The Way of the Wilderking (6 page)

“Besides,” Percy added, “we're almost to Sinking Canyons already. Next water we see will be the little creek that flows at the bottom of the canyons.”

The morning of the third day after leaving Hustingreen, the three travelers struck a little creek that was struggling across the plain. “This is it,” said Percy. “This is the creek that flows through Sinking Canyons.”

Aidan took another look at the muddy stream. He could easily jump across it. It wasn't even deep enough to support fish larger than minnows and shiners. He cocked his head and looked questioningly at Percy. “This little creek cut a canyon?” Aidan had seen a canyon once in the Hill Country. Through it roared the Upper Branch of the mighty River Tam, boiling white as it leaped over rocks and plunged into pools, swirling and thundering, cutting its own path through the canyon's granite walls on its way to the sea many leagues away. Aidan could imagine the River Tam cutting a canyon. But this little stream? It didn't seem possible.

As they hiked up the stream, however, its banks deepened and grew farther apart. And soon the banks of the creek weren't banks anymore, but the sides of
a little valley through which the stream ran flat and wide, not even ankle deep, in muddy rivulets that crossed and recrossed one another like braided hair.

“Watch this,” said Percy as he stepped into the braided stream. The water ran over the tops of his feet and flowed cloudier a little distance before the stirred-up mud settled out again. Percy pointed where he had just stepped. “Watch my bootprints.” The clear imprint of Percy's boots melted away as the rivulets braided themselves back together in the soft mud. “A hundred men could troop up this streambed, and a quarter hour later there would be no trace of them.” The stream was forever shifting, constantly flowing into new patterns of its own design. There, out in the open, was a secret passageway of sorts, covering tracks almost as quickly as the travelers could make them.

Before long the streambed had sunk more deeply beneath the level of the plain. The steep sides of the valley were noticeably higher than the three travelers' heads, and Dobro was growing visibly nervous. “This ain't no place for a feechie,” he said. “I got no business going underneath the ground.”

“You aren't underground,” Aidan said, pointing at the mud they were slogging through. “There's the ground, and it's under you.”

“That ain't the ground I'm talkin' 'bout,” Dobro answered. He pointed up the valley wall to the grass and trees that grew well above them. “I'm talkin' 'bout that ground.” He began moaning the warning
chant that his mother had taught him about Sinking Canyons:

By now the valley had deepened into a canyon. Its sheer walls were so high that not even Dobro could heave a rock up to the canyon rim. Aidan had never seen another place like it. The midday sun reflecting off the sheer canyon walls was almost blinding. Up near the rim, at the top of the canyon wall ran a band of the same red clay that prevailed throughout much of Corenwald. But below that, and all the way down to the canyon floor, the wall was a swirl of colors ranging from white to deep pink to lavender and every combination thereof.

The farther they traveled up the canyon, the higher the walls rose above them, to fifty feet, to a hundred feet, even to a hundred fifty feet in places. On either side the walls folded themselves into fissures and crevices. In places they bulged out in rounded buttresses like the base of a swamp tree. On either hand numerous fingers, smaller canyons, connected to the main canyon like tributaries joining a river. They created a
mazelike complex of caves and hidey-holes—a perfect place for lying low, an easy place to defend against a much larger force, if need be. Knife-thin ridges, some a hundred feet high, spurred out from the canyon walls. The canyon floor was dotted with great pink and white chimneys and towers, some round and boulderlike, some so high and spindly they looked as if they might topple over any minute.

“Time to leave these neighborhoods,” Dobro repeated, remembering his mother's warnings.

But Aidan was fascinated with the place. “What is it made of?” he asked, admiring the breathtaking beauty of the scene. “Some sort of stone?”

“Not stone,” Percy answered, leading his brother to the nearest spur. He swiped his hand across the surface of the wall, and a shower of sand cascaded to the ground. Then he held his hand up to Aidan's face, showing him the layer of slick white clay that remained. “Sand and clay,” he said, waving his hand to gesture around him. “This whole canyon is nothing but clay and tight-packed sand.”

A hundred strides up the canyon, Percy pointed up at a tree that dangled upside down against the canyon wall, half its roots still clinging to the red soil at the canyon's rim. “That tree was still standing when we got here two years ago,” Percy said. “Fell in when the ground beneath it collapsed in a rainstorm last year.” He pointed at a second tree nearby whose roots snaked out of the clay and into midair. “That one is liable to go next.”

Dobro swung a few steps toward the far side of the canyon, as if he expected the tree to crash down on him any second. “Time to leave these neighborhoods,” he muttered, but neither Errolson paid him any mind. “Trees falling down,” Dobro continued under his breath, “sand walls liable to drop off and bury us alive...”

“All right, Dobro,” Aidan said, “we know: Sinking Canyons is no place for a feechie.”

“That's what I been trying to tell you!” Dobro answered. “No vines to swing on. Nothing but scrubbified trees that ain't hardly worth climbing. Ain't even enough water to get the hairy part of my foot wet—” He suddenly broke off. “What was that?” he whispered, pointing at a low chimney nearby. “'Hind of that big rock.” He picked up a hardened lump of white clay about the size of his fist, and when the top of a head appeared from behind the chimney, he cut loose with the clay ball, which whistled mere inches from sandy curls that quickly disappeared again behind the chimney.

“A spy!” Dobro yelled. “I ain't gonna tolerate a feller spyin' on me like he was a bunny in a brush pile. It ain't neighborly.” He had already picked up another jagged clay ball when Percy grabbed his throwing arm.

“Hold on, fireball,” Percy laughed. “It's one of our sentries.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted toward the chimney. “Slider Turtle!” That was the password.

A hand waved from behind the chimney. “You can come out,” Percy called. “All is clear.”

“Arliss!” Percy shouted when the sentry came out.

“Arliss?” Aidan called after him, delighted to see the young miner who once led him through the caverns under the Bonifay Plain six years earlier.

Arliss rubbed his eyes. “Aidan, is that you?”

“It's me,” Aidan answered, and the two young men stood looking at one another, not sure what to say. “You still don't look much like a miner,” Aidan finally said, looking up and down his old friend's long and lanky frame.

“But I still got the miner's head,” Arliss said, tapping his skull with a skinny finger. “And that's worth plenty with the boys at Greasy Cave.”

“This is Dobro,” Aidan said by way of introduction. “Dobro, this is Arliss.”

Arliss extended a hand to shake with Dobro, but Dobro didn't seem to notice as he flashed a greenish, gappy grin at the civilizer and stepped up to give him a head-butt of greeting and good fellowship, in the feechie manner.

Aidan grabbed Dobro's arm to stop him, lest he should break the taller man's nose with his forehead. He discreetly gestured at Arliss's outstretched hand. After a moment of confusion, Dobro placed his clay ball in Arliss's hand—the same clay ball he had meant to throw at Arliss's head a few moments earlier.

“Dobro's a …” Aidan wasn't sure he was ready to go into the details. “Dobro's an old friend.”

Arliss kept smiling, but his eyes narrowed the least bit, as if he were trying to figure this strange fellow out.

“From the Feechiefen,” Dobro clarified.

A spark of recognition lit Arliss's face. “A feechie,” he said knowingly. Now he understood why Dobro looked and talked so peculiar.

“That's right,” Dobro said. “I'm a natural-born feechie, but I figured it was time I give civilizin' a try.”

Arliss looked at Aidan. “We been speculating whether you'd bring feechies with you when you come back.”

“Well, one feechie,” Aidan began, “and only because he wouldn't take no for an answer.”

But Arliss couldn't contain himself any longer. He was too excited to listen to Aidan's explanation. “Wait till I tell the boys,” he said, then he turned and sprinted up the canyon.

Aidan turned to Dobro. “If you want to pass yourself off as a civilizer, you've got to stop talking about the Feechiefen.”

“And you need to know about shaking hands,” Percy added.

“Shaky hands?” Dobro said. “No, thank you. My hands is good and steady, and I aim to keep them that way, whether I'm feechified or civilized.”

“No, Dobro, shaking hands—it's a civilizer greeting. It's what we do instead of head butting. If somebody reaches a hand out like this”—Percy extended
his right hand—“you grip it nice and firm and give it a shake. Try it.”

Dobro grabbed Percy's hand and began to shake it violently back and forth, like a terrier shaking a rat.

“No, Dobro, not that way,” Percy yelled, wrenching his hand out of Dobro's powerful grip. “You're not supposed to shake the other fellow's armbone to jelly. Watch how Aidan and I do it.”

But Aidan and Percy never gave their handshaking demonstration. Just then Errol appeared from around the nearest bend in the canyon.

He was running toward the three travelers, and running surprisingly well for a white-haired man in his sixties. Just behind him were Jasper and Brennus. Aidan ran to embrace his father. The old man's cheeks were wet with joyful tears, and he could barely speak—couldn't, in fact, say anything but Aidan's name over and over.

Aidan embraced Brennus and Jasper with all the affection of a long-lost brother, and there were more tears of joy all around. Dobro was so affected by the scene that he, too, began to cry sloppily and loudly.

“Father, this is Dobro Turtlebane,” Aidan began, “the feechie friend I have told you about.”

“You are very welcome to Sinking Canyons, Dobro,” Errol said, extending his right hand. Aidan was afraid for a moment that Dobro would seize his father's hand and shake his arm out of its socket, but instead he fell on Errol's neck and buried his face in the older man's shoulder. “Thank you for them kind
words, Mr. Errol,” he sobbed. “Any daddy of Aidan's is a daddy of mine. And I ain't had no daddy since the gator down at Devil's Elbow knocked mine out'n a flatboat and et him—and me no more'n a yearling at the time.”

Percy continued the introductions. “Dobro, this is Brennus, our eldest brother, and Jasper, my twin.” Dobro seized both brothers in a single hug and cried again.

Aidan looked beyond his father and brothers and for the first time realized how many men were living in Sinking Canyons. There must have been sixty or seventy of them, all keeping their distance out of respect for the family reunion. Errol noticed the look of astonishment on Aidan's face. “Our band of outlaws,” he said, throwing his thumb over his shoulder. “Didn't Percy tell you?”

Percy didn't tell me there were so many!” Aidan recognized many of the men, but nearly half were strangers to him. “Who are they?” he asked.

Errol led his sons and Dobro to the clusters of men who had been watching them. “You remember the Greasy Cave boys,” he said.

“Of course,” Aidan answered. “We saw Arliss before. Ernest. Cedric. Clayton.” He shook hands with each in turn. “And Gustus, the foreman.” Gustus gave a toothy grin, then broke into an energetic but tuneless version of the song Aidan had composed for the miner-scouts the night they went down to the caverns beneath Bonifay Plain:

The rest of the miners joined on the chorus, improving it only slightly:

“King Darrow got it in his head that you was hiding out in the mines at Greasy Cave,” Gustus said. “Thought your old friends was protecting you, which we would have, if ever you had asked us. So he outlawed us.”

“Every last one of us,” Cedric added.

“Your pap got wind of the outlawing and sent Brennus to fetch those of us what might want to hide out in Sinking Canyons,” Gustus continued. “All five of us from the Bonifay adventure come along, plus another eight.” He gestured at a group of men, short and stocky like the rest of the Greasy Cave boys, who waved bashfully at Aidan.

“Their skills have been invaluable here in the canyons,” Errol remarked. “I don't know how we would have gotten along without them.

“And then there are the Last Campers.” Errol gestured toward a group of men all clad in buckskin.

“Massey. Floyd.” Aidan shook the men's hands vigorously. “Do you still do any timber rafting? Hugh. Isom. Big Haze. Little Haze. Chaney. Burl. Cooky, are you cooking for the men here too?”

“Yeah,” the old cook grumbled. “Not that nobody appreciates all the trouble I go to. And it ain't easy feeding sixty folks,”—he gestured at Aidan and Dobro—“now sixty-two folks, on the stringy deer and skinny possum what live around here.”

“Same old Cooky,” Aidan smiled. “Same old grouchy Cooky.”

“We got outlawed for ‘aiding and abetting a enemy of the king,'” said Massey. “You being the enemy of the king, don't you know. Just imagine it: I don't even know what ‘aiding and abetting' means, but here I am guilty of it. Shows you never do know. But if I got to be outlawed for something, I like the sound of ‘aiding and abetting.' It's a sight better than cattle rustling or poaching.”

“Jasper come to fetch us when your pa heard we was outlaws,” said Floyd. “And I don't mind telling you it's a heap more fun being in a band of outlaws than outlawing alone.”

“These boys have kept us in meat since they got here,” Errol added. “They can always find us a deer or a wild hog.”

“But nary a alligator,” Massey remarked wistfully.

Errol gestured toward two older men whom Aidan knew very well. “King Darrow outlawed Lord Cleland and Lord Aethelbert and their sons when
they protested our being outlawed. We all came to Sinking Canyons together two years ago, along with Ebbe and the field hands.” Ebbe, the stuffy old house servant, bowed to Aidan. He didn't seem quite so stuffy out here in the wilderness, though his tunic was remarkably well kept. Aidan shook hands with the six field hands he had known all his life.

A lot of familiar faces. But there were still plenty of faces Aidan had never seen before. He was surprised to see a dozen men wearing the same standard-issue blue army tunics he, Percy, and Dobro wore. “Soldiers,” Errol explained. “Scouts, actually. King Darrow sent a half dozen men to track us in the canyons, and when they found us …”

“When you found us, you mean,” laughed one of the scouts.

“When we found them, then,” Errol smiled, “they decided that life among outlaws was better than life in King Darrow's army.”

But that accounted for only half of the soldiers in the group. “Where did the other half dozen come from?” Aidan asked.

“They're the search party,” Errol said, smiling. “The ones King Darrow sent out to find the first party.”

“And they deserted too?” Aidan asked.

Errol's smile faded. “These men are not deserters. They are men of honor. Understand this, Aidan, and do not doubt it: We remain King Darrow's most loyal subjects. It would have been no loyalty to King
Darrow if these soldiers had handed us over to certain death, leaving only time-servers and flatterers in Darrow's service. No, by disobeying King Darrow's orders these men have done him a great service, whether the king knows it or not.”

Aidan gave his father a long and watchful look. Errol had always taken a dim view of deserters, had always insisted on unswerving obedience to the king. Was this the same father he had always known, now saying that disobedience to the king was service to the king? Yes, things had changed in the years Aidan had been away.

“And who are they?” Aidan asked, pointing at a tight knot of eight or ten men gathered apart from the rest of the group and talking among themselves.

Errol paused before speaking. “They joined us only recently. I don't know most of their names. They're outlaws like us.”

“They may be outlaws,” Jasper muttered, “but they're not like us.”

Errol gave his son a sharp look. He obviously didn't intend to speak candidly in the hearing of the whole group. “Marvin,” Errol called toward the group. “You and the boys come say hello to my son Aidan.”

Marvin was a mountain of a man. His face was as round as the full moon and pocked like the moon too. It bulged against a massive quid of tobacco in his left cheek. He was bald on top, with long, thin hair straggling down the back of his neck. He moved slowly,
deliberately toward Aidan, but his eyes were quick. He offered what he meant for a smile. It looked more like a sneer; it showed his big, brown-stained teeth.

Towering over Aidan, Marvin extended a hand. Aidan reached out his own hand to shake; sausage-thick fingers wrapped around it and squeezed with a crushing force that nearly brought tears to Aidan's eyes. “I'm Marvin,” the big man said. He pointed at the ragtag group of dirty men he had just come from. “This here's the boys.”

He looked at Aidan with an appraising eye and gave a snort that suggested he was none too impressed. “Ain't you supposed to be the Wilderking or something?” Two or three of his cronies snickered.

Aidan didn't know how to respond to Marvin's remark, so he didn't respond at all. Dobro, meanwhile, was admiring the long hair that draped down the back of Marvin's neck. It was the most feechiefied haircut he had seen on a civilizer, and he felt an immediate connection.

Marvin noticed him staring. “What are you looking at, Snaggletooth?” he snarled.

“I was just likin' your hairdo,” Dobro said. “Ain't a lot of civilizers got that much style.”

Marvin squinted at Dobro, not sure whether or not this scrawny fellow was making fun of him. “Coming from a feller as ugly as you, I don't know how to take that.”

Dobro shrugged. “Take it however you want to take it. It don't make me no never mind.”

Marvin found himself getting annoyed at the nonchalant attitude of this ugly runt, who obviously wasn't intimidated by him. “Say, boy,” he said, looking intently at Dobro, “how'd you get so ugly?”

“I reckon he's a feechie,” said one of Marvin's followers. “Ain't I always said the Wilderking would come back with feechies?”

Dobro nodded at Marvin. “He got it right. I might look like a civilizer—scrubbed pink and with my mane lopped off—but I'm feechie born and bred.” There was nothing civilized about the green smile he directed at Marvin, or the acrid breath he exhaled in a self-satisfied sigh.

“Well, I don't believe in feechiefolks,” Marvin insisted. “And if I did, I don't reckon I'd think too highly of them.” He squirted a jet of tobacco juice on the ground in front of Dobro's bare feet and wiped his thumb across his grinning lips.

Dobro eyed Marvin, trying to figure out what was the proper civilizer response to such a challenge. He figured he couldn't go wrong if he responded in kind, so he worked up a nice, foamy glob of spit and let it fly right between the big man's boots.

Marvin flew into a rage. He raised a huge fist and brought it down like a sledge hammer. It surely would have cracked Dobro's skull if it had connected, but the feechie was too quick for him. He scrambled between Marvin's legs and scurried up his back. Dobro reached one arm around the big man's neck in a choke hold. His free thumb he stuck in Marvin's eye. Marvin
staggered, roared, and rained blows on Dobro, but he couldn't do any real damage to the wiry feechie. When Dobro reared back and butted the back of Marvin's head, the big man crumpled to the ground in a senseless heap.

Dobro was feeling a little woozy himself. Butting Marvin's massive head was very much like butting a tree. When Marvin's followers made a circle around him, Dobro was a little unsteady on his feet. But his mouth was still working fine. “I weigh 'bout 125 when I'm friendly,” he shouted, “But now I'm angrified, I weigh about seven hundred!”

Marvin's gang all raised their fists and made menacing faces, but none of them wanted to be the first to take on the wild man who had felled their leader. “I can pick the ticks off'n all you boys,” Dobro roared. “All at once or one at a time, whichever suits you better.”

Marvin's boys seemed relieved when Errol pushed through them and grabbed the raging feechie by the shoulders. “Enough,” the old man yelled, barely able to suppress a smile. “That's probably enough introductions for one day.”

With much effort, Marvin's men dragged their leader to the shady spot and revived him with stream water. The other men surrounded Dobro; they were fascinated by him—a real-live feechie—and awed at his efficient whipping of a man so much larger than himself. Dobro basked in their admiration and kept them royally entertained with his peculiar observations about civilizer life and customs.

The men would have surrounded Aidan, of course, except his father had whisked him away immediately after he had settled Dobro.

“Who are those people?” Aidan asked as father and son walked up the canyon toward the camp and sleeping quarters. “Marvin and his gang? Where did they come from?”

“I'm not sure where they came from,” Errol answered. “They came to the canyons a couple of months ago, claiming to be on the run from King Darrow, so we took them in. That was Aethelbert's idea—thought they would be good fellows to have on our side in a fight.” Errol shook his head. “They were on their best behavior for a while, but I've about decided they're just common criminals.”

“Or spies?” Aidan asked.

“I've considered that,” Errol said, “but I don't think so. I'm not sure they've got enough sense to make spies.”

“Maybe not,” Aidan agreed. “But that Marvin may not be as stupid as he looks.”

“Yes, Marvin's trouble. He's trouble if he stays, and he may be more trouble if we send him away.”

“Because he knows we're in Sinking Canyons,” Aidan said.

“Actually, I'm starting to think everybody in Corenwald knows we're in Sinking Canyons. King Darrow most certainly knows. The problem is that Marvin and his crowd know where most of our hiding places are.” They walked past a wide, deep place
in the canyon stream. “The miners dug that,” Errol remarked. “It's where we do our washing. Looks natural, doesn't it?”

He pointed to a crevice in the side of the canyon, no different from hundreds of cracks in the canyon wall. “This is our main hideout and storage area,” he said.

Aidan followed his father through the crack in the wall. It was so narrow they couldn't walk through side by side. But just a few steps in, beyond the first turn, the little crack broadened into a rounded tunnel, obviously dug by human hands. “This is the miners' work again,” Errol said, his voice echoing against the walls.

It wasn't, properly speaking, a tunnel, but a widening of the crevice, which continued above their heads all the way up to the canyon rim and to the sunlight above. They continued deeper into the canyon wall until the tunnel opened into quite a large, round room. A shaft of sunlight made its way a hundred feet down from the canyon rim to illuminate the place. A few wisps of smoke curled up from a banked fire in the center of the room and slithered up the crevice as if it were a chimney. It was all strangely beautiful.

Errol pointed up into the sunlight. “Sometimes when we have been to the villages to trade, we lower supplies down by ropes.