Free The Transall Saga by Gary Paulsen Page A

voice called to him from above.
    He opened one eye. The girl with the long black braids was standing over him with her arms folded. She barked an order, and a rope circled his head and settled around his shoulders. Sarbo jerked Mark to his feet, and some of the warriors helped pull him out of the pit onto his stomach. One of them held him down while another quickly tied his hands together.
    Sarbo got up on his mount and barely gave Mark time to stand before he dragged him through the village to a small outbuilding behind one of the larger log houses.
    He shoved Mark inside the shed and bolted the door. The smell was awful, like an open sewer. It would have been pitch black in the tiny room except for a small semicircular opening near the bottom of the back wall. Mark crawled through the slime on the floor and looked through the hole.
    There were fat, hairy piglike animals with long, pointed snouts rooting in a pen attached to the back of his cell. No wonder it smelled so bad. He was in some kind of pigsty.
    He moved to the door and tried it. It wouldn’t budge. He pushed on the walls. They were solid, made of logs like the houses. That left the opening. He knelt by it again. It was so small he doubted he could get his head through, much less his body.
    The floor. It was dirt. He would dig his way out. But first he had to get his hands loose. Feeling in the bottom of his boot, he found his knife and began to saw awkwardly on the rope. Minutes later it snapped off his wrists.
    He dug at the base of the opening, using everything he could find—his knife, the toe of his boot, his fingers—until finally he had a hole big enough to fit his shoulders through. He wriggled into the pen.
    He hadn’t really planned to escape until it was dark but he couldn’t take the chance they might discover the hole. Staying low behind the log fence, he crossed through the herd of pigs and peeked up over the side of the pen. There was no one in sight.
    It was now or never. He took a deep breath and slid over the fence. He moved carefully from one building to the next until he had made his way to the edge of town.
    Ducking behind some tall red plants in a garden, he took a quick look around. The road they had come in on was to his right. But taking it was out of the question. They would catch him if he stayed in the open. He looked to the mountains. They were steep and rocky but would have better places to hide.
    Mark crawled along the rows of vegetables. There was only one more house to get past and then he would head for the rocks and brush on the hillside.
    He raced to the back of the building and leaned against it to rest. The move nearly cost him his life.
    A small furry animal—he hesitated to call it a dog but it had some of the same features—started up a scrawking sound. Mark knew there was no time to lose. He bolted for the closest ridge. Behind him he could hear shouting and the sounds of people running.
    Something whizzed past his ear. An arrow hit the dirt in front of him. He dodged to the left and zigzagged up the mountain. He was nearly to the top of the ridge. If he could just make it to the brush they’d never catch him.
    He felt something slam into his back. It ripped through his flesh like a hot iron. He fell to his knees. Twice he tried to get up but couldn’t. He clawed at the ground, then managed to get to his knees and pull himself behind an outcropping of rocks.
    The voices were getting closer. Mark fought for air. Something was taking his breath away. With his last spark of consciousness, he felt around for something to use to defend himself. His fingers closed around a large rock. He tried to pick it up but he was too weak; it fell from his hand.
    Then they were on him.

chapter
24
    The heavy steel band around his ankle dug into his skin as he walked. The chain forged to the band held a heavy iron bar that made his movements slow and clumsy.
    It had taken almost three months for him to heal from the arrow wound. And