The Saga of Larten Crepsley 1-4. Darren Shan

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СКАЧАТЬ and in a few more seconds there would be nothing for his cousin to see.

      “Out of it,” one of his brothers grunted, shoving Larten aside.

      Larten yelled a curse and kicked out, but only hit the barrel. His brother pushed Larten again. Anger flared in the younger boy’s eyes and he stepped forward for a fight. But Vur had spotted the danger and acted quickly to avert it. He didn’t like it when Larten got into fights, even when he won, as he often did.

      “If we don’t leave now, we’re going to be late,” Vur warned.

      “We’ve loads of time,” Larten scowled.

      “No,” Vur said. “We’ll be getting our heads daubed today. If we’re not early, Traz will beat us.”

      “We got them daubed a few days ago,” Larten argued.

      “Trust me,” Vur said. “Traz will do it again today.”

      Larten growled, but turned away from the barrel and sloped across to where Vur was using a scrap of cloth to pat his neck dry. There was no fixed schedule for the daubing days. Traz seemed to hand them out at random. But Vur had a knack of being able to predict when one was due. He wouldn’t tell Larten how he knew, but eight times out of ten he got it right.

      “Ready?” Larten asked, as if he was the one itching to leave.

      “Aye,” Vur said.

      “Then let’s go,” Larten sniffed, and the two boys, neither yet a teen, headed off to work.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Larten and Vur wound their way through the narrow, filthy streets to the factory. Though it was early, the city was already bustling with life. In these dark autumn months you had to make the most of the sunlight.

      Traders had set up stalls in the gloom before dawn and were busy haggling and selling fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, shoes, clothes, rope, pots, pans and more. Larten and Vur occasionally went to one of the big Sunday markets, where animals were traded and stalls boasted exotic wares from countries that the boys had never heard of. The pair would spend their time ogling the worldly traders and their goods, dreaming of travel and adventure. Those markets were a place of magic and mystery.

      These small street stalls, on the other hand, were a nuisance. It took time to detour around the crowds, and some of the traders cuffed the boys if they drew too close — they were always wary of thieves, and one dirty street urchin looked much the same as any other. Certain traders lashed out at any child who came within striking distance.

      “I want to be a trader when I grow up,” Vur said, smiling as they passed a fish stall, ignoring the putrid stench.

      “Aye,” Larten said. “We can hunt elephants and sell their tusks.”

      “No,” Vur shivered. “I’d be afraid they’d eat me.”

      “Then I’ll collect the tusks and you can sell them,” Larten decided.

      They’d heard many tales of elephants, but had never even seen a picture of one. From the wild stories, they believed the mighty creatures were bigger than five houses, with twenty tusks, ten on either side of their trunk.

      The two boys often discussed their plans for the future. The nineteenth century had dawned a few years earlier and the world was a place of mystery and intrigue, opening up to travellers more than it ever had before. Vur wanted to visit the great cities, climb the pyramids, sail across an ocean. Larten wanted to hunt tigers, elephants and whales. He knew that was unlikely, that both boys would probably remain at the factory, marry in their teens, have children of their own and never venture beyond the outskirts of the city where they’d been born. But he could dream. As poor as they were, even he and Vur had the right to do that.

      They arrived fifteen minutes early for work, but Traz was already outside the door, buckets of dye lined up, a brush in his hand and a wicked glint in his eyes.

      Traz was their foreman. He had been at the factory for a long time, part of the staff even when Larten’s father had worked there as a boy. He was a cruel master, but he produced excellent results and kept costs down, so the owners tolerated his brutality.

      Traz’s eyes narrowed as the boys approached, their heads lowered and knees trembling. Part of the fun for him on daubing days was catching the children by surprise. He loved it when they turned up on time, only to find themselves at the back of a line. By the time he’d processed those ahead of them, the children at the rear would be late and Traz could legitimately beat them.

      Traz disliked the Horston boy intensely. The pale weakling was too smart for his own good. He did a fine job of hiding his intelligence, but he gave himself away at times like this. Only the shrewder children were able to second-guess Traz. These two almost always turned up early on daubing days, and he was certain that the Crepsley brat wasn’t the brains of the outfit.

      “You’re early!” Traz barked when the boys stopped before him, as if being early was a crime.

      “Our mother had to leave earlier than usual today,” Larten muttered. “She threw us out, so we came here.”

      Traz glowered at them, but decided not to press the matter. Others were already arriving and he didn’t want to waste too much time on the daubings — he would take the blame if production dipped.

      “Bend over,” he grunted and grabbed the back of Larten’s neck. Thrusting the boy down, he reached into the bucket of orange dye with his brush, swished it from side to side, then ran the coarse bristles over the top of Larten’s scalp. The dye stung, and a few drops trickled into Larten’s eyes, even though he kept them squeezed shut.

      Traz painted Larten’s head a second time, then a third, before releasing him. As Larten staggered away, coughing and wiping his eyes, Traz forced Vur down over the bucket. He was even rougher with Vur and daubed his scalp five times. Vur was crying when the foreman finally let him go, but he said nothing, only stumbled along after his cousin.

      Traz daubed the head of every child in the factory. Each had a specific colour, depending on their job. The lucky few who worked on the looms were blue. Cleaners were yellow. Cocooners were orange. He liked being able to tell with a single look where a child was meant to be. That way, if he saw an orange-haired boy lurking by a loom, he knew straightaway that the child was shirking.

      Larten and Vur had been assigned to the cocooning team when they started at the factory at the age of eight. Their heads had been orange ever since. In fact Larten couldn’t remember what colour his hair had been before that.

      Larten’s father had been a muscular child and had worked on a team carting heavy loads around. His head had been dyed white, and although he’d left the factory before Larten was born, his locks had kept their unnatural colour, so Larten had resigned himself to a life of orange hair. Nobody knew what sort of poisons Traz included in his dyes, but they seeped into a person’s pores and remained there for life. Larten wouldn’t be surprised if the dye had even turned his brain a dark orange colour.

      Once past Traz, the boys made their way to the room of cocoons to begin their shift. They worked in the factory for twelve hours a day, six days a week, and eight hours on most Sundays, with no more than a handful of holidays every year. It was a hard life, yet there were others worse off than Larten and Vur. Some of the children were slaves, bought by Traz from poor or greedy parents. The СКАЧАТЬ