Spirit Walker (21 page)

Chapter 21: The Quicksilver Man

Tull spent that day in a daze. He had never met anyone who believed in him, and Phylomon’s faith seemed the product of a deranged mind.

Tull couldn’t decide whether to tell Phylomon and the others what Tchupa had said about the armies of Craal. The words frightened him, and he did not want to give this evil kwea to others.

Besides, they would be traveling to the White Mountains soon enough, and they would learn firsthand whether the armies of Craal could overrun the Rough. For a while, Tull went to look for Wisteria. He found her shopping with Tirilee, and the two seemed preoccupied, so Tull and Ayuvah worked on their wagon all day.

The wagon was made to be pulled by a mastodon, not by oxen, and the men had to take the doubletree from the glass seller’s wagon and switch it to their own, since the glass seller’s wagon could not carry the kind of weight they would be hauling once they filled their great barrel with water. It was easy work, requiring only strength and patience.

Once, Tull stopped and stared at his hands.

Ayuvah asked, “Did you cut yourself? Are you all right?”

“These do not look like the hands of a doctor, do they?” Tull asked. “I could never cut someone open in surgery.” They were large and clumsy, more like the paws of a bear really.

“They are just hands,” Ayuvah said. “I speak truthfully, I would rather have a human with his clever little hands cut me open. Still, you are as smart as a human. You can do some things. You can fix broken arms. You could make medicines.”

“Dr. Debon said that Neanderthals were born to throw spears—our arms rotate at the shoulder more perfectly than a human’s can, and because our arms are stronger, our toss is more powerful than a human's, too. Our hands are big and strong because they were made to grip heavy things, like spear shafts.”

Ayuvah smiled. “Humans cannot throw spears, that is certain. And Fava could beat up the strongest human in town. One day we shall rule them.”

“They will always rule us,” Tull said. “They will make clever little things that we cannot, and we will sell our souls for baubles. Their doctors and engineers will own us. Still, it feels good to work with my hands, to fit this doubletree to the axle.”

Ayuvah wrinkled his brow. “Tull, I know you believe that we will sell ourselves to the humans, and this bothers you. But my father is a Spirit Walker. Someday, he says, we shall be their teachers. We shall overthrow the Slave Lords. Bashevgo will crumble to the sea, and the God of Terror will die in Craal. Then the humans will look up to us, not down upon us.”

Tull snorted in derision. “The Pwi will never attack Craal,” he said, bending over to inspect the size of the bolt holes on the doubletree.

Ayuvah slapped Tull’s face. “Do not laugh at the words of my father,” Ayuvah shouted, then he stepped back in dismay. “Forgive me, my brother! Forgive my anger!”

Tull looked up at him, startled more than angry. “Forgive my unruly mouth,” Tull begged.

By evening the ground had dried from the passing thunderstorm and a chill wind took its place, bringing the smell of winter. The camp swelled by another fifty people, and, as often happened when there was nothing to do, people began to party.

Many Pwi got drunk on sweet-potato wine, but the Okanjara cooked a great bowl of thin stew filled with hallucinogenic mushrooms, a crude opium made from the heart of wild cabbage, and poisonous seeds from wild cucumbers, and in early afternoon, they began to feed.

Phylomon looked the pot over, and declared, “Anyone who eats this stew will not be sane for a month.” But many among the Pwi went to the Okanjara camp to eat.

Tull slept for the afternoon and did not wake until midnight. Wisteria lay beside him, but when he hugged her, she pushed him away. He heard singing in the Okanjara camp and went to investigate.

The Okanjara played panpipes and drums. The women and the children were so heavily drugged that they just sat and stared at the fire. Most of the men were still eating, going back for thirds and fourths. They dressed in hats made of dyed porcupine quills, and danced around a fire and sang, watching the backs of their hands, shaking them, mesmerized by their white wrists flashing in the moonlight. Tchupa watched over them like a king.

“Tull, my friend,” Tchupa shouted. “Come celebrate with us!” He offered Tull a gourd filled with liquid from the pot. Tull took a small sip to please the Okanjara, then spit it out when no one was looking.

“Today and tomorrow we trade,” Tchupa said, “But the day after we must hunt. Our warriors go to hunt now in their dreams. They will dream of the mammoth spirits and find where the mammoth will give themselves to our spears. You should come with us.”

Tull smiled at the offer. He like Tchupa, and would have enjoyed his company. “You Okanjara are not so bad as I’d heard. Almost I could imagine being one of you. But I, too, must hunt soon,” Tull said, “for other game.”

“I have heard of your hunt for the serpent,” Tchupa said. “It will be a strange hunt.”

The warriors danced around the fire, spinning wildly and singing:

I am the sleek silver man,

who runs all alone in the moonlight.

Though the katydids sing of decay,

the earth is my drum.

my feet beat the pum-a-la, pum-a-la,

pulses of life.

I am the quicksilver man

who runs unafraid at midnight.

The wind rattles the dry grasses,

a fox barks over his back,

my heart racing within me

does not measure my life.

I am eternally running

far beyond man in the moonfall.

The sweat storming off me

gives drink to the seas.

The sigh of my passing

adds breath to the wind.

Embers of soulfire within me

shall ignite the dawn.

“If you go to hunt mammoths,” Tull said, “why do you sing of death?”

“The Hukm have all the mammoths now,” Tchupa said sadly. “To hunt for the mammoths is to hunt for our own deaths, for they will come to kill us. Still, the ivory pays well.”

“If you have prophesied correctly,” Tull said, “then perhaps next year, you and I will hunt for Craal’s warriors here together.”

Tchupa smiled grimly. “I think it more likely that they will hunt us.” He laughed, too loudly.

A Pwi man dragged a small boy into camp, gripping his arm. He whispered to the boy, and the boy pointed at Tchupa. The Pwi threw the boy at Tchupa’s feet.

“This boy says you are his father. I trust he is not a liar as well as a thief!”

“A thief?” Tchupa said in surprise. Tchupa looked at the boy. “Does he speak truly? Have you stolen something?”

The boy dared not answer.

The Pwi man held up a small silver bowl with a dragon engraved on it. “He stole this when he thought I slept. I caught him in the act!”

“Is this correct, Ixashe? Speak freely,” Tchupa said softly, with a hard edge to his voice. The child shook. He put his hands in front of his face. Tchupa was a powerful man, and the boy had no choice but to answer. “Yes. I just wanted to look at it.”

It was a lie, of course. Everyone knew it. Even Tchupa knew it. Tchupa grimaced, as if in mourning.

“My son is old enough to be judged as a man,” he said. Tchupa drew a dagger from his belt, handed it to the Pwi. “Slit the boy's throat if you like,” he said. “Or, if you are merciful, you can keep him. He is yours. Do as you wish.”

The Pwi looked guiltily at the child, then walked away. When he had left, Tchupa stood up, picked up his knife, walked slowly to the boy, and slugged him in the stomach. The boy doubled over.

“Never admit guilt!” Tchupa hissed. The boy doubled over. Tchupa flipped the knife upside down and struck the boy in his temple with the bone handle. The boy crumpled, and Tchupa kicked him a dozen times.

Tull’s stomach clenched. He could not stand by and watch a child be hurt, so he grabbed Tchupa and said, “Stop! Stop!”

Tchupa wrestled a bit, then shouted at the boy, spittle flying from his mouth: “In Craal, that man would have squashed you as if your life were less than a turd! Tomorrow, you will crawl to him and thank him for sparing your life!”

Tull could not believe his ears. A few moments ago, he thought he could see himself as an Okanjara, but now he saw that the differences truly ran deep. Never had he seen a Pwi beat a child like that. No Pwi would have offered to let a stranger slit the throat of his son—especially in front of his own eyes. The kwea of such memories would destroy a man. And Tchupa was teaching his son that it was all right to steal, as long as he did not get caught.

“Friend,” Tull said, “You missed the point. The Pwi wanted you to teach your son not to steal!”

Tchupa looked at Tull, raised his eyebrows in shock. “But perhaps someday the child will have to steal in order to stay alive. And if he must steal, he must learn to steal
well
!”

Tull looked Tchupa in the eye and saw that the Okanjara was truly a stranger, a man whose mind he did not want to comprehend, for it was said among the Pwi that “To understand another, you must become like him.” Tull had never lived in Craal, could not imagine a man beating his child for not stealing well.

The stories he’d heard of Thrall warriors working for slavers, of Thralls who ate human flesh, who thought it a sign of strength to endure unendurable pain—all of them could be true with a man as duplicitous as Tchupa.

A realization struck. Tull felt a bond with Tchupa, a sense of brotherhood.
You can love a man, and yet hate what he does.

“I see,” Tull said. His head was spinning. He felt that he needed to leave, to have time to think about Tchupa, and perhaps advise him as a friend. But for now, it was too late, and his mind moved too slowly. He yawned as if tired, stretched. “In the morning, we will talk more, my friend.”

The small taste that he’d taken from the Okanjara’s drugs must have made him dizzy, for he staggered a bit as he ambled back to his own camp.

That night when Thor set behind the hills and the cries of jackals filled the camp as the dogs began to sneak in to nibble table scraps beside the fires, Tull still lay thinking. He could not sleep. The Okanjaras’ drugs gave him strange dreams and brought back painful memories, and the nightmares seemed too real.

He kept seeing flashes of Tchupa in his mind, Tchupa riding upon the back of a horned dragon in the night, beneath Thor’s green moon.

He heard a sudden shout. “Hukm! Hukm are upon us!”

Tull and Wisteria were lying in the giant barrel, and thus were somewhat protected. He untangled himself from Wisteria’s arms and whispered urgently, “Wait here. I’ll go I see what’s happening!”

But as he pulled off his bearskin covers, he looked out, and in the dying embers of the fires he could make out dozens of mastodons, black shadows with great curved tusks. The white of the polished tusks reflected the light of campfires. The mastodons had circled the camp.

Giants squatted atop the mastodons, and as Tull watched, the great hairy men silently urged their mounts in among the people.

The traders had naturally set up several camps—one made mostly of Pwi, another to the east for humans, and a third just to the north for the Okanjara, and so Tull was watching the mastodon men enter his own camp, a wall of flesh surrounding it. His own people began to cry out and flee.

Everywhere the Pwi shouted, “Run, run!” “The Hukm are here!” “This way!” “No, here!” They were rushing about in fear—turning first one way, and then the next.

In the darkness Tull heard sickening thuds as Hukm war clubs smashed into bodies.

Thus the Pwi die,
some small part of him thought. Ever it was so. Neanderthals were tougher than humans in so many ways, so much stronger, but kwea could kill—with fears and loves that could not be mastered.

Tull spotted Phylomon beside a fire, the light playing on the back of his blue skin, desperately waving his fingers in Hukm finger language.

A great hairy Hukm, a lord with many silver bracelets, steered his mammoth close, peered down at Phylomon, and answered calmly, with slow waves of his fingers.

“Hold! Hold!” Phylomon began shouting to the Pwi, trying to keep them from running to their deaths.

Phylomon pointed toward the Okanjara camp, and the Hukm lord pointed in that direction, urging his warriors toward the new camp.

Only the two smaller moons shone, and Tull could see little by their light. A wall of mastodons raced through camp, trampling the tents. The heavy scent of wet, shaggy hair from the mammoths blended with woodsmoke.

Faint cries rose from the throats of a few women in the nearby camp, and Tull remembered that the Okanjara were all drugged, that they were helpless.

Above the cries, rose the rhythmic beating, like drums, as war clubs smacked into flesh.

“Leave, now!” Phylomon shouted to the Pwi, over and over. “Walk calmly. Don’t make any quick moves!”

Tull threw on his tunic. Several huge Hukm, each over eight feet tall, came loping through camp. One stopped to examine Tull as if he were a child. It sniffed at him, peered into his face, into his eyes, gripping a polished war club, and then trudged on.

It was rumored that the Hukm could see in the dark, and Tull realized that the creature had been looking for the blackening under the eyes of the Okanjara warriors. He smelled the warm coppery blood on the Hukm as it rushed past.

Scandal and Ayuvah quickly threw their bedding in the barrel. Wisteria covered herself with a bearskin.

“Stay inside,” Tull warned.

He suddenly feared for the Dryad, wondered where she might be, but spotted something pale moving deep in the shadows.

Tirilee was there hiding in the black heart of the barrel.

“Where are the oxen?” Scandal huffed. “We need to get the team of oxen!”

“They’ve scattered,” Phylomon shouted, and suddenly the blue man stood beside Tull, throwing his own bedding on the wagon. “Leave them for now. The Hukm will not harm them. We can come back for them later!”