Gregor the Overlander - 1 (18 page)

"Forget about it," said Gregor. "I only did it because I need you." He didn't want Ripred thinking they were friends or anything.

"Did you? I'm glad," said Ripred. "I thought I detected in you a sense of fair play. Most dangerous in the Underland, boy."

Gregor wished everybody would just shut up about what was dangerous to him in the Underland. The whole place was one big minefield. He ignored Ripred's comment and continued to apply the spider-webs. Behind him he heard Luxa whisper to Henry, "Why did you not tell us?"

"To keep you safe," Henry whispered back.

"Safe," thought Gregor. "Right." Even if he got back to the Overland, Gregor didn't think he would ever feel safe again.

"You must not do this again, Henry," he heard Luxa say. "You cannot take him alone."

"I could have, if the Overlander had not interfered," said Henry.

"No, the risk is too great, and we may have need of him," said Luxa. "Let the rat be."

"Is that an order, Your Highness?" asked Henry with a slight edge to his voice.

"If that is the only way you will heed my advice, then yes," said Luxa earnestly. "Hold your sword until we better understand our condition."

"You speak most exactly like that old fool Vikus," said Henry.

"No, I speak as myself," said Luxa, stung. "And as one who wishes us both to survive."

The cousins realized their voices had risen to the point where everyone could hear them, so they stopped talking. In the silence, Ripred resumed gnawing on the bone he'd been carrying around. The scraping grated on Gregor's nerves. "Do you think you could stop that, please?" he asked.

"No, actually I can't," said Ripred. "Rats' teeth continue to grow our entire lives, which necessitates gnawing to keep them at a manageable length. If I didn't gnaw frequently, my lower teeth would soon grow through the top of my skull and puncture my brain and alas, kill me."

"Glad I asked," said Gregor, slapping a last piece of web on Ripred and leaning back against the cavern wall. "So, now what?"

"Well, since obviously no one's going back to dreamland, we may as well make tracks for your father," said Ripred, rising to his feet.

Gregor went to get Boots. As soon as he touched her he felt alarmed. Her face was burning like a furnace. "Oh, no," he said helplessly. "Hey, Boots. Hey, little girl." He gently shook her shoulder. She whimpered something in her sleep but didn't wake up. "Luxa, something's wrong. Boots is sick," he said.

Luxa laid her hand on Boots's forehead. "She is fevered. She has caught some pestilence from the land of rats." Pestilence. Gregor hoped that wasn't as serious as it sounded. Luxa dug through the vials Solovet had left with them and held one up uncertainly. "I think this is for fever."

Ripred took a sniff and wrinkled his nose. "No, that kills pain." He buried his snout in the pack and rooted out a blue glass bottle. "You need this one.

Give her only a few drops. She cannot handle more at her size."

Gregor was reluctant to give her any of the strange medicine, but Boots was so hot. He slipped a few drops between her lips and thought she swallowed it. He tried to lift her up to put her in the pack, and she moaned in pain. He bit his lip. "She can't ride with me; it hurts her."

They laid Boots on a blanket on Temp's back. Gox spun a web to secure her to the shell.-Gregor felt sick with worry.

And eight will be left when we count up the dead.

He couldn't lose Boots. He just couldn't. He had to get her home. He should have left her in Regalia. He should never have agreed to the quest. If anything happened to Boots, it would be his fault.

The gloom of the tunnel soaked through his skin and into his veins. He wanted to scream out in pain, but the darkness choked him. He would have given almost anything for just one glimpse of the sun.

The party limped along slowly, painfully, suspi ciously, preoccupied by the worries they all shared, but no one spoke aloud. Even Ripred, by far the most hardened of the group, seemed to hunch down under the weight of the situation.

This general despair was just one of the reasons they didn't detect the score of rats until they were almost on top of them. Even Ripred could not distinguish the smell of rats in a place reeking of rats. The bats couldn't sense them in the narrow tunnel as they approached the increasingly loud river. The humans could see nothing in the gloom.

Ripred led them out of the tunnel into a huge cavern divided by a deep canyon. A wide, powerful river ran through it. A swinging bridge spanned the river. It must have been made with the combined efforts of several species in better times. Thick silk woven by the spiders supported thin slats of stone cut by the humans. They must have needed the bats' flying abilities, too, to build such a bridge.

When Gregor shone his flashlight up to see how the bridge was secured, he caught sight of them. Twenty rats sitting motionless on the rocks above the opening to the tunnel. Right above their heads. Waiting.

"Run!" Ripred yelled, and literally snapped his teeth at Gregor's heels. Gregor stumbled forward onto the bridge and began to cross, his feet slipping on the worn stone slats. He could feel Ripred's hot breath on his neck. Henry and Luxa were flying ahead of him, jetting across the river.

He was halfway across when he remembered Boots wasn't on his back. She had been with him so continually on the journey, he had begun to think of them as inseparable. But now she was on Temp!

Gregor turned abruptly to go back. Ripred, as if anticipating just this move, spun Gregor forward and snagged the backpack with his teeth. Gregor felt himself lifted into the air as Ripred ran flat out for the far side of the river.

"Boots!" yelled Gregor. "Boots!"

Ripred moved like lightning. As he reached the opposite bank, he dumped Gregor on the ground and joined Luxa and Henry, who were frantically trying to hack through the silk ropes supporting the bridge.

Gregor aimed his flashlight and saw that Gox was about three quarters of the way across.

Behind her, carrying his sister, Temp struggled along with Boots. Between Boots and the twenty killer rats that were now streaming across the bridge -- there was only Tick.

"Boots!" Gregor screamed, and dove back for the bridge. Ripred's tail caught him across the chest and flung him back onto the ground, knocking the wind from him. He gasped, trying to fill his lungs, then got to his knees and crawled toward the bridge. He had to help her. He had to.

Gox zipped off the bridge and began to snap threads with her jaws. "No!" coughed Gregor. "My sister!" He pulled up to his feet just in time to catch another blow from Ripred's tail.

The roaches were within ten feet of the bank when the rats caught up with them. There was no discussion between them; it was as if the bugs had worked out this whole scenario long ago. Temp put on a burst of speed for the end of the bridge, and Tick turned to face down the army of rats alone.

As they bounded at her, Tick flew directly into the face of the lead rat, causing it to startle back in surprise. Until that moment, Gregor hadn't even realized the roaches had wings. Maybe the rats didn't know, either. But it didn't take them long to recover. The lead rat sprang forward and crushed Tick's head in its jaws.

Temp collapsed on the bank just as the bridge gave way. Twenty rats, the leader still holding Tick in its teeth, plunged into the river below. As if this sight wasn't horrific enough, the water churned as enormous piranha-like fish surfaced and fed on the screaming rats.

"Move it, move it, move it!" instructed Ripred, herding them all from the open bank and into a tunnel. He forced them along for a few minutes until they were well out of sight and, hopefully, out of smell of the tunnel entrance. At a small chamber, he gave the order to halt.

"Stop you. Sit you. Slow your hearts."

Wordlessly, the remaining members of the quest sunk to the floor of the tunnel. Gregor sat with Temp, his back to the others. He pawed up Temp's back, found Boots's hot little fingers, and entwined them with his own. He had almost lost her. Lost her for good. She would never have had the chance to meet their dad or get back to his mom's arms or play in the sprinkler with him and Lizzie or do anything ever again.

He did not want to look at the rest of the questers. Every one of them would have watched Boots and the crawlers fall into the river to stop the rats. He had nothing to say to them.

And then there was Tick. Brave little Tick, who had flown into the face of an army of rats to save his baby sister. Tick -- who never spoke much. Tick -- who shared her food. Tick -- who was after all just a roach. Just a roach who had given all the time she had left so that Boots could have more.

Gregor pressed Boots's fingers against his lips and felt scalding tears begin to slide down his cheeks. He hadn't cried, not the whole time he'd been down here, and there had been plenty of bad stuff. But somehow Tick's sacrifice had crushed whatever thin shell remained between him and sorrow. From now on, he felt an allegiance to the roaches that he knew would never fade. He would never again take a roach's life. Not here and not -- if by some miracle they made it home

-- in the Overland.

He felt his shoulders began to shake. Probably the others thought he was ridiculous, crying over a roach, but he didn't care. He hated them. He hated them all.

Temp, whose antennas had drooped down over his head, reached out and touched Gregor with a feeler. "Thank you. To weep when Tick has lost time."

"Boots would weep, too, if she weren't..." Gregor couldn't go on as another wave of sobs swept over him. He was glad Boots hadn't witnessed Tick's death. She would have been upset and she wouldn't have understood it. He didn't really understand it, either.

Gregor felt a hand on his shoulder and jerked away. He knew it was Luxa, but he didn't want to talk to her. "Gregor," she whispered sadly. "Gregor, know you we would have caught Boots and Temp if they fell. We would have caught Tick, too, had there been any reason."

He pressed his hand against his eyes to stop his tears, and nodded. Well, at least that was a little better. Of course Luxa would have dived after Boots if she'd fallen. The Underlanders didn't worry about falling the way he did, not with their bats.

"It's okay," he said. "I know." When Luxa sat beside him, he didn't move away. "I guess you think it's pretty stupid, me crying over a roach."

"You do not yet know the Underlanders if you think we lack tears," said Luxa. "We weep. We weep, and not just for ourselves."

"Not for Tick, though," said Gregor with a trace of bitterness.

"I have not wept since the death of my parents," said Luxa quietly. "But I am thought to be unnatural in this respect."

Gregor felt more tears slipping down his cheeks when he thought of how badly you had to be hurt to lose the ability to cry. He forgave Luxa everything at that moment. He even forgot why he needed to forgive her.

"Gregor," she said softly when his tears had stopped. "If you return to Regalia, and I do not... tell Vikus that I understood."

"Understood what?" asked Gregor.

"Why he left us with Ripred," said Luxa. "We had to have a gnawer. I see now he was trying to protect us."

"Okay, I'll tell him," said Gregor, wiping his nose. He was quiet for a minute, and then he asked, "So, how often do we give Boots that medicine? She still feels pretty hot."

"Let us dose her now, before we move on," said

Luxa, stroking Boots's forehead. Boots murmured in her sleep but didn't wake up. They slipped a few more drops from the bottle between her lips.

Gregor stood up and tried to shake off the pain. "Let's get going," he said, not looking at Ripred. The rat had been in tons of wars. He'd probably seen lots of creatures killed. He'd told Gox to eat Treflex. Gregor was sure Tick's death affected him as little as ... well, as swatting a roach affected people in New York.

But when Ripred spoke, his voice lacked its usual snide tone. "Take heart, Overlander.

Your father is nearby."

Gregor lifted his head at the words. "How nearby?"

"An hour's walk, no more," said Ripred. "But so are his guards. We must all proceed with extreme caution. Bind your feet in webs, speak not, and stay close behind me. We had rare luck at the bridge. I do not think it follows us where now we go."

Gox, whom Gregor was beginning to appreciate more as time passed, quickly spun thick silk slippers to pad their feet. As Gregor held his flashlight for Luxa to put on her pair, the light faded. He dug in his pack and came up with the last two batteries.

"How much longer can your torchlight last?" Gregor asked Luxa. He had noticed they'd gone to one torch when they met up with Ripred, apparently to conserve fuel. Now the one torch burned low.

"A short time only," admitted Luxa. "Your light stick?"

"I don't know," said Gregor. "These are my last batteries, and I don't know how much power's left in them."

"Once we have your father, we will not need light. Ares and Aurora can get us home in the dark," said Luxa encouragingly.

"They're going to have to," said Gregor.

The questers regrouped. Ripred led with Temp and Boots behind him. The tunnel was large enough for Gregor and Gox to walk beside them. Aurora and Ares fluttered along next, making short, silent flights. Henry and Luxa brought up the rear on foot, swords drawn. Ripred gave them a nod and they started off, deep, deep into enemy territory.

They tiptoed along, scarcely daring to breathe. Gregor froze every time a pebble moved beneath his foot, thinking he had triggered another rat assault. He was very afraid, but a new emotion was rising up in him, giving him strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

It was hope. It flowed through him, insisting that he break his rule. His father was nearby. He would see him soon. If only they could keep moving forward undetected, he would see him soon.

When they had been creeping along for about half an hour, Ripred suddenly stopped at a bend in the tunnel. The whole party pulled up behind him. Ripred's nose twitched furiously and he crouched.