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‘Come,’ said Tighe, ‘we must climb away to safety. Ati!’

‘My hand,’ moaned Ati, waving the stump in front of himself. ‘Look at it!’

‘You have another hand,’ Tighe pointed out. He gripped Ati by his shirt and pulled him up. ‘Come on.’

It took a little more chiding, but eventually Ati got into a rhythm of going up from trunk to trunk. It was an awkward, slow procedure, but they
were climbing up and to the west. Tighe found himself pondering their position. They were presumably still far to the east of the Meshwood. If they hoped to go all the way through to the west it would take them several days.

Ati had stopped and was sitting on a trunk sobbing to himself.

They rested soon, both hungry. The intimacy of their terror had receded a little, but they still both felt overwhelmed by the horror of their surroundings. But at least they had seen no more claw-caterpils during their climb.

The dusk gale started with a tremendous shaking and rustling of leaves that made both Ati and Tighe cry out and hug one another. But it was only the wind disturbing the leaves and they found a place to wedge themselves in. They held each other very tightly as the wind thrashed about. ‘Maybe this wind,’ said Tighe, trying to think of things that would console Ati, ‘maybe it blows off all the claw-caterpils, blows them all off the wall.’

Ati laughed sobbingly. ‘But they would have been blown off this morning,’ he said. ‘Or during last night’s dusk gale. Or some other time.’

‘No, no,’ soothed Tighe. ‘They live in a big cave downwall from here. But they were tempted out by us and now they are too far from their cave and are all out on the branches. All blown into the air! All blown away for ever!’

Ati laughed again and for a while they were silent whilst the wind raged. As it died away they both fell asleep, but Ati soon twitched awake again. ‘We can’t stay here,’ he said, feverishly. ‘We can’t stay here or they’ll come and devour us. Oh, my hand hurts!’

‘We’ll be all right, ‘I think,’ said Tighe. But he wasn’t certain.

‘No, no, we must go away.’ Ati struggled up, pulling himself away from Tighe’s embrace. ‘We must climb.’

The night was thoroughly black, a complete darkness which made climbing much harder to manage. They had to feel their way up the wall at their side, reaching for a branch. ‘Ati,’ said Tighe after less than an hour of this. ‘Ati, can we stop? We must rest, we must.’

Ati mumbled something.

‘Ati,’ said Tighe firmly, grabbing him round the waist. ‘This is idiot thing. Come, stop. We might as easily put our hands on a claw-caterpil in the dark as escape them in this manner. Stop!’

That thought gave Ati pause and he curled himself up, crying. Tighe knelt down and embraced him and then positioned him gently so that he was lying across the trunk with the wall at his back. He curled in behind him, pressing his own body close. ‘We’ll be warm and safe,’ he promised. ‘It will be all right.’

Ati sobbed for a while and then it seemed he fell asleep. To Tighe, he felt like a baby in his arms. But Ati could not sleep long. He would come awake abruptly, shouting, ‘They are coming!’ or ‘My hand! No!’ Sometimes he woke with a mere yell. Each time it took him longer to get back to sleep.

Tighe felt hungry and exhausted and found himself resenting Ati’s constant interruptions. By the time the dawn gale started they had neither of them slept for more than half an hour.

Come the morning, they were both so tired they could barely co-ordinate their limbs. It was much harder climbing in this state, particularly with Ati’s added handicap.

‘I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry and my hand hurts.’

They had climbed only three trees up. Tighe left Ati propped against the wall and stumbled along looking for some kind of food. His eyes kept closing themselves and once his foot slid and twisted away when he thought it had been properly planted. The jar to his chest winded him and he had to lie on the trunk until he got his breath back.

He saw a grey-worm, a small one, and pounced on it. But when he brought it back, Ati began shuddering and he turned away. ‘I can’t eat it,’ he said. ‘It’s too repulsive. ‘I can’t eat it.’

‘Come!’ said Tighe. ‘It is food.’ He took a bite and chewed it enthusiastically.

‘I want grass-bread,’ said Ati, tearful.

‘Where could we possibly find grass-bread here in Meshwood? Don’t be silly. Come.’ He pulled free a lump of the worm’s flesh and passed it towards Ati, but he mimed disgust and buried his face in the crook of his left arm.

Tighe ate on alone.

When he had finished they resumed their climb.

At eighty, or thenabouts, they made it on to a brief grass- and moss-covered crag. This led up and shortly past its end there was a longer ledge, partly overhung and growing with fresh meshwood tree shoots. At the end of this was another one. This was much easier going and the two of them soon reached the far end.

Before them was a long vertical chimney, backed with tiny slabs of manrock and so straight up and down that no meshwood grew there. Five arms’ lengths upwards there was a curious metal grille, deeply rusted, and a slab of smoother manrock beside it. The faint impression of a single yellow line, the paint flaked and over-mossed, could just be made out going straight down. Grass clung to the lip of this gash and moss lined the innards. On the far side another almost wholly overhung ledge carried on up.

‘It is too far to jump,’ said Tighe, ‘but we might make a bridge.’

He pulled a branch of meshwood tree from below and broke it off. This reached over the space easily, filling the hole with its leaves.

‘It is not strong enough to support us,’ Ati pointed out.

‘We will need several. Come, help me.’

But Ati, with only one hand, could not pull and sever the branches and Tighe worked on alone. After a short while he had laid four over the gap and tentatively tried the structure for load-bearing ability. ‘I think it is all right,’ he said, inching forward. ‘I’ll go over and you can follow – that way ‘I can catch you and help pull you up.’

The soggy branches of meshwood bowed under Tighe’s weight, and the far end arched up; but they jammed under the overhang and did not come loose. When he was across the gap he motioned for Ati to follow him. ‘It’s safe,’ he said, ‘really it is.’

Ati was whimpering with fear, but he pushed himself out along the precarious structure. ‘Think!’ Tighe told him, to encourage him. ‘If we find it hard to cross this chimney, then the claw-caterpils will surely find it impossible.’

With a big tug Tighe pulled Ati up the last bit and the two of them lay hugging one another on the far ledge. Then Tighe made sure to kick the makeshift bridge away, and they continued their upward trek.

At the top of this angled trench was a dog-leg, and the two of them doubled back on their track, still ascending. Then the ledge ended, with an easy step to a meshwood tree trunk and up to a clear and lengthy ledge. Branches in easy reach spread up and to the west. Their way was easy, straight before them.

‘There!’ called a voice.

Tighe and Ati looked round together. Three grey-uniformed Otre soldiers were standing, a little more than twenty yards away. One was pointing with an outstretched arm and the other two were raising their rifles.

‘Quick!’ squealed Ati. ‘We can clamber into the trees, and lose them.’ He ran quickly to the western edge of the little crag and leapt, reaching out for a broad, horizontal branch to use it as a swinging-bar to the next crag along.

‘No!’ called Tighe, starting after him. But it was too late. Ati was in the air, reaching out for a branch with a hand he no longer possessed.

His stump scraped along the branch, and his left fingers scrabbled at the bark. Then he was falling, tipping through the air to plummet straight down.

Tighe, ignoring the shouts of the soldiers, clambered down from the crag and hurried along the downward ledge. He found Ati at the bottom,
lying on his back, his head bent so far round that it was practically upside down.

Tighe crouched beside him, weeping fully. Because Ati’s head was at such a weird, horrific angle, his scowl was transformed into a grin. When the soldiers came up behind him, placing their huge hands on his shoulders, Tighe was still crying.

The three Otre soldiers tied Tighe’s right hand to his right ankle with a plastic tether just short enough to force him to stoop awkwardly as he walked. They needn’t have bothered. Tighe was too stupefied to think of trying to run away.

He loped along between the lead soldier and the second in line as they retraced their steps, moving awkwardly between ledges. At one point they helped him, hauling him unceremoniously up a series of trunk stepping-points one above the other. Then they reached the broad ledge, possibly the same one that Tighe had been on the previous day when Mulvaine, Ravielre, Pelis and Ati had still been alive. The thought made Tighe cringe into tears and cry with his mouth open. The tears smarted and stung in his eyes. The soldiers ignored him until they became annoyed by the incessant noise and shut him up with a series of sharp knocks from their rifle butts.

They marched east along this ledge at a leisurely pace. All this time the three soldiers chatted amongst themselves in their odd, guttural language. They seemed completely at ease and laughed often.

Within the hour they emerged from the Meshwood at its eastern border. The guard eyrie which had been built by Imperial troops was now occupied by grey-uniformed Otre soldiers and the shelves beyond were busy with Otre military activity.

Tighe walked with the soldiers, making his way awkwardly up the ledge and on to the shelf, loping and snivelling. ‘Here,’ said one of his captors in atrociously accented Imperial, ‘you go here.’ They were standing at the doorway to one of the dugouts.

Tighe lurched through and fell forward. The Otre had erected a wooden door and it was dragged across the opening when Tighe was inside. Light gleamed in four thin lines through the gaps between the planks of wood.

There were perhaps a dozen people in the shadow-coloured space; all tethered, either with a wrist tied to an ankle like Tighe or else with their
hands strapped together behind their backs. They all looked up as Tighe stood there, but nobody said anything.

He limped over to a wall and sat down. It was all equally irrelevant. What did any of it matter?

One of the others hobbled over towards him. ‘What were you?’ he asked in fluent Imperial. ‘Sapper? Potboy?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Tighe. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Forgotten, eh?’

‘And the only thing’, said Tighe, looking at the floor, ‘is why they all had to die. All of them and not me?’ He looked up and caught the other’s eye. ‘Does that make sense to you?’

‘Me?’ said the other, a startled-looking, pale-faced man. ‘I was a regular soldier. Not one of your riflemen me.’

‘And as for Ati,’ said Tighe, reaching out with his free hand, ‘he endured so much. Had he not earned his life?’

The pale-faced man looked suspiciously at Tighe’s outstretched hand. ‘As I say,’ he said, backing away a little, ‘I’ll admit to surprise that they captured me rather than just throwing me straight from the wall. It’s slaves they’ll sell us for. That’s our future: we’re to be commodities, do you see. And grown men like me don’t reach a good price as slaves, as commodities. But here I am, anyway.’

‘He fell twice,’ explained Tighe. ‘The first time he fell further and was all right; the second time he fell not so far and it was his death. Is that fair, do you think?’

‘Nice young one like you,’ said the man uncertainly, retreating against the far wall, ‘you’ll get a better price. Strange-coloured skin like yours, that’s rarity value. But I suppose I should be grateful that they kept me alive at all.’

He fell silent, and for a while there was no sound in the enclosed space except Tighe weeping discreetly. He lay on the floor curled tight up on himself and wept. The light faded from between the slats of the door and the dusk gale began. After it died down Tighe slept; but vivid dreams of Ati, up and walking around although with his head at an impossible angle, disturbed his sleep.

In the morning the Otre opened the door and pushed through some stalkgrass and a crude clay bowl of water. Tighe lay motionless, watching as the other prisoners bickered around this insignificant treat.

Another day passed. A second batch of stalkgrass was pushed through the door in the afternoon. Once again the other inhabitants of the cell bickered amongst themselves over the meagre provision. Tighe lay motionless and watched them. His belly was hurting with the hunger, but he welcomed that
sensation. It was right that he should be hurting. It was appropriate. He valued this physical manifestation of his pain.

After all the food had been eaten, the prisoners settled themselves back into their usual positions. One of them, a dolorous-looking woman, stared at Tighe.

‘All sorts in this army,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ve seen all sorts. But I never saw somebody as dark as you.’

Tighe didn’t reply. He stared at her.

‘You’re a freak, with that skin,’ she said, passionlessly. ‘That’ll fetch a good price I guess.’

That night Tighe slept deeply. He woke with a start in the darkness, with somebody hunched over him. Hands were rummaging through his clothing. With a yell he kicked out and pushed up with his hand. The individual fell away, whimpering. It was the same pale-faced man who had spoken to him when he had first been brought in.

‘What are you doing?’ Tighe cried.

‘Just checking to see if you had anything valuable about you,’ said the man, with a catch in his voice. ‘I’m sorry, I really am.’

Tighe sat himself up and tried to watch for movement, but it was too absolutely black to see anything. Eventually he nodded off, and woke after dawn with a pain in the bones of his neck.

This time when the jailers pushed food through the door Tighe struggled with everybody else and grabbed himself some food. He chewed his two fistfuls of grass and licked the dampness off the walls.

‘What’s your name?’ asked the pale-faced man, hunching down next to Tighe. It was as if his attempted robbery the night before had established some bond between them.