Bane said softly, between his teeth, “I’m just thinking I’m not set on dying just yet. And the way he’s going, he’s going to get himself killed and everybody else who happens to be standing too close.”
Dyre pretended not to hear and they rode silently for a time. A legger came up behind them, abated its speed, and seemed content to follow. Nonetheless, Dyre kicked his horse into a trot and came up beside Bane, throwing suspicious glances over his shoulder. Bane ignored him, though Dyre had been right, of course. Bane did get mad at people saying he smelled. But then, they’d been at Madame’s, and she’d stopped the way he and Dyre smelled, and nobody at House Genevois had ever mentioned it, not even Mouche, but they’d still felt mad. Like being mad was a sort of habit. He thought about this for a time, then tried again to involve his brother.
“All right, look. Who’s on our side? There’s Hughy Huge. And there’s those crawlers we saw this morning, like Crawly, back at the camp, only bigger. And there’s that one we heard about, the one that’s grown into the mountain. And there’s the ear and the eye and all, who’re probably coming along. And there’s Bone and Mooly, and the rest. So there’s muscle ones, and mouth ones, and belly ones, and other kinds of ones. There’s all kinds of body parts, all kinds but one. There’s no brain one. Don’t that make you wonder?”
“Wonder what?” snarled Dyre.
“Oh, shit, forget it.” Bane frowned to himself and shut his mouth tightly, drawing his horse away from his brother’s. Maybe there was something wrong with him. Maybe he was sick. Maybe he’d caught this sickness at House Genevois. He’d never had thoughts like this before. He’d always been pretty much like Ashes, mad at everybody, getting his pleasure out of hurting them, screwing them up. So now Ashes was really going to screw something up, and then what?
As though to accentuate this thought, the earth moved beneath him, the horse stopped, legs braced wide, white showing at the edges of its eyes, nostrils flaring. The tremor went on and on, then faded. Ahead of them, the road danced then stilled. Behind them the legger emitted a confused noise, for it had been knocked off the road and now lay on its side, all its legs kicking without being able to right itself. Suddenly the legs came loose in pairs connected by saddle-shaped bits, and a few of these pieces began galloping away down the road, making the horses shy away. Then the tubular body split into cylindrical sections that wheeled onto the road and began rolling westward, spinning like tires, while the abandoned legs assembled themselves into pairs of pairs and spun after them like four-spoked wheels.
Only a squarish part was left behind, one that immediately began a shrill screaming, “Weeeple, weeeple, weeeple!”
The rearmost set of legs skidded to a stop, turned, sped back, separated itself to attach one leg pair at each end of the remaining part, then galloped off after the rest, the screamer still keening, “Weeeple, weeeple!”
Another tremor began, a long, slow shaking that seemed to go on endlessly. The horses refused to move. Cursing, Ashes dismounted and sat on a quivering rock at the side of the road, the reins loose in his hands.
“Did you see that?” Bane asked.
“See what,” his father growled.
“D’ja see that thing come apart?”
“They all come apart. Joggiwagga comes apart into snakes and balloony parts. Leggers come apart into tubes and legs and voice boxes. Tunnelers are just legger tubes with a driller section added on in front. Swimmers are just tunnelers with fins added on.”
“How about Timmys?”
“Funny about them. They don’t seem to fit together real well, and they don’t come apart into smaller things.”
“How do you know all that?” Bane asked.
“Been watchin’ ‘em. Long time.” Ashes yawned, his face suddenly becoming vacant and unlike himself. Bane stared at him, wondering why he looked so mushy, as though his nose and chin were sinking into his face. “You feelin’ all right?”
“Why?” snapped Ashes, suddenly himself. “Something the matter with you?”