Uki and the Swamp Spirit Read online

  ‘I’ve just made up a song,’ said Kree. ‘Maggety-Pie, Maggety-Pie, kissed a frog and made it cry!’

  And, as Uki winced and blushed some more, she sang it over and over, all the way back to Bo’s house.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Glopstickers

  The Gurdles were happy enough for Uki and Jori to join them on their scouting trip. Kree had decided to stay in the village with Mooka. Most of the expedition was going to be by boat and she didn’t think the jerboa would cope very well, not after the stress of being so ill.

  There were three rabbits going with them. Ma Gurdle had volunteered some of her best scouts. Hitch and Yurdle were two of her sons and Rawnie was the tribe’s finest hunter. She had more snake fangs on her necklace than anyone.

  The boat they took was called the Sleek Hawker. It was a flat-bottomed dinghy, with a stubby mast and a muddy-green sail which was currently rigged up as a tent-like canopy, with Rawnie’s bedroll and blankets beneath. As Uki and Jori watched, the Gurdle hunter hopped aboard her craft and dashed about, untying knots and coiling ropes. Within a few minutes, she had the sail wrapped around the boom arm that jutted from the mast. All her bedding, pots and pans were stowed out of sight, and two oars had appeared in the rowlocks. She also brought out a long pole, which she passed up to Hitch.

  ‘Ready to cast off,’ she said, hopping up to the prow. ‘Yurdle will row, Hitch will steer, unless we get weedbound. Then he can punt us free. You two mollygogglers can sit in the stern.’

  Coal was standing with them. Uki thought he might have liked to come, but there was no room in the boat. ‘Be careful, you two,’ he said. ‘You’re just going out to find where the Maggitches are. Stay in the boat and keep quiet.’

  ‘We can take care of ourselves, thank you,’ Jori replied, stepping briskly into the dinghy. Uki paused to give Coal a smile, hoping to make up for his friend’s bluntness.

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Look after Kree and Mooka for us.’

  ‘Will do.’ Coal held out his hammer to help Uki into the boat. It rocked and swayed as he stepped in, but after spending a few days on the floating Gurdle village, he found his legs were used to it.

  ‘Casting off,’ said Hitch. He untied the ropes that joined the Sleek Hawker to the rest of the houses, then gave it a shove with his pole. As it drifted out into the lake, he leaped from the platform, landing in the stern and making the boat bob alarmingly. Uki yelped and clung on to the sides.

  ‘Show-off,’ said Yurdle, grinning back at his brother. He took the oars and began to row – deep strokes that drove the boat swishing through the water. Hitch sat at the tiller, his pole resting on his knees, and steered them across the lake.

  ‘Will we have to go far?’ Jori asked. She seemed to be clutching the sides as tightly as Uki. Perhaps, he thought, for all her experience of the world, she hasn’t spent a lot of time in boats.

  ‘That be depending,’ said Rawnie. ‘Ma reckons them Maggitches has dug in on Gollop’s Mound. Won’t take us too long to get there. If’n they’re somewhere else … we could be out all day. Maybe longer.’

  Uki looked at the dark water rippling by on either side of him. There was nothing between it and his feet but a thin layer of wood. He gripped his seat even harder and tried to stop his ears from trembling.

  They rowed out of the lake, drifting underneath the trailing branches of the willows, which reached down to tickle their noses and leave a shower of catkins all over them. The Sleek Hawker emerged on to a winding river, high walls of bulrushes and reeds on either side.

  Rawnie climbed up on to the prow, leaning out over the water with a long, bronze-tipped spear in her paws. Her head twitched to and fro as she stared at the reeds and the surface of the water, searching, searching for something.

  ‘Erm … what are you looking for?’ Uki asked, almost dreading to hear the answer.

  ‘Snakes,’ she replied. Uki winced.

  ‘We’re going right into zaggert grounds now,’ said Yurdle, as he strained at the oars. ‘Vipers, you mudwalkers call ’em. Adders. Big, venomous snakes.’

  ‘Exactly how big?’ Jori asked. Her paw moved to rest on her sword hilt.

  ‘Depends,’ said Hitch. ‘They start off the size of one of you nippers. Then they just keeps on growing. I’ve heard tell of ones bigger than an oak tree, out by Toadtwitch Lake.’

  The two brothers sniggered a little, so Uki didn’t know whether they were joking or not. But when Rawnie spoke, her voice was deadly serious.

  ‘Fully grown zaggerts are big,’ she said. ‘Big enough to eat one of us whole. They swim too, but they don’t usually strike in the water. It’s when we go on land that we’ll have to be careful. Especially if we’s near the reeds. They hide in them and then shoots out – whip-quick – so fast there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘But you hunt them, don’t you?’ Uki said. ‘You’re good at killing them?’

  ‘Younglings, mostly. One or two gurters. If I see one big enough to eat me, I run.’ Rawnie took her eyes off the water long enough to spare Uki a glance. A hard, serious look that made his fur stand on end. Uki took a spear from his harness and began to stare at the passing reeds as well.

  They rowed for an hour or so, with Hitch having to stand and punt every now and then, when Yurdle’s oars became tangled in weed. Tall reeds hemmed them in, their bearded heads nodding in time to the wind. There was birdsong everywhere – coots hooting, ducks quacking. Dragonflies darted about, their wings shining like shards of floating glass.

  Thankfully, the only wildlife they saw was small. Finches, geese, moorhens and herons. A flash of blue and orange that Hitch said was a kingfisher, diving into the river to catch her supper.

  Uki looked out for signs of Charice’s plague amongst the creatures. Here and there a dead fish floated, its pale belly marked with angry red sores. They seemed to see more of them as they moved further away from Gurdle territory, as they edged closer to the ancient spirit that Uki could feel pulsing in the back of his head.

  When the river began to open out, Hitch steered the boat over to the bank. Rawnie leaped ashore, tying the painter to a tree root and holding the boat steady for the rest to disembark.

  ‘Downriver is Blacksand Bay,’ she said. ‘A nice little cove for sea craft to land in. We smuggle the booty up the river here, and the Spikers don’t know a thing about it.’

  ‘Can’t we get to Gollop’s Mound by sailing?’ Uki asked. Even though it was just a few planks of wood, he felt safer inside the Sleek Hawker than he did walking past the reed beds on foot. Every step, waiting for a snake’s head to come shooting out and bite him. His reactions were fast, true, but he doubted they were quicker than a striking viper. And even Iffrit’s healing wouldn’t work very well from inside an adder’s stomach.

  ‘No streams or rivers go that way,’ said Hitch. ‘We can take this path for a bit, then we have to glopstalk.’

  ‘Glopstalk?’

  ‘Walk through the mud, like. In the marsh.’

  Uki and Jori looked at each other. It was hard to say who was the most horrified.

  The riverbank they stepped on to was high, dry land with thick trees and bushes on the other side of the reeds. A well-worn path led alongside the river and they followed it back the way they had rowed a little, before Rawnie stopped by a gap in the hedgerow. She pointed through it, southwards, to where the view opened up. Uki saw an expanse of fen: patches of meadow grass, dotted here and there with pools and clusters of reeds. Further off, the pools seemed to join together, making a wide strip of brown mud. In the distance was a high, round hill, covered with bushes and the spindly fingers of dead trees.

  ‘Gollop’s Mound,’ Rawnie said.

  As soon as Uki saw it, he felt a pulsing pain in his head. Charice was there, he was sure of it. And something else too. Another spirit? The waves of queasiness that seemed to flow from the place blurred his senses. He couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Well,’ said Jori. ‘We’ve seen it.
Perhaps we should head back now?’

  ‘Not yet, mudwalker,’ said Rawnie. ‘We need to get a bit nearer. Close enough to see if them Maggitches is there.’

  Twirling her spear, Rawnie hopped down from the bank and began to follow a faint path across the meadow. Hitch and Yurdle followed, and there was nothing Uki and Jori could do except join them.

  The sun was nearly at its noon point in the sky when they saw the snake.

  They had picked their way around most of the marshy pools and were heading across the last piece of dry grassland when Rawnie suddenly stopped, dropping to a crouch and spreading both arms wide in warning.

  ‘Everybody halt!’ she hissed. ‘Don’t take another step!’

  Uki froze in mid-stride, one foot still off the ground. He held his breath, fighting for balance, eyes darting everywhere. Where was the danger?

  Then he saw it. From a patch of reeds off to their left, what he’d thought was a mound of earth began to twitch, before lazily uncoiling. Metre after metre of black and brown scaled skin unspooling into the twisting form of a serpent at least five times as long as he was.

  It had a broad, paddle-shaped head and two round eyes with a sinister red tinge. Tongue flicking, it moved from side to side as it slithered through the grass in front of them. As it flowed across the ground, Uki could see the black markings made a zigzag pattern along its back. The same markings he had seen on the Maggitches’ snakeskin cloaks.

  ‘Don’t wiggle a whisker,’ whispered Rawnie. ‘It can sense vibrations through the ground.’

  Uki’s balance was failing, but he dared not set his foot down in case the bump of paw on earth drew the snake’s attention. He flailed his arms a little, trying to keep upright. He hadn’t even let out his breath. His chest felt like it was going to burst.

  Finally, thank the Goddess, the adder reached a wide pool of muddy brown water and slid inside. It swam off, body wriggling, head held clear, leaving Uki and the others in peace.

  ‘By all the numbers!’ Jori let out the breath she had been holding, just like Uki. He gasped and set his foot down – gently, in case the snake still felt it from wherever it had swum to.

  ‘I don’t think we were in any danger,’ said Rawnie. ‘Did you see its fat stomach? It had eaten something not long ago.’

  Uki had indeed noticed a bulge halfway down the snake’s body. It had looked about the same size as an adult rabbit.

  ‘Was the snake healthy?’ he asked. ‘I mean, do you think it had any of the Maggitch plagues?’

  ‘Hard to tell from this distance,’ said Rawnie. ‘We can follow it if you like? Try and get a better look?’

  ‘No!’ Uki answered so quickly, it made the snake-hunter blink. ‘I was just wondering. Forget I said anything. Please.’

  ‘Plague-carrying snakes,’ Jori muttered. ‘That’s all we need.’

  ‘You mudwalkers will be pleased to know it’s not far now,’ said Hitch, as the others stared after the adder. ‘We’ll just get close enough to check for firesmoke. Maybe spot some movement on the hill. We can watch from that copse over there.’

  He pointed to a stand of trees poking out from the swampy mud. Praying that there were no more adders about, they made their way to the edge of the grassland and began to wade.

  *

  The swamp didn’t grab them immediately. It crept up, slow and hungry.

  First, Uki’s galoshed paws started to squelch. Water was bubbling up through the grass with each step, and he sank a little deeper every time he moved.

  Soon, he was up to his ankles. The grass had petered out, replaced with scratchy, straggly reeds. In between the clumps were pools of muddy brown water. When he looked closely, Uki could see twitching things swimming quickly out of his path.

  Another few metres, and the water was up past his knees. It was so dark and brothy, he couldn’t see what he was standing in, but he could feel the suck-schlop of mud and slime every time he pulled a paw free. He kept close behind Hitch and Rawnie, both of whom were prodding ahead of them with spear and pole, making sure they didn’t step into a sinkhole or patch of quickmud.

  ‘Isn’t there … some kind of path?’ Jori asked, fighting to pull her leg free.

  ‘This is a path, you big wazzock,’ said Rawnie, over her shoulder. Uki cringed. It really wasn’t a good idea to call a trained assassin names. He could hear Jori muttering something about ‘marsh-grubbing halfwits’, and could picture the scowl on her face without even looking.

  It certainly wasn’t like any kind of path Uki had ever seen. Although Rawnie did seem to know where she was going, winding around patches of water that looked deeper than the others, gradually – oh, so gradually – inching closer to the copse of trees they were going to spy from.

  You should have stayed back in the village, his dark voice muttered in his ear. There was no need for you to be here. Now you’re going to get sucked under the mud, or eaten by a snake. Maybe both.

  There might still be a chance, Uki told himself. A chance I could slip away from Rawnie and get into the Maggitch camp. I could capture Charice before there has to be any fighting.

  Slip away? Sneak up there?

  Uki looked across the marsh between him and Gollop’s Mound. Even if he could get away from the others, he was moving at the pace of a one-legged badger, stuck in a barrel of treacle. They would be able to hear the schlop, schlop of his slow footsteps from miles away. And that’s if he didn’t fall down an underwater hole first.

  ‘Whose stupid idea was this?’ Jori said, drawing level with him.

  ‘I think it might have been mine. Sorry.’

  ‘Let’s just get it over with and get back to the village,’ said Jori. ‘The quicker we’re out of these fens, the better.’

  A worrying thought occurred to Uki. If it was this tricky to get to the mound, how were the Gurdles planning to mount their great attack? He caught up with Rawnie and asked her.

  ‘We’ll come at night,’ she said. ‘We know the paths well enough. By sun-up, we’ll all be at the bottom of the mound, if that’s where them Maggitches is hiding. Then we just have to run up it and give them a good paddlewhacking.’

  Uki was about to suggest that it might not be as easy as all that, when something slithered through the mud in front of him. Something big and wriggly. He let out a yelp.

  ‘Just a hoppet,’ said Rawnie, poking the mud with her spear butt. A slimy, long-legged creature burst upwards with a plop and then began to squirm its way to the nearest pool. ‘Only a small one too.’

  It was the size of my head! Uki started to say, when he spotted a movement at the pool’s edge. It had looked like a pair of eyes, ducking down under the water. There for an instant, then gone, any ripples it might have made disguised by those of the escaping frog.

  ‘Did you see that?’ he asked, but everyone’s attention was fixed on the muddy water in front of them.

  ‘Just keep moving,’ said Rawnie. ‘We’ll soon be out of this glop.’

  Uki carried on, step by slurping step. He kept a careful watch on the water, though, and a few minutes later saw the eyes again. This time it looked as if they had ears behind them. Long ones. Rabbit ones.

  ‘There’s something …’ he began to say, when a paw shot out of the mud beside him and grabbed his leg.

  ‘Glopstickers!’ Hitch yelled, and then there were suddenly explosions of water and muck all around as rabbits burst up from below the surface.

  ‘Maggitch troops!’ Rawnie shouted. ‘They come from beneath the mud! Bunch together!’

  Uki had a glimpse of several mud-coated figures, dressed in stitched snakeskin with some kind of masks and breathing tubes over their mouths. They had appeared from all directions, surrounding them completely. Jori had her sword drawn, the others were brandishing their spears.

  ‘Jori,’ he called, trying to move closer to her, but his leg was still gripped tight, right around his ankle. He strained, trying to use his strength to break free, but all the mud and water made it har
d to get any traction.

  Just as he felt his attacker’s grip begin to slide, another pair of paws grabbed his foot, then more around his waist. Just how many of these Glopstickers were there?

  Uki flailed, feeling his legs slipping out from under him. He went down on his side – cold, clammy mud flooding into his clothes, soaking through his fur. He tried to stand up again, but the paws were pulling, pulling him … backwards, downwards into the swamp.

  Jori was screaming. ‘Uki!’

  He had one last glimpse of her, struggling towards him through the marsh, her paw outstretched, and then he was dragged down … gone … under the surface.

  Slime, water, silt – it bubbled over his head, flooding his ears and nostrils. He could taste gritty, dank earth, feel slippery wetness squidging everywhere he tried to grip or stand. And always the paws of the Maggitch warriors, pulling him deeper, deeper into the muddy darkness …

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Pit

  Uki woke with a start.

  So cold … and … muddy?

  Yes. Freezing, wet mud everywhere … and the fading edges of some dream where he was watching himself, huddled at the bottom of a pit.

  He peeled his eyes open and sneezed globules of swamp slime from his blocked nose. His cloak, shirt and jerkin were heavy with mud and marsh water. They slapped against his fur when he moved.

  His eyes adjusted to the gloomy light and he looked around … he was huddled in the bottom of a pit. One dug out of the mud, a good four metres deep. There was a circle of open sky above, covered by a grid of wooden poles, lashed together. It was dank, and stank of wet earth and rotten pondweed. The floor and the walls were slippery and soggy. Every time Uki moved, he could hear squelching. His paws slipped as he struggled to sit upright.

  What had happened? He remembered walking through the marsh, trying to get to the trees. Then the paws had grabbed him, pulled him under …