The Way of the Wilderking (2 page)

By midafternoon, three dozen or more feechies, attracted by the news of the captured civilizer, arrived at Scoggin Mound from all over the swamp. They represented eight different bands, enough to form a swamp council.

As home chieftain, Tombro Timberbeaver led the proceedings. He climbed a stump in the middle of the central clearing, near the village fire, and raised a hand for silence among the gathered feechies. When that didn't work (raising a hand for silence almost never worked with feechies), he simply shouted over everyone. “Let this here swamp council come to order!” he bellowed. “Or if that's too much to ask, let this here swamp council come to a little less disorder.”

The noise died down the least little bit, and Tombro began. “First off, let me say sorry to Percy. We didn't know you was Pantherbane's brother.” He nodded toward Percy. “We thought you was a spy.”

“He told you he wasn't a spy, didn't he?” asked Aidan.

“Well, yeah,” said Tombro. “But I ain't exactly in the habit of listening to what civilizers says.”

“Besides,” said Hyko Vinesturgeon, “ain't that what a real spy would say? No spy worth the name gonna tell you he's a spy.”

“What kind of spy comes to warn you that his own army is planning an invasion?” Aidan asked.

“We just figured he was bragging,” Tombro answered, a little weakly.

“Didn't he tell you he was my brother?” Aidan asked.

“Sorta yes, sorta no,” Tombro said.

Percy had been quiet thus far, but this answer got under his skin. “Sorta yes? I must have told you a hundred times I was Aidan Errolson's brother.”

“Well, that's the thing,” said Tombro. “I don't know nothing about no Aidan Errolson. Now Pantherbane—I'd swim nekkid through a herd of snapping turtles for Pantherbane or any of his folks.”

“Nobody around here knows my civilizer name,” Aidan explained to his brother. “All they know is Pantherbane.”

“Oh, and about what them wee-feechies done to you, Percy—about them feeding you to that alliga
tor.” Tombro was trying to keep a grave and apologetic face, but something twinkled in his eye. Was it pride in the wee-feechies' spirit and creativity? “They ought notta done that.” The wee-feechies had sneaked Percy out of his cage while the grown-ups were embroiled in a heated argument over what they should do to him. “But you know how younguns is,” Tombro concluded. It wasn't the most satisfying apology Percy had ever received.

“Say, Tombro,” Aunt Seku called. “Ain't you forgettin' somethin'?”

“I didn't pole half a day just for jabbering and sorrifyin',” said one of the Coonhouse feechies. “You want to confabulate about this here civilizer trouble, that's fine with me. But looks to me like you owe me some entertainment first.”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the assembled feechies. Orlo Polejumble called out, “Tombro, I want to see can't Wimbo Barkflinger whup your daddy's beavers at long last.”

Percy was confused, being unfamiliar with feechie ways. Wasn't this an emergency swamp council? What did entertainment have to do with anything? But Aidan just groaned. A timber-cutting contest would mean at least an hour's delay, and they didn't have an hour to spare.

“The civilizers are coming!” Aidan shouted, trying to make himself heard. “We don't have time—”

But his voice was drowned out by a rising chant: “Timberbout! Timberbout! Timberbout!”

The crowd pushed Wimbo Barkflinger and Bardo Timberbeaver, Tombro's father, toward the stump in the middle of the clearing. Wimbo looked uncertain about going up against Bardo's beavers, but Bardo rubbed his hands in evident glee. Wimbo was the greatest of the Feechiefen axmen. No man alive could outchop him with a stone ax. But nobody, not even Wimbo, had ever beaten Bardo's team of trained beavers in a timberbout. The Timberbeaver clan derived its name from these very creatures, so great was the clan's pride in them.

Wimbo raised his palms in front of his face, the backs of his hands facing outward. It was the gesture by which a feechie accepts a public challenge. The crowd grew silent.

“Bardo, I'll chop against your beavers,” he said, “on one condition.” The beaver trainer inclined his head toward the timber cutter and smiled, inviting him to name his condition.

“Let me pick out the trees,” Wimbo said.

Bardo shrugged. “I don't see what difference that makes, long as the trees is the same kind and about the same size.” That was a given anyway, according to the rules of a timberbout. “And as long as you don't pick out pine trees. You know my beavers can't abide pitch and turpentine. It ain't natural.”

Wimbo agreed and butted heads with the old feechie to seal the deal.

“Well then,” said Bardo, “I better go fetch my beavers.” The crowd cheered in raucous anticipa
tion of the timberbout, and the feechies all fell in behind Bardo as he stomped down the trail toward the landing.

Near the water's edge, Bardo found the cypress paddle he used to call his beavers. He slapped it flat on the surface of the water, in imitation of a beaver's tail slapping.
Slap! Slap! Slap-slap-slap! Slap! Slap!
Slap-slap-slap!
It wasn't long before three deep-brown knobs appeared on the black water's surface, approaching fast and trailing broadening Vs in their wake.

“Hyah, Sawtooth!” Bardo called. “Hyah, Crackjaw! Hyah, Chip!”

The three massive, glistening, dripping beavers emerged from the swamp and waddled briskly to Bardo, then sat on their haunches in affectionate greeting to the old feechie who had raised them from kits and trained them in the finer points of competitive tree felling.

“There's my thunder beavers,” Bardo crooned, stroking each in turn. “There's my trunk snappers.” The beavers arched their backs in pleasure at their master's praise. “I got 'em when they was wee fellers, and I raised 'em into tree fellers,” Bardo cackled. In spite of his impatience with the whole situation, Aidan couldn't help but be warmed by the obvious affection between the wrinkled old feechie and his furry friends.

It was comical to see such heavy creatures frisk about in their lubberly way. Even so, there was something nervous and high-strung in the beavers'
manner. Bardo bred his beavers to be energetic and competitive, and while beavers were proverbially eager, these particular beavers went beyond eager to something more like manic. From the moment they got out of the water, they worked their powerful jaws, flashing their huge front cutting teeth as if they couldn't wait to start gnawing something.

“Pick your trees, Wimbo,” said Bardo, “before Sawtooth commences to chawin' up somebody's leg.”

Wimbo looked around at the nearby trees. His gaze soon fell on a pair of nearly identical loblolly bays, each about a foot in diameter, standing some ten strides apart. “How 'bout them two trees?” he suggested.

“My beavers thinks a bay tree's a stick of sugar cane,” Bardo boasted. “I imagine they ate two or three for breakfast this morning. You sure you don't want to try your luck on somethin' a little more challengin'?”

“Naw,” Wimbo answered. He had already unslung the hickory-handled stone ax he always carried on his back and was scraping himself a footpad in the sand at the base of one of the bays. “I reckon these two trees will serve.”

“All right then,” Bardo answered, herding his beavers toward the second bay tree. “Circle up, Sawtooth! Circle up, Chip! Crackjaw!”

The three beavers circled around their tree, and it was all Bardo could do to keep them from tearing into the bark before Tombro gave the start whistle.

When Tombro's whistle shrilled across the little island, Wimbo Barkflinger fell to with all the passion and determination of wounded pride. Bardo's beavers had bested him in ten straight contests. They were the bane of his existence. He strained every muscle and sinew, he rotated at the hips, he kept his feet planted. And the chips rained in a steady shower.

The beavers, however, weren't making nearly so much progress. They attacked their tree with all the enthusiasm their master had bred and trained into them. But they quickly fell back like soldiers repulsed by an enemy.

“Have at it, my champeens!” Bardo urged. “Fling bark! Grind that tree! Chop it!”

At Bardo's encouragement the beavers launched a second attack. But it was no good. They each made no more than a superficial scrape in the tree's bark before they went to sneezing and coughing. They curled up their lips and wrinkled their noses so their front teeth protruded even more, a grotesque exaggeration of a beaver's already ludicrous profile.

Meanwhile, Wimbo chopped away, seemingly unaware of the big lead he was gaining on his opponents.

“At it, my darlings!” Bardo urged. “Make stumps, my princes!” But by this time, the beavers were rooting like hogs, snorting and sneezing in the sand at the tree's base.

“What's a matter with them beavers?” somebody asked from the crowd.

Bardo got on his hands and knees, the better to coax along his three champions. That's when he noticed little balls of pine resin in Crackjaw's whiskers. Examining his beavers' tree—the tree Wimbo had selected for them to gnaw—Bardo realized it had been painted all the way around with turpentine and resin. Bardo's eyes were flashing when he turned them on Wimbo, still swinging away at his own bay tree.

It didn't take Bardo long to figure out what had happened. Wimbo must have known he would be called on to compete against Bardo's beavers once again. He had to have known. Every time he came to the Timberbeavers' home island, somebody urged a timberbout on him. Wimbo, the rascal, had painted this tree with turpentine and pine resin after he arrived the night before. No wonder the wily axman had insisted he be allowed to select the trees himself. Bardo looked at his unhappy beavers who, at his urging, had taken two mouthfuls of turpentine. Looking at Wimbo's flailing form, fury rose like a red mist before Bardo's eyes. He pointed his cypress paddle at the axman. “Hyah, Sawtooth! Hyah, Crackjaw! Hyah, Chip!” he intoned. “Chaw him!”

In a feat of athleticism unheard of among beavers, one of Bardo's darlings—Chip, Bardo later said— jumped three feet off the sand and hit Wimbo square in the belly while the axman was on the backswing. Wimbo went down in a heap, covering himself against the flashing teeth of his attacker. Sawtooth went to
work on his shinbone while Crackjaw made short work of the hickory handle on Wimbo's ax.

When Crackjaw had destroyed Wimbo's ax, Bardo called his beavers off Wimbo and set them on Wimbo's tree. The Feechiefen's greatest axman just watched as the three beavers finished the job he had started. The gathered feechies scattered as the tree thundered to earth. Wimbo had been handed his eleventh straight defeat in a timberbout.

The muddy faces of the swamp councilors were still alight with the excitement of the timberbout when Tombro called the meeting to order a second time.

“A thousand civilizers,” Tombro began, “crossing the river and coming this way. What you reckon we ought to do 'bout it?”

“Whup 'em!” shouted Theto Elbogator. He shook his fist ominously.

“Drown 'em!” offered an ill-favored she-feechie from Turtle Strand.

“What are we waitin' for?” whooped a pinch-faced member of Larbo's band whom Aidan recognized from the Battle of Bearhouse. He raised a spear above his head, holding it with both hands, and ran a lap around the gathering, trying to whip his fellows into a warlike frenzy.

On the warmonger's second pass, Tombro grabbed hold of his spear and wrenched it from his hands. “Hold on, Sligo,” Tombro said. “The time'll come for whuppin', but now's the time for talkin'.” He turned
toward Aidan. “Pantherbane, you a civilizer—used to be anyway. What you think about all this?”

Aidan was slow to answer. “The thought of civilizers in the Feechiefen scares me to death,” he finally said.

The gathered feechies breathed a collective gasp.

“Bless him,” said Aunt Seku. “He's scared of civilizers.”

“Don't you worry about a thing, Pantherbane,” Branko Flatbottom called. “We won't let them mean old civilizers catch you. Your fights is our fights, remember?”

“No,” said Aidan, “it's not that. I'm afraid that if a thousand civilizer soldiers came into the Feechiefen, they'd never go home alive.”

“Hee-haw!” yodeled one of the feechies.

“That'll learn 'em!” shouted another.

But it was plain neither Aidan nor Percy took any pleasure in the idea.

“What you boys mullygrubbin' for?” Dobro asked. “Surely it don't hurt your feelin's none to see your enemies whupped?”

Aidan shook his head. “Those soldiers aren't my enemies … even if they think they are.”

Dobro snorted. “I don't believe you know what a enemy is.”

Percy spoke now. His tone was unusually solemn. “About a quarter of those fighting men are from the Hustingreen Regiment. Some of them probably worked on our farm in harvesttime. We saw them on
market days, played with them on the ferry landing when we were boys.”

“They aren't our enemies,” Aidan repeated. “They're our countrymen. And they're just following orders.”

“Follerin' orders?” Dobro barked. “How 'bout the feller what gave the orders? Is he a enemy or not?”

It was a good question. Aidan, like his brothers and his father, had pledged allegiance to King Darrow. But that was before Darrow had turned on Aidan, before he had run Aidan's family off its land. Was Darrow his king or his enemy? For years now, Aidan had been able to put the question out of his mind. He had been happy in the swamp and far beyond King Darrow's reach or influence. In the Feechiefen he hadn't needed to have an opinion about King Darrow. He didn't have to be a friend or an enemy. But now it was clear: He would soon have to decide.

Dobro was in Aidan's face now, poking a finger in his chest. Aidan could feel his old friend's rancid breath on his cheek. “I asked you a question, Aidan Pantherbane. Is King Darrow your enemy or not?”

Aidan looked to Percy, but his brother wouldn't meet his gaze. Aidan shoved Dobro back out of his face. “I don't know, Dobro,” he said. “I don't know yet.”

In the silence that followed, Aidan understood what he had to do—at least part of what he had to do. “Those civilizers won't make it to the Feechiefen,” he announced. “I'll see to that myself.” All around him,
eyes narrowed as the feechies tried to understand what he meant.

“Pantherbane, I don't mean no disrespect, and we all know you got what it takes,” Tombro began. “But ain't a thousand civilizers with cold-shiny arms more'n you can handle? Even if your brother helps you?”

“No, listen here,” Aidan said. “If I leave the Feechiefen—and if King Darrow knows it—he'll never send his men into the swamp.” Aidan took a deep breath before he spoke the next sentence. “I'm leaving the Feechiefen. Right now.”

The gasps of fifty feechiefolk sounded like the rustle of leaves before a thunderstorm.

“Aidan,” said Tombro, “we can hide you as long as you want to be hid, and your brother too. And if you don't want us whuppin' your civilizer friends, or enemies, whatever they are”—here he looked around nervously, not sure if his fellows would agree—“I reckon we could resist it.”

“Thank you, Tombro,” said Aidan, “but I won't ask you to do that. If civilizers come into Feechiefen, there's bound to be bad trouble. And even if you didn't whip them, the alligators and the wolves and the quicksand would.

“No,” he continued, “every hour I stay here, I'm putting the peace of this whole swamp in danger. And I'm putting those thousand civilizer soldiers in danger—and the five thousand King Darrow will send when they're gone, and the ten thousand he'll send after that.”

“But, Pantherbane,” came the piping voice of a wee-feechie who had sneaked into the swamp council. “You gonna come back, ain't you?”

“No, Betsu,” Aidan answered, “I don't reckon I ever will.”

The stunned silence in the clearing was broken by a wave of wailing lamentations. Percy was astonished to see half the feechiefolk wallowing in the sand for sorrow at Aidan's departure.

Aidan couldn't bear the thought of saying goodbye to the people who had been his gracious hosts and faithful friends these three years. He knew if he didn't slip away immediately, somebody would start organizing a farewell feast in his honor, complete with fistfights and feechiesings and probably a gator grabble. He just didn't have the time. He grabbed Percy by the elbow, and the two brothers disappeared into the forest.

Running for the north end of Scoggin Mound, Aidan heard the slightest rustle in the treetops, and he realized he and Percy were not alone. “Dobro?” he called. “Is that you?”

“It's me,” came the answer from somewhere in the treetop.

“Go back, Dobro. We're going to civilizer country.”

Dobro slid down a vine and dropped to the ground beside them. “I know,” he said. “I been thinkin' I might take up civilizin' my own self. Maybe get me a horse to ride around on, marry me
one of them pretty civilizer gals, and raise some civilizer younguns.”

Aidan couldn't help but smile at the thought. But he knew the swamp was the place for Dobro. “No, I think this is good-bye, friend. Maybe we can meet at the Bear Trail one of these new moons. But you'd better get back to the swamp council. Tell everybody good-bye for me.”

“I don't reckon I will,” said Dobro, in a very matter-of-fact tone. “And I don't reckon you could make me. I'm comin' with you.”

Aidan didn't have time to argue. “Maybe you could escort us as far as Big Bend.”

“Sure, I'll escort you to Big Bend,” said Dobro. “Then I'm gonna escort you across the river, and I'm gonna escort you wherever you go in civilizer country, and me and your brothers is gonna be big buddies, and your daddy's gonna treat me like his own son. Your fights is my fights, Aidan.”

Dobro among civilizers. Aidan didn't see any way it could work. It had disaster written all over it. He had to think of something, and fast. So he lied. “Here's the thing, Dobro. I don't want you to come with me.”

Dobro just shrugged. “Want me or don't want me. It don't make me no never mind. I'm comin' with you.”

Aidan looked at Dobro and sighed. He was one determined feechie. And the truest friend in the world. In truth, Aidan couldn't bear the thought of
parting ways with Dobro, whatever trouble he might cause among the civilizers.

“Come on, then,” he said.

“Haw-wee!” Dobro whooped, and he put one arm around Aidan's neck and the other around Percy's. “Let's go get civilized!”