’re going to stop you, and the others. You’re going back into a crystal, and this time you’re going to stay there.’

  ‘Never!’ Valkus’s body twisted and vanished in a blink. Uki stared in shock for a moment, before realising that the mayor was still there. Moving swiftly towards him with a drawn sword. Valkus was using Renard’s body to fight back.

  This definitely wasn’t part of the plan, Uki thought as he jumped backwards, just in time to avoid the blade that was whistling towards him. Why hadn’t they thought Valkus would attack them? Why hadn’t Jori taught him some sword moves? At least the two guards weren’t joining in. They were still stumbling backwards and forwards, shaking their heads, trying to clear them. Not that it mattered: Valkus was going to be more than enough for Uki to deal with.

  The mayor’s body swung the sword sideways, making Uki duck. That one had skimmed his ears, shaving a little patch of white and black fur from each. He raised his spear and hopped backwards again. He could hear voices from somewhere within the longhouse now, and footsteps. More guards were on their way. They could be here any second. He had to trap Valkus before they arrived, or it was all over.

  ‘I am War!’ screamed Valkus. ‘You will never catch me! I will fill this whole planet with battle and blood and death!’ He let loose a surge of rage that almost knocked Uki off his feet. It was backed up with a sword thrust aimed right at Uki’s heart.

  ‘No!’ Uki cried. Pure instinct made him sweep his spear across
, blocking the blade. Valkus roared in frustration. He rotated his sword, flicking it around Uki’s spear and slamming it down, pinning the shaft to the side of the firepit.

  Uki tugged at it, but it was stuck tight. Worse, his right arm was stretched outwards, leaving his body wide open. Valkus stepped closer, into striking distance, and drew a long, curved dagger from his belt. He raised it up and all Uki could do was stare at the shining tip. That, and the eyes of the mayor that were now mixed with the stare of Valkus, glowing red pinpoints of hatred at the centre of his pupils.

  ‘Uki! Your other spears!’

  A voice echoed down from the rafters. For one second Uki thought it might be the ghost of his mother, until he remembered Jori was up there. She must have woken just in time to see the battle, to see him die …

  Your other spears. Of course! He had more in the sheath at his back. If he could reach them in time …

  Valkus’s dagger began to fall, the curved edge heading for the base of Uki’s neck. He could see its path like an inevitable, unstoppable line.

  Using every last scrap of speed and strength in his body, Uki began to move. His only chance, slim as a whisker, was that Iffrit’s power would make him fast enough.

  Uki’s left paw reached up behind his head, grasping for a spear haft. He had less than a heartbeat to grab it and strike. Half a blink to save his life, to save everyone …

  Please, he prayed. Please …

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Knife and the Spear

  T he long, curved dagger. Silver steel, flashing orange in the firelight.

  It seems to hang there, frozen. Everything has stopped: swirls of smoke from the fire, the blade plunging towards him, even his own heartbeat.

  Uki thought this in the space between seconds. Time had slowed to a sticky crawl somehow. Each breath seemed to last a lifetime. Was this another of Iffrit’s gifts? Or was it just what happened when you were about to die?

  Stop wondering about that, you stupid rabbit. You’ve been given a chance. Use it!

  Uki’s dark voice was right for once. He focused on the blade, seeing there was no way to avoid it. But there was hope: if he moved just a few centimetres to the right …

  Time snapped back into speed, and Valkus’s blade came down, slicing into Uki’s flesh.

  Not his neck, which would have killed him, but his shoulder. That tiny movement, the width of his paw, had saved his life.

  It still hurt, though. A burning shock of pain that made him scream. He turned it into a yell of rage, as his reaching fingers finally connected with a spear haft.

  While Valkus’s dagger was still stuck in his shoulder, Uki brought the spear up and over in a stabbing motion of his own. He smacked the tip of the crystal right in between the eyes of the mayor, as hard as he could.

  Even with Uki’s boosted strength, the blunt crystal was barely sharp enough to break the mayor’s skin. But that didn’t matter. As soon as it was close enough, the crystal began to do its job, sucking out the spirit form of Valkus like an oversized mosquito drinking blood.

  Uki heard the echo of a scream and felt a surge of heat and rage. It flooded the tip of his spear and flowed down his arm, filling his body completely.

  For a horrible instant, he knew what it was like to be Valkus. To want to fight and kill and destroy for no other reason than the twisted pleasure of it. It made him want to snatch the mayor’s sword and attack the two stunned guards, and then rush out of the longhouse to battle anything else that moved. It made him want to scream and burn and kill. It was pure, primal anger from some ancient memory of being a frightened animal. Something his body had forgotten and buried with better instincts of peace and kindness.

  And then the power of Iffrit took over.

  Uki could actually see the calming orange glow as it washed out from his head, down over his body. When it reached the crystal, it seemed to soak in, like water poured on dry sand. Uki felt the change almost instantly. It was as if a door had been locked shut, a flame had been blown out. Every last scrap of Valkus’s fury was gone. The most potent and important of all the powers Iffrit had been given, Uki now realised, was to be able to bind these creatures inside their prisons, cutting off the spells they cast on the outside world.

  Valkus was sealed inside the crystal, which was now glowing scarlet. All the anger and hate was now channelled into strength. Uki felt his own power, which had been slowly ebbing, come bubbling back, twice, three times greater than before.

  He stood for a moment, gasping, just as the longhouse door burst open and a crowd of guards rushed in, weapons drawn.

  The mayor, free of Valkus now, slumped to the floor. The guards stood, frozen in place by the sight of their leader apparently knocked out by a small, black-and-white furred rabbit with a glowing spear. More than that, the overpowering feeling of rage and battle lust that had filled them for days had suddenly vanished. It was like they had woken from some terrible blood-soaked nightmare, and were back to their ordinary rabbit selves. They blinked and shook their heads, not sure what was real or dream any more. One or two actually staggered, leaning against each other for support.

  ‘Wh— Where am I? Who am I?’ Mayor Renard looked up from the floor, staring at Uki with puzzled eyes.

  Uki slotted his unused spear back in his harness, then reached up to his shoulder where the dagger still jutted, and pulled it out with a sharp tug. He let it clatter to the floor, wincing as he felt his body begin to stitch the wound back together.

  ‘Don’t just stand there! Run!’ Jori hissed down at him from her perch on the windowsill. Uki looked up at her and shrugged. He could probably charge through the guards and knock them all to the floor, but there was a chance one of them might still be angry enough to jab him with something sharp, and he’d had quite enough of that for one evening. He was, he discovered, sick to his back teeth of fighting and running and being scared.

  Instead he calmly unscrewed the crystal from the end of his other spear and slotted it into his harness buckle, next to Gaunch’s. There was a little crackle of lightning as the captured spirits came close together.

  Uki dropped the empty spear shaft to the floor and wandered over to one of the feasting tables. It was solid oak, over a hundred years old, and a good four metres long. He grabbed it with two paws and hoisted it into the air like it was a piece of kindling. There were gasps from the guards, and some of them rubbed their eyes, unable to believe what they were seeing.

  Jori was leaning over the windowsill now, yelling at him. ‘What under earth are you doing? Stop rearranging the furniture and get out of there!’

  Uki walked until he was just beneath her and then propped the table up against the wall, making a ramp. With a final backward glance at the guards, he began to climb up it to the window that Jori was hanging from.

  ‘Hey … um … stop?’ said one of the guards, although he didn’t sound very convincing. The others just stared at him.

  Their attention was drawn away a second later by the mayor, who had managed to sit himself up. ‘Help me,’ he groaned.

  While the guards rushed to pick up their confused leader, Uki hopped up to the window and then kicked the table end away. As it crashed to the floor, he clambered out on to the roof, next to Jori.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ she said. ‘They could have captured you easily!’

  ‘Can’t you feel it?’ Uki replied. ‘Valkus is gone. The spell he held over all these rabbits has disappeared. They’re all dizzy, confused. I expect they can’t even remember what they’ve been doing.’

  ‘What about the mayor?’ Jori looked back through the window to where the guards were carrying Renard out of the hall, backs straining under his considerable weight.

  ‘It’ll be like Nurg’s brother, I should think,’ said Uki. ‘He won’t know where or who he is for a while. Then he might come back to himself.’

  Jori stared for a moment at the new crystal in Uki’s buckle. Its glowing red light throbbed and surged, and she
imagined the furious Valkus in there, battering helplessly at the walls. ‘We’d better go,’ she said. ‘Whatever’s confusing all the guards might not last long.’

  Uki started to help her walk along the rooftop, but then found it was easier just to pick her up. Jori was so exhausted, she couldn’t even object. He hopped back up to the walkway, and then over the fence in a bound, landing on the steep side of the mound.

  ‘Capturing Valkus gave you more power, I see,’ Jori said as they skidded their way down the slope.

  Uki nodded. ‘Yes. But we still have to get through that lot.’

  Setting Jori down, he pointed to the fortress gateway. There were crowds of rabbits milling around, most with empty buckets hanging from their paws. Buildings smouldered around them as they scratched their heads, wondering what they were doing out of bed in the middle of the night, and why everything was black and crispy.

  As they watched, some kind of commotion started. The dazed rabbits were being shoved aside as something large pushed its way through the crowd.

  Uki held his breath. The way the night was going, it was bound to be something awful like Necripha or Venic come to attack them again.

  Instead, he was pleasantly surprised to see Mooka the jerboa hopping towards them with Kree on his back, waving.

  ‘You did it!’ she shouted. ‘I knew you had! The fighting suddenly stopped and Mooka wasn’t going crazy any more! I knew you’d beaten Valkus. I rode straight here to find you …’

  Uki hurried over, handing Jori up to her. ‘We did do it,’ he said. ‘But we had better not stand around here for too long. The guards could come to their senses at any moment, and there’s the others to worry about.’

  ‘You mean Venic and those rabbits that captured you?’ Kree helped Jori to sit on the saddle in front of her, wrapping the bigger rabbit in her little arms. ‘I haven’t seen any sign of them, but you’re right. We should get as far away from the city as we can before dawn.’