Gool by Maurice Gee

Author:Maurice Gee
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: JUV000000, JUV037000
ISBN: 9781921834455
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2012-05-22T16:00:00+00:00

NINE

The first day they travelled safely, with the dogs alert and Xantee and Duro probing with their minds. Several times they led Tarl away from the course he wanted to take – runways, mazes in the rubble – away from bands of Keech men, patrolling randomly. Surprise was a tactic Keech had perfected. Twice they came across bodies of scavengers or defectors, punished in the places they were caught.

Too much killing, Xantee thought. Rain fell on the burrows, then the sun beat down from a hard sky, making flat surfaces steam and the ruins hiss like an oven, but she felt cold everywhere – the coldness of humans without pity and the unnatural coldness of the gool.

Tarl had made them cut branches of scrub. When night fell they found a den where no light escaped and made a fire. They scorched the meat he brought and ate it half raw.

For Hari, Xantee thought, swallowing.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘We’re nearly through Blood Burrow. Tomorrow it’s Keg.’ Tarl grimaced. Those names were lost. ‘If these books you want are anywhere they’re south of Port. There was a park by the sea. Hari went there. He went everywhere. Buildings called Music Hall and Art Hall.’ Tarl shook his head. He had no idea what art and music were. ‘If there were books . . .’

‘Book Hall?’ Xantee said.

‘Hari never said that name. He said the park had stone arms and legs, and heads of horses, and a fangcat killing a sheep.’

‘Statues,’ Xantee said. ‘Like Cowl the Liberator in People’s Square.’ Hari had told her about Cowl.

‘Cowl Bigmouth,’ Tarl said. ‘The bolt cannons broke the ones in the park to pieces.’

And the rats have eaten the books, Xantee thought. But they had to find out. She could not think of anything else to do.

They set out again in the morning. In the part of the burrows that had been Keg, women and children had built shelters in the ruins. As Tarl had said, they were every colour, some even had the reddish-brown of the south, like Sal and Mond. There was no way round them. Children approached, begging, but the sight of the dogs sent them scuttling away.

There were no dogs in the burrows any more. Keech had wiped out all that had not fled with Tarl.

‘These people will tell the patrols we’re here,’ Tarl said.

‘We can make them forget,’ Duro said.

‘There are too many. Capture one of the scouts. Make him tell us where Keech is.’

They found a hiding place behind a wall half fallen into a hallway. Tarl and the dogs slept – they could sleep at will – while Xantee and Duro kept watch. Women passed, carrying buckets of water from a well at the end of the street, but it was midday before a man appeared. He had the quick movements of a scout, and a way of shrinking into doorways and emerging like a shadow. He stopped suddenly outside the place where the travellers were hidden.

Duro, he’s seen the dogs’ footprints.

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