The Boys of Fire and Ash Read Free Page B

rang out again, louder, echoing off the walls of the Pit and slopes of the Fire Mountains a hundred times over.
    Cubby and I yelped at the sound and turned back to the East Wall.
    “There.” Av pointed.
    I saw movement in the undergrowth, then movement in the treetops.
    A two-legged figure burst out of the brush and flung itself over the edge, tumbling down the East Wall—tumbling into the Pit.
    Our Pit.
    “They’re coming in!” shrieked Cubby, the pitch forcing my stomach up into my throat.
    “They can’t!” I said. “They’ll die!”
    The figure’s limp form bashed helplessly into boulders and outcrops until it managed to grab hold of a rocky ledge.
    A shrill wail echoed out from the trees, so hideous and loud I thought my ears would bleed.
    Scrambling out of the trees at the top of the East Wall came three pasty, bald creatures. They looked like Brothers, naked, but crouched and disfigured. No, not Brothers. Their sickly yellow color gave them away as something else entirely. The way they moved, jerky and sharp, looked clumsy, but they weren’t. Even from where we stood, I could see they were fast, faster than any Brother. They stalked back and forth along the wall, watching the figure, their lost prey, unwilling to climb down after it.
    The figure had managed to stop its fall, and was now carefully inching its way down the East Wall. The East Wall had never been an easy climb for the Brothers up or down, and I decided the figure probably wouldn’t be able to make it with an injury. But it was doing well, taking the same route the Brothers would take. Its movements seemed familiar, precise.
    “It’s a man,” I said.
    “He’s Ikkuma,” Av corrected me.
    —
    By the time the three of us reached the man, we could hardly breathe. We’d run as fast as we could from the Landfill to the base of the East Wall, Av tirelessly leading the charge, Cubby lagging behind, wheezing and begging me to slow down. When we arrived, a group of Little Brotherswho must have witnessed the man’s daring escape as well had gathered around him. They were all tentatively sucking their thumbs or holding up whatever rocks they’d found, ready to protect themselves. They didn’t need the makeshift weapons; the man had collapsed, motionless in the dirt and rocks on the floor of the Ikkuma Pit.
    Cubby stayed back with the other little ones as Av and I moved our way to the front of the group.
    We stood over the man, looking down at him. He was covered in layers of hides, types I’d never seen before. Furs with black stripes slithered on white, gray spots circled brown on gold, covering his shoulders and boots. I’d never seen so many skins on one person. The Pit is so hot that the Brothers mostly just wear one skin from their waist down, made from Larmy pig or Arid mule from Nikpartok. This man could have covered ten Brothers and still have skins left for himself. Beneath all that he was wrapped in something, not made out of any hide, the color of an angry bruise. The layers were so thick I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. I could see the blood, though. His shoulder must have been wounded by those things still pacing back and forth along the East Wall. They had hurt him good, made him bleed so much that the blood soaked through all those layers.
    His belt, the same bruise color, secured his fabrics at the waist, and attached to it was a tube, kind of. It wasn’t round, not really; it was as if long flat pieces of animal skin were molded together as round as they could be to form a pouch. The ends were pointed and made of a polished green stone, bright as Cubby’s eyes.
    One of the creatures let out a call, and one or two of the little ones started crying.
    I looked up the black rock face, a wave of nausea washing over me as I realized just how high it was. Somewhere up there, the creatures were pacing.
    I could feel Av staring at me. His eyes mirrored what I was wondering.
Is he dead?
    “Hey, fella!” I said. Nothing. The