Spirit Walker (10 page)

Chapter 8: Judgement Day

At dusk, a crowd of perhaps two hundred humans mixed with another three hundred Neanderthals gathered in and around the Moon Dance Inn, each person eager to hear of the blue man’s doings. Phylomon calmly sat inside to dine, the wild Dryad at his side, while the inn filled to overflowing. The townsfolk were amazed to see such a pair sitting on the familiar weathered oak stools of the inn.

Scandal himself bustled back and forth between the common room and his kitchen, offering Phylomon course after course of his finest fare—honey muffins with salmon berries, lamb ribs barbecued in plum sauce, buttered eel, squash and pine nuts under a blanket of fine white cheese, a baked bread pudding covered in a layer of blackberry tart.

When he could no longer stand it, one townsman called out to Phylomon, “What are you doing here?”

“He’s eating pudding!” Scandal said protectively, not wanting the locals to bother his celebrity.

Phylomon glanced up from his plate. Even from his stool, he could gaze out over the crowd. He measured his words. “I was in Wellen’s Eyes a few weeks ago and heard that the serpent hatch had failed, so I came to investigate.”

“Ayaah, it failed,” Scandal said, “and it will fail again next year. There’s not a single serpent at the nesting grounds at Haystack Rock. I’ve got some men, and we’re heading for Craal in a week to catch some hatchlings, bring them back here, and stock them in the bay.”

“Alive?” Phylomon asked. He felt unsure if the idea was brilliant or simply just as ludicrous as it sounded. “You hope to catch them alive?”

“They wouldn’t be any benefit to us dead,” Scandal answered. “I know it can be done. Why, when I was young, I met a chef out of Greenstone. He had a recipe for serpent—young serpent in chestnuts and red peppers, with an apricot-brandy glaze. The Crawlies catch serpents in the Seven Ogre and transport them by wagon three hundred miles to Greenstone, and send them out by ship all across the Craal.”

“Yes,” Phylomon said, “many fishermen at Seven Ogre go out for the serpent catch.” He looked down at the table and his eyes became unfocused, remembering those distant lands. “But you plan to haul the serpents much farther. Can they even survive, I wonder….”

Scandal said, “I figure we can take a few boys over the mountains, fill up my beer keg with serpents, head down to Denai, buy us a small boat, and sail the cargo to Castle Rock. With the serpents nesting, we wouldn’t dare try to get the boat through the Straits of Zerai, but we can ship them overland to Bashevgo, along with our boat, and then put the boat back in the water. We’ll have a three-man crew at Bashevgo building a barge big enough to house the serpents—since they’ll be hitting a growth spurt—and then we can sail the serpents home.”

Phylomon considered. “That sounds like a fanciful plan on the surface of it, but the serpents
do
make it to Greenstone. Still, I expect some attrition in the harvest. How many serpents do you think you can catch?”

“I figure, that if we get there early, we can bring in the little ones—three footers. I could hold a hundred of them in the barrel. By the time we reach Bashevgo ten days later, they’ll be six footers, and by the time we get them on a barge and ship them home, they’ll be fifteen to twenty feet long.”

“A hundred serpents to patrol this coast is not many,” Phylomon said. “By spring they’ll only be eighty footers. I’d prefer that you brought back a thousand.”

“What?” Scandal said. “Ten mastodons? Ten wagons?”

“But even with only one wagon, it will be hard to get in and out of Craal unnoticed,” Phylomon said. “You underestimate the Blade Kin.” Phylomon became silent for a moment, and no one said a word.

The Blade Kin, cruel warriors culled from the darkest prisons in Craal, were skillful fighters, far more highly trained than the pirate slavers of Bashevgo.

Phylomon continued, “Over the past few years, they’ve begun to keep a better watch on the Rough than you know. The number of escaped slaves has increased over the past decade, and the escaped slaves make constant war upon the mountain fortresses of the Blade Kin, so the borders are always under watch. It will be difficult to pass them.”

This was bad news, and Phylomon noted how the mood in the room darkened. Scandal’s plan sounded fanciful, but it might just work.

“Still,” Phylomon added, “if there are no serpents here in the East, something must be done, and I must come with you.”

Scandal clapped his hands in relief, his face lighting up with joy.

“But first,” Phylomon said, “I have urgent business here. A new college opens in Benbow soon, and they need a printing press to make books. I understand that you have one here in town?”

“Ayaah,” one of the merchants said, “Sort of. A fellow from the south came up here and tried to sell us one a few years back. He was a crazy youngster with grand ideas. The press was made in Craal, and we wouldn’t be able to get spare parts. He didn’t have the money to ship it elsewhere. No one bought it, so he dumped it into the bay.”

“Fools!” Phylomon said, standing and looking at the lot of them in shock. Those nearest townsmen backed away, out of sword’s reach, and the entire crowd fell silent. “Why do you hamper me at every turn?” Phylomon scolded. “Surely you realized the value of that press. Could not one of you have spared a steel eagle for it? How do you ever hope to regain the stars when the highest bit of technology you are willing to master is the use of a gun? Damn the lot of you to hell! Isn’t there one among you with any foresight?”

No one dared answer. They stared at the floor, or into their hands. Phylomon’s gaze whirled to Scandal. The innkeeper here seemed to be the most visionary among them, but even he had not spared a pittance to save the printing press.

A young farmer barged into the inn, sweat streaming down his face, as if he’d just run the miles to get here. He had frantic blue eyes that were too wide, like the eyes of a simpleton. “Phylomon, Good Sir! Heal my daughter! She's deadly sick.”

Phylomon looked to the back of the room and shook his head sadly and asked, “Who am I to heal your daughter?” Legends of his wisdom and powers had grown too large, it seemed.

“I’ve heard,” the young man said, “that if you spread your skin upon a sick person, you can heal her. Heal my daughter, please!” He pushed his way forward through the crowd, fell to his knees.

Phylomon shook his head, “Those are children’s stories, Friend,” he said, lifting the simpleton to his feet. “My blue skin can’t be removed so easily. In ancient times all Starfarers wore them, just as you wear leather and cotton and wool. But it is not clothing, it is a symbiote, an animal with a mind and will of its own that drinks my sweat to stay alive. In return it protects me, heals me, and extends my life.”

“Then maybe you could loan it to her,” the farmer begged, “for just awhile. Maybe it could protect her!”

Phylomon shook his head sadly. “If your daughter had a skin like mine, she too would be immune to disease. But I can no more remove this blue hide than you can remove your own skin. I’m sorry, but my touch won’t heal your daughter. I have no magic powers.”

“What can I do?” the farmer begged, and he fell to sobbing.

Phylomon lightly touched the man’s shoulder. “Perhaps I can help her some other way. I know a bit of healing lore. Stay for a bit. I’ll come to your home as soon as possible and do what I can. But now, I must prepare for sunset,” Phylomon sighed, and then led the Dryad to his room.

At sunset the Pwi threw a party in Phylomon’s welcome, as if it were a holiday, and many of them painted themselves blue and danced through the streets with flutes and drums. They tied streamers to every tree and brought their finest lamps down to the docks to see by as they listened to Phylomon's words, for it was said that his counsel was legendary.

Wisteria watched them gather from her home, at first, but soon joined the crowd, staying off to its edges. The fine day promised a cool evening, which was welcome after such a hot summer. The nights were not crisp yet, nor even cool, but the promise of fall could be felt for the first time this year.

Someone brought a beer keg to the dockside and the Pwi roasted three pigs in a great bonfire in the middle of the street. Everyone began to sing, and laughter filled the air.

Something in the festivities frightened Wisteria. There was a frenetic energy to it, a wildness to it. Most people seemed oblivious to the fact that Phylomon had asked the men to come dressed in war gear, and only a few Pwi brought their shields and war clubs.

As darkness grew, so did the throng.

Well over six hundred men and women with screaming babies and tired, ecstatic children eventually gathered. The Pwi celebrated, and the smell of roasting pork and beer filled the air. The music and laughter swelled so that soon the gaiety spread among the whole crowd. Everyone showed up—even old Byrum Saman, who’d been too sick to move from his pallet all summer, had been carried down to the docks. Two ships were still moored in the harbor.

Woden—a small white moon like a blind staring eye—had risen, and Phylomon’s pale skin gleamed dully as he entered the crowd. The Dryad stayed in their room. Phylomon carried his long, thin sword in its scabbard.

Wisteria waited in the crowd, and eventually her mother and father joined her. Tull Genet came and stood behind Wisteria, a bit too close. She couldn’t help but be conscious of him, waiting, as if after five years she might once again fall into his arms.

It was so
Pwi
of him.

The blue man appeared tired, and the crowd was disorganized. The men did not march in their war gear and line up in front of him like a real army might. It had been twenty years since they’d mustered, and those few who remembered to dress in battle gear seemed embarrassed to have pulled out old war shields with cracked leather, maces that had never been swung in battle. Among the crowd, only two men had guns—crude single-shot rifles.

Phylomon, moved by some internal clock, decided that the time was right and marched down to the wharf, where he stood with his back to the water and began to speak.

“People of Smilodon Bay,” Phylomon said loudly, “I have asked your men to come in war gear because you are in danger. Here in Smilodon Bay, you are far from Craal, and perhaps you are not aware of your enemy’s power, or the length of their reach. We here in the Rough number under sixty thousand, yet if you combined the armies of the Seven Lords of Craal, you would find that they have over six million men and women who bear arms. Many of these slavers are not
sometime
warriors—they fight with the sword day in and day out, and they kill one another for a living.

“In the past, the great distance between Smilodon Bay and Craal has served to protect you. But the Rough is shrinking. Every year, the borders of Craal move closer. Every year the slavers’ kingdom and power grows. If the Seven Lords were not so busy fighting among themselves, they would have swallowed you long ago.

“Soon—perhaps in a year, perhaps ten—the slavers will come and take you anyway. I’ve known them long enough so that I can tell you what will happen. They see no difference between owning people like you and owning herds of swine.” He pointed at two of the younger boys, both humans. “You and you, the slavers will castrate you before your mothers' eyes, and you will be made house servants. The slavers think it no more indecent to castrate you than to castrate a bull.” He pointed to Wisteria and two other young women, “You will be branded and turned into whores. You Pwi will be shackled and put to work in the mines and fields, and you,” he said, pointing out several grandmothers, along with Byrum Saman on his sick bed, “They’ll smother you with no more thought than if they slaughtered a dog that had outlived its usefulness.

“I have spent my entire life fighting the slavers, but some of you seem to be ignorant of their crimes. Two years ago, in Craal, I collected testimonies from slaves detailing the accounts of their capture. Some of them were taken by some of your townsmen….” A woman shrieked in disbelief. Others stiffened and looked around, studying the eyes of neighbors. Some muttered, and the sound of shifting feet threatened to drown out Phylomon’s voice, so he shouted, “Those slaves shall be vindicated this night!”

Phylomon held three slips of paper. He stroked the middle of his seven medallions, and it began to gleam like a firefly. A Pwi woman gasped at this sign of magic. He read, “Six years ago, I, Molliron Hart, was taken slave in Smilodon Bay. I was walking down the road just after dark when Jassic Goodman and Denneli Goodman caught me and raped me. They carried me to the hold of a merchant ship and sent me here.”

The crowd roared in anger. Denneli Goodman, a middle-aged fat man, tried to make a run for it. A woman stepped in front of him, and he slapped her in the head with a mace, cracking her skull. Several men grabbed the Goodman brothers from all sides, disarmed them, and dragged them shrieking and kicking toward Phylomon. The injured woman bled profusely and sat on the ground, stunned, while a dozen people tried to help tend to her wounds.

“Here’s the ones that did it!” someone shouted. Wisteria stared with her mouth open.
It's started,
she thought.
It has started.
She was not surprised to find that these Goodman brothers were slavers. From her childhood she recalled that Jassic and Denneli were two of the meanest men in town.

Phylomon stepped in front of Denneli Goodman, a tall thin man with a haggard face. Denneli stared at the ground, and he shook as if with a chill. Phylomon asked, “What have you to say for yourself?”

“Does it matter?” Denneli asked. “You caught us. I’m a dead man.”

“Dead you are,” Phylomon said. He turned to the townspeople and said just loud enough to be heard by all, “When the first Starfarers fell from the skies, there were 312 men and women. You are all descended from them. In the past thousand years your bloodlines have crossed and recrossed countless times. You look at the person standing next to you, and though he may be a stranger, you share so many genes that he is as much a brother as if you were born of the same mother. I myself have fathered five children in the past eight hundred years. Most of you could not cite your genealogy without finding that I am one of your forebearers. When you sell one another into slavery, you sell your brothers and sisters. The people I kill this night, are
my own
children!”