At last! Sorry about the very long wait, though I think that this chapter's worth it, it's a good one. I like the end of it a lot. It had the intended effect on me anyway! It's the sort of thing that would excite my English teacher.
Chapter 6, Paths
Barry’s head swam. The pain in his shoulder was now coupled with a throbbing pain in his skull. Someone grabbed him by the feathers and yanked him up onto his knees, just in time for a fist to catch him hard the jaw.
"Enjoying yourself Mud?" He was pulled to his feet and the sligs made a circle around him again. Their captain continued, "No, don’t bother guys, he wants to run, he can run!"
The slig pulled a rope out of his pack and grabbed Barry’s wrists, his left arm screaming in protest. Then the slig tied his wrists together, pulled the knot unnecessarily tight and leered at Barry.
"Bandage his arm, someone, and we’ll get going. Old Oily won’t give us anything if he’s the wrong one and we bring ‘im in dead."
One of the sligs tied a course bandage round his left shoulder, and then the captain yanked the rope and set off at a steady run. The other sligs followed.
At first it was easy for Barry to keep up, but the sligs legs were mechanical and didn’t tire out. After five hours Barry was struggling to keep going. Every time he lagged, the slig yanked hard on the rope round his wrists, which in turn pulled on his wounded left shoulder, which ached anyway from supporting the weight of his arm. Normally he could have kept this up but having only slept a few hours in the last three days and the pain in his wounds that seemed to be sucking up so much of his energy wore him out.
It was around 3 O’clock when they began. At around 10 the sligs slowed down to a walk, too late to give Barry any comfort. The idea of torturing their prisoner seemed to give the sligs energy. Barry remembered enough of sligs to know that even they would be feeling tired now and at any other time would probably have simply slumped down and refused to go on until morning, whatever they were told by their bosses. But simply seeing him gasping with pain, blood flecking his arm and chest seemed to urge them on.
It was midnight, 13 O’clock (Oddworld time) by the time they decided to stop. Their captain had them tie his ankles together and then tie them to his bound wrists behind his back, leaving his immobile, lying on his left side, weight on his left shoulder, squeezing pain from the wound. He knew he wouldn’t get much sleep tonight.
The sligs lit a fire and slumped in a semicircle around it, between him and the flames, blocking most of the heat and light from him. They pulled out cigarettes, food and what Barry guessed was beer and talked amongst themselves for a while. Barry ignored most of what they said, until he heard a few words that caught his attention.
"Most of the sligs from the factory are out here. Whatever Gopemi lost must be worth a lot." The captain, quiet, sounding almost conspiratorial.
"Worth a lot to us," The second voice was loud and drunk, a big contrast to the quiet voice of the captain. "They won’t even tell us what we’re looking for, what does that say about it?"
"It doesn’t really matter, what could we do with it?" Another, muffled speaker, sounded tired.
"What? Take it! Sell it to the highest bidder: get a nice little sum to keep us going till retirement!"
"Like you could ever save any money!" Another slig, mocking the loud voice. "Anyway, Old Orily will dig into the Mud and find what he’s looking for."
"Old Oily? He couldn’t find a scrab if it bit his arm off. He’ll get vykkers to look…" The captain was scoffing their boss in a strong contrast to his previous voice, but Barry was hardly listening. Orily, their boss was Orily. Director Orily of Orily’s Gear-works, the factory where… where Jason had worked. The one he had been aiming for! He was in with the right sligs!
With that one comforting thought, the first to hit him in what felt like seasons, he drifted into sleep. But he slept lightly, waking many times in the night from haunting dreams of the shadows of his past.
The sun was high in the sky when Barry was jerked awake by the sligs. His shoulder now ached with pain; dark bruises flowered around the wound. His headache, he noted eventually, had packed up and given in, but it was little comfort at the thought of what was ahead. His limbs ached from being held in position all night, and when the ropes were untied and he was ordered to his feet he found his legs stiff and reluctant to move.
In the end it was a long time before the sligs moved on. It appeared one of them, Askar, the loud voiced slig he’d heard the night before, had indeed had too much to drink and was wrecked, reluctant to open his eyes, let alone move on.
Barry was surprised to find himself almost impatient with the hold up. Now he knew he was going the right way he was more than willing to get going and put the forest behind him. He wasn’t the only one; all the other sligs were impatient, wanting to move and get back to the Gear Works to have a break. Their captain was almost jumping with anger, shouting at the hung-over slig (with little positive effect) and kicking him every few minutes (also with little positive effect).
In the end he ordered the sligs to move on and leave Askar behind, lying on the ground, refusing to move. They tied up Barry’s wrists again and dragged him along, less aggressively than the day before (for which he was very pleased).
Within 10 minutes Askar had staggered up behind them, but kept to himself for the march, wincing at every sound above a whisper, eyes almost closed anyway and looking very touchy. When the captain decided to start a stirring round of ’10 Fat Glukkons Standing on a Ball’ he groaned loudly and shoved the mute slig who had been leading Barry away and grabbed the rope, yanking on it with every other syllable, hanging back to kick him and generally taking his rage out on the unfortunate mudokon.
They stopped at midday, tying Barry to a tree and having a meal before continuing. By evening the trees were thinning and Barry could see pillars of smoke ahead, illuminated by the light from the setting sun. He guessed that they were maybe a day’s walk away.
That night they tied him to a tree a few metres from the camp. They seemed to have forgotten to make him miserable in the excitement of being in sight of the towers of thick smoke that told of the nearby factories and the sligs’ home.
They tied his ankles together and left his wrists tied, and they set one of the sligs sitting nearby, who quickly fell asleep. Sitting awake, Barry risked removing the Orb from his loincloth and feeling its warmth between his hands. It seemed so strange that all this trouble to spread out from that one ball. He wondered how he’d get it past the security in the factory, but told himself to tackle that problem when the time came, as he’d always done. He looked up into the sky, trying to spot the moon with its mudokon-paw shaped crater among the stars, but it seemed hidden. He couldn’t spot it. He remembered, eventually, that it was the wrong time of the season, and neither of Oddworld’s moons would show in the sky for several days still.
He tucked the Orb away and once again fell into uneasy sleep.
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