The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,159

it kind of dug in and made itself at home. Then there was a thing like a little bottle with a needle on the end of it, that somehow was just there on a little ledge inside the drudge that seemed to come out of nowhere. Ursala stuck the needle in her arm and touched her thumb to the end of the bottle. It emptied itself into her.

There was more things too, but since I didn’t know what they was for I wasn’t watching close. Sometimes I was looking up at the walls on both sides to see if anyone else was coming after us. Other times I was looking at the bodies on the ground, especially Sky’s. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t make my eyes stay away from them any more than I could stop smelling the blood and shit smells that was in the air. Flies was coming in great numbers now, drawed by them smells, and settling on the bodies.

We stayed there for what must of been half a turn of the glass or more while Ursala fixed herself. I seen her empty some blood into herself through the tube that was in her arm, and some other stuff went into her chest that sealed up the hole in her, kind of. When she was done, it looked like she had got some new skin where the wound had been, that was a different pink than the rest of her and somewhat shiny.

She got me to bare my leg then, and took care of that too. She done it with another one of them needles that she pushed into me at the back of my knee. I had got to look away, for looking at it made me want to be sick. I gun to get a little feeling back right away though, and more by and by. Some of the feeling was pain, but it was not so bad that I couldn’t bear it.

“Okay,” Ursala says at last. “I think we should go now.”

“Did you know?” I asked her.

“That the drudge was coming? No, Koli. Not for certain.” She tugged down her sleeve to show me the mote controller, which I had clean forgot about. “There’s a tracker in this that has a five-mile range. But I couldn’t be certain these people had left the drudge intact, or that it would be in a good position to read the signal. Obviously it couldn’t track me when I was underground. If it had been on the wrong side of the mountain, it might not have sensed me at all. Or it might have been too far away to do any good. We got lucky. Frankly, I think we were overdue.”

She lifted up her hand for me to take, and I helped her up. Her face was pale and she was not so steady on her feet. I said maybe she should ride up on the drudge, and she said she had been knowed to do that sometimes, but right then she wanted the gun on the drudge’s back to have as much travel as possible. “It won’t do any good if we’re ambushed and all it can see is my arse.”

I never heard Ursala say arse before. It struck me funny and would of made me laugh if we was not still surrounded by the bodies of them the drudge had killed. And if I didn’t have that memory in my mind of the people jumping into the train after we set light to it.

I done two last things before we went. One was to tie the DreamSleeve into its sling again, but this time on the outside of my shirt. I wanted it to start getting charged up just as soon as could be. The other was to kneel down at Sky’s side and take the big curved blade she weared there, sheath and all. I thought of taking a spear too, but I never yet could hit my mark with one of those.

“We’re all right, Koli,” Ursala said as we set out – so, so slowly – on our way. “We’re going to be fine.”

The drudge’s gun spun round and dipped and rose and spun some more.

Flies buzzed behind us, calling each to other. Saying hey, come to the feast.

52

We did not know where we was at first.

The open space in front of us was just some more of the mountain, sloping down towards a river that looked like it might be too