Read In Solitary for Free Online Page B

pass a look at the others to say in a gesture, ‘I did my best.’ Stella’s face had a peculiar look on it which pulled me up short.
    ‘Stella?’ I said in a low voice.
    Her eyes glittered with a kind of triumph.
    They’re together,’ she muttered in a satisfied tone. ‘Your bow.’
    I wound the mechanism without really considering why. The Soal officer looked puzzled but stood his ground. He had no reason to move.
    ‘On the mud,’ he jerked out the words again, annoyed at having to repeat himself. No one moved except Fridjt who took a step forward.
    ‘Kill them!’ rapped Stella.
    I gasped, unbelieving. No mudwalker had ever used violence against a Soal – not for as long as I could remember. The Soal memories contained the same thoughts as my own, for they merely began ruffling their feathers in anger. They did not even bear personal arms – though the craft contained brainstingers.
    ‘Now!’ screamed Stella, stamping her foot. ‘Do it, you fools, do itnow.’
    Fridjt suddenly came to life again, reached forward and grabbed the officer by his right skinwing, tearing the flimsy webbing. The Soal opened his mouth in pain and Fridjt clamped his hand round the mouth, between the two beaklike jaws, and drove the head against the wall, shattering the light skull.
    I stood transfixed in terror, shaking from head to foot. The other Soal took off from the ledge and began gliding towards his craft, which was hovering a few metres from the tower.
    ‘Get him,’ shouted Stella.
    I raised the crossbow, levelled the sights on the moving figure and pulled the trigger. There was a smooth clunk and a nudge from the crossbow as the bolt left the channel. I was trembling so much I felt I must have missed, but the figure doubled-up in mid-air and fell to the mud below with a muffled splatter. He gave one twist, as he lay in the small hole his impact had made, and was then still. We could see the black bolt projecting from beneath his torn armpit. The amount in view, and the angle of the bolt, told me that the point of it was buried somewhere in the Soal’s brain. I shivered involuntarily.
    ‘We’re really in trouble now,’ I stammered still staring at the body below.
    The way the Soal had fallen into the mud reminded me of poor Askreenata, when her wings had failed her over the sludge of the vats. She plummeted in the same manner – broken-winged and with a look of surprise mixed with annoyance, that changed to terror when she hit the surface of the mire. Unlike the Soal below, her death was one of suffocation, watched by helpless playmates. A Soal feared death only when it was imminent. Until that last second, they were immortal.
    Stella snorted. ‘We were dead anyway.’
    ‘Yes but …’ I could not find the words. There was no punishment great enough for such a dastardly crime as ours, but I was sure the Soal would think of one.
    Fridjt spoke for the first time since the nightmare began. ‘Come. We must go quickly.’ He was no longer the bumbling idiot. It was I who lacked the mental strengthnecessary to meet the situation.
    ‘Where?’ I cried. ‘They’ll find us wherever we go on the mud – there’s nowhere to hide.’ I began babbling but neither of them were listening to me. They were staring at the hovering machine, divorced from us by just a few metres of unbridgeable air.
    ‘We’ve got to get on that chiton craft,’ said Stella. Then she jerked her thumb at me.
    ‘He can control it.’
    A heavy feeling settled in my stomach as I stared helplessly, and silently now, at these humans that had destroyed me within a matter of days. They were alien beings – I did not understand either of them and I doubted I ever would, but I was grateful to them now, as surely as if we three were grafted together. Between them they had seen to it that any hope I ever cherished of returning to my comfortable life on the mainland was gone now. Even Lintar would be horrified at what his once close human companion had