The Way of the Wilderking (9 page)

Within a week all the militias had arrived at Sinking Canyons—thirty-six hundred men from every corner of Corenwald. Some had military experience. Many had fought the Pyrthens at the Battle of Bonifay Plain six years earlier. Some had actually been with King Darrow's army at Last Camp when Aidan came out of the Feechiefen with Percy and Dobro.

They came with stories of a kingdom in disarray. The army had fallen apart in the weeks since King Darrow abandoned his invasion of the Feechiefen. The king rode back to Tambluff alone, leaving no orders for his officers. The men just wandered back home to resume the lives they had left when they were forcibly drafted into the army. A few soldiers, in the
absence of leadership, had taken to looting, highway robbery, and other crimes.

Sinking Canyons could no longer be properly called a hideout. There was no way of concealing the presence of so many men, even in the maze of caves and crevices. It was unmistakably a military outpost. Aidan worked with his father, his brothers, and the noblemen, Aethelbert and Cleland, to organize the militias into more efficient fighting units. They worked on the basics of sword fighting and archery, drilled quite a bit on troop movements—flanking an enemy, orderly retreat, field signals. But most of their time was devoted to tasks that related specifically to the kind of battle they expected to be fighting. They studied the geography of Sinking Canyons, learning every crevice, every finger, every tower and chimney, every fold in the earth that might provide cover in combat. They reviewed plans for ambushes and for search-and-rescue operations. They worked on tracking techniques and habits of concealment—always walking up the braided stream whenever possible, sweeping away tracks with pine boughs after walking through soft sand. Dobro offered special seminars on feechie methods of camouflage.

But more than anything, the new recruits spent their time digging. Under the miners' guidance, they dug tunnel after tunnel for shelter and storage. They dug out hiding places; they dug out wells. On more than one occasion, they dug each other out after poorly dug tunnels caved in.

The old-timers—the original band of Sinking Canyons outlaws—didn't have as many tunnel-digging responsibilities as the new recruits. They maintained their interest in Jasper's archaeological dig.

One day, Arliss made a discovery at the diggings that set the whole camp abuzz. It had been days since anyone had found anything more interesting than splintered logs or pieces of broken crockery. Then Arliss noticed a small, shiny disc peeking out from a shovelful of sand he was about to toss on the discard heap. It was a silver coin in surprisingly good shape, considering it had been buried for many years. He immediately ran with it to Jasper, who was cataloguing their findings, seated at a small campaign table he had taken from his father's cave.

“Fascinating,” said Jasper, admiring the bright silver. Then his eyes grew wide as he made sense of the date on the coin. “Am I reading this right?” he marveled. “Is this coin three hundred years old?”

Percy scrutinized the date, sure that Jasper must be mistaken. But it was plain enough; Percy scratched his head. “I don't see how,” he said. “It was barely a hundred years ago when the first people got to this island.”

“Humph!” Dobro grunted. “A long time before the civilizers showed up, there was plenty of folks on this here island—feechiefolks!”

Aidan pointed at the silver coin. “Does that look like something a feechie would carry around?” he asked. “I've never seen a feechie with a money purse.”

“'Course not!” Dobro said with some haughtiness. Even Chief Larbo's band, when under the spell of cold-shiny knives, axes, and shovels, never had any use for cold-shiny money. “I was just makin' a point,” Dobro continued. “Just because there ain't no civilizers on a island don't mean there ain't no people.”

“I take your point,” said Percy, somewhat chastened.

Jasper was still studying the ancient coin. It must have been made from the purest silver, for it was hardly tarnished. The portrait on the front was still easy to make out—a thickset man with an enormous beard and a four-cornered hat or crown on his head. Jasper's finger traced a pair of branching sticks that appeared to sprout from the figure's head. “Are those supposed to be tree limbs behind his head?” he asked. “Is this some kind of forest king?”

Errol took the coin from his son and examined it. “Those aren't tree limbs,” he said. “Those are antlers.”

“So this is …” Jasper began. His lips were parted in astonishment.

Errol nodded. “I think it must be.”

All twenty of the men at the diggings looked expectantly from Errol to Jasper and back again, waiting for an explanation. But the father and his studious son both fell silent, brows creased in perplexity.

“This must be what?” asked Percy. “This must be who?”

“King Halverd the Antlered,” said Aidan, the light finally dawning on him. “The first king of Halverdy.”

Arliss and several of the other Greasy Cave boys looked blank. They were no scholars. “Where's Halverdy?” Arliss asked.

“It's on the continent,” said Jasper. “Or used to be. Most of the first people to come to Corenwald …”

“Most of the first
civilizers,
” Dobro corrected.

“Right. Most of the first
civilizers,
” Jasper continued, acknowledging Dobro's correction, “were Halverdens who left the continent when their kingdom finally fell to the Pyrthens in the middle of the last century. Our ancestors were Halverdens. Yours probably were, too, Arliss.”

Jasper pointed to the face on the coin his father still held. “Halverdy got its name from this man—Halverd the Antlered. It was he who first united the warring tribes of the continent's eastern plains and great forest into a single kingdom to fight the Pyrthen hordes that were sweeping in from the north and west.”

But Arliss was only minimally interested in continental history. He wanted to know more about this Halverd. “But how in the world,” he asked, “did he get antlers?”

Jasper laughed. “He probably just attached a pair to his helmet. His crown was decorated with antlers too. But he went down in the old lore as Halverd the Antlered, as if the antlers had sprouted from his head.”

“Like Harvo Hornhead,” Dobro offered, as if everyone knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Like who?” asked Arliss. Though Arliss famously had the “miner's head” for finding his way
underground, he had no head for history. He was already feeling overwhelmed by Jasper's discourse, without adding feechie history to the mix.

“You know, Chief Harvo, the first Feechie chief,” said Dobro, a little exasperated at the poor miner's ignorance. “Head like a buck deer, body like a hefeechie.” Arliss still looked blank. Dobro continued. “Harvo was the one what caught six turkeys at one time. Put his head down and run through a flock of them. Skewered the rascals on his antlers. Then he roasted them. Just leaned out over the fire with them dangling from his antlers.”

Everybody was listening, but to Dobro's chagrin, only Aidan knew what he was talking about. “If you ain't the ignorantest bunch of know-nothings I ever run into!” Dobro exclaimed. “What kind of history do they teach you people?”

Aidan had heard the legends about Chief Harvo while he was living in the Feechiefen. But he had never before considered the similarities between Harvo and Halverd the Antlered.

Errol was holding the coin at arm's length, trying to focus enough to read the inscription on the back. “V-E-Z,” he struggled to read. He handed the coin to Brennus. “Your eyes are younger,” he said. “What does this say?”

“It's not just your eyes, Father,” Brennus said. “This is hard to read. V-E-Z-something-somethingsomething-N-D.”

Aidan pointed to a blurred spot in the middle of the inscription. “Is that an L?”

Percy squinted at the coin. “V-E-Z-something-Lsomething-N-D.”

Errol shouted, “Veziland! Veziland! My grandfather used to sing ballads from the old country about Veziland.”

“So this coin,” began Aidan, speaking slowly because he wanted to be sure he had it right. “This coin came from the place you call Veziland some three hundred years ago—two hundred years before the first civilizers came over from Halverdy.”

“Looks that way,” Jasper answered.

“But how did it get here?”

“Maybe a coin collector dropped it?” Percy suggested, though not very confidently.

Aidan looked around at the desolate landscape—an inhospitable environment for coin collectors. “Doesn't seem very likely.”

“Maybe this is an old feechie settlement,” said Brennus. “Maybe feechies traded with Vezilanders three hundred years ago, before any civilizers came over.”

Dobro scoffed at the idea. “This ain't no feechie settlement. Feechiefolks don't cut down trees to make cabins.” He pointed at the corroded plowshare they had found earlier. “Feechiefolks don't scratch up the ground with cold-shiny blades. And feechiefolks don't live in holes in the ground!”

Dobro had a point. Nothing they had found at this site suggested feechiefolk.

“Maybe we've always had it wrong,” said Percy. “Maybe civilizers got here earlier than we thought.”

“We haven't been wrong about that,” Errol insisted. “All four of my grandparents came in the first flotilla from the continent. I know for a fact that there weren't any civilizers on this island when they got here.”

Aidan took the coin in his hand again and wondered if he would ever see through to its puzzling origins.

* * *

After morning drills a few days later, Errol took Aidan aside. “I think it's time you went to see this Lynwood,” he said. “The chief of the Aidanites. The chair of the—what was it?—the Secret Committee for the Ascendancy of the Wilderking?”

“I thought he might come see us,” Aidan said.

“From what I know of Lynwood,” said Errol, “he's not the sort to go to that much trouble if there's someone he can pay or cajole to do it for him.”

“Who is he?”

“He's a merchant and a very wealthy one. Lives with his wife and daughters in one of the finest houses in Tambluff.”

“If he's so rich, what does he want with a new king? Sounds like things have gone well enough under the old king.”

Errol thought on the question. “I don't really know the man; we met only once or twice, so most of what I know of him is second hand. But he strikes me as the kind of man who wants to have a king who owes him a favor. He's done well enough under King Darrow, but Darrow doesn't know him from Adam. He'd risk a charge of treason for the satisfaction of being in a king's inner circle.”

“Is he a bad man?” Aidan asked.

“He's a man who doesn't know his own heart. He probably tells himself he does everything for the good of Corenwald, and he probably believes it.

“Now that he's given you an army, it's probably only fair that you should tell him where you stand with things.” Errol thought for a moment, then his eyes brightened with an idea. “Dobro's been dying to get out of these canyons.”

“Time to leave these neighborhoods,” said Aidan.

“Right. If anything would throw cold water on Lynwood's desire for a Wilderking, it might be having a genuine feechie in his house. Why don't you take Dobro along?”

The village of Ryelan was the nearest civilization to Sinking Canyons, ten leagues across scrubby plain. In truth, it just barely counted as civilization. The mean little village was the sort of place people left the first chance they got. But horses could be bought there, so Aidan and Dobro made it their first stop on their journey to Tambluff. They wore hooded robes over their tunics to conceal their identities.

“Listen here, Dobro,” Aidan said when the low buildings of the village came into view. “I think it's going to be better if you don't talk while we're in Ryelan. We need to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible. And if we can keep people from noticing you're a feechie, so much the better.”

“Seems a shame,” said Dobro, who had begun to think of himself as something of a feechie ambassador to the civilizers.

“Here's the thing,” said Aidan. “Even if you don't mind breaking the Feechie Code—”

“Aw, Aidan,” Dobro interrupted, “half the civilizers in Corenwald believes in feechies these days.”

“That's not the point,” Aidan insisted. “When people realize who you are, they realize who I am. You heard what those militiamen were saying. Everybody's been talking about how I brought a feechie with me when I came out of the Feechiefen.”

“Folks don't say you come with one feechie,” Dobro corrected. “They say you come with a whole mess of feechies.” He took some pride in the fact that popular gossip had multiplied him into a band of feechie warriors.

“The last thing we need is a bunch of Aidanites and Wilderkingers following us to Tambluff. So when we get to Ryelan, don't speak to anybody.” He thought about Dobro's green teeth; tooth brushing was one aspect of civilizer life Dobro hadn't yet mastered. “Don't smile at anybody either.”

“What if I see a pretty civilizer lady?” Dobro asked.

“If you see a pretty civilizer lady, believe me, she doesn't want to see your teeth. And whatever you do, don't breathe on anyone.”

* * *

There was more activity than Aidan had expected in the little village. The dust from the main street lay in a thick cloud, kicked up by people going back and forth. The activity seemed to center on the general store. Only it wasn't called a general store anymore. On the façade above the entrance, a new sign had
been nailed over the old one. It read “Sinking Canyon Outfitters. One stop for all your camping and militia-related needs.” A string of wagons stretched along the front of the store, waiting there to unload their supplies of boots, ropes, water bladders, hardtack biscuit, dried beef, swords, shovels—everything a militiaman might need to make Sinking Canyons more livable.

Aidan hurried past the scene on his way to a public house called Ma Pearl's two doors down. “It's almost noon,” he said to Dobro. “Let's get some dinner here and save the food in our packs. I'm sure somebody here can direct me to a horse trader.”

The little dining room was nearly full and loud with the raucous conversation and laughter of the rough locals. All eyes followed Aidan and Dobro as they pushed their way to an empty table in the back.

After they were seated, a rough voice from two tables away called in their direction. “You boys hiked in from the south, didn't you?”

Aidan nodded his head.

“Sinking Canyons?” the man asked.

Aidan craned his neck to see if the innkeeper were coming.

“'Course Sinking Canyons, you half-wit,” shouted a walleyed man at another table. “Coming from the south. Where else would they be coming from?”

“Must be a couple of Aidanites,” another man observed. “Say, when you boys figure to march on Tambluff Castle?”

The walleyed man snorted. “They better march on
it soon if they don't want to find Pyrthens when they get there!”

“Don't matter to me who lives in Tambluff Castle,” the first man declared. “Long as they leave me alone, I mean to leave them alone. Tambluff's a long way from Ryelan.”

“Say,” said the walleyed man, directing his attention back to Aidan and Dobro, “I reckon you boys has seen this Aidan Errolson?”

Aidan and Dobro looked down at the table, trying to pretend they hadn't heard the man.

“I'm talking to you boys,” the man repeated a little more loudly, refusing to be ignored. “I asked if you boys has seen Aidan Errolson.”

“You know, the Wilderking,” said another.

“Watch for the Wilderking!” boomed another with false portentousness.

“Yes, we've seen him,” Aidan finally answered, hoping to avoid trouble.

“I wouldn't mind getting a look at that feller,” said the walleyed man, getting a look at the feller even as he said it. “I hear he goes around with a whole gang of mean-looking feechies. Is that true?”

Dobro drew his hand over his mouth, trying to stifle a smile of pleasure at his inflated reputation.

“No,” Aidan answered. “It's just one feechie, a scrawny rat of a fellow, acts like he doesn't have good sense half the time.”

A man in the far corner shouted across the room, “If you Aidanites think a Wilderking is any different from a
King Darrow or a Pyrthen king—or a feechie king, for that matter—then you Aidanites is a pack of fools.”

His opinion was met with hoots of agreement and support from across the crowded room.

Ma Pearl, the innkeeper, finally arrived at the table. She was a stout, jolly-faced woman, and she wiped her hands on her apron as she said, “Fools or no, them Aidanites has sure been good for business. You want lunch, sugar?”

Aidan and Dobro both nodded their heads.

“I got bacon, collard greens, and sweet potatoes.”

“Bring us two,” Aidan said. “And some water if you don't mind. And could you tell me where I could find a horse trader?”

Ma Pearl directed him to a stable on the other side of the dusty street, and Aidan, eager to keep their visit to Ryelan as short as possible, left Dobro waiting at the table while he went out to buy their horses.

“Remember,” he whispered in Dobro's ear before he left, “no talking. No fighting. No grinning.”

It wasn't long at all before Ma Pearl brought the plates to Dobro's table. And Dobro, figuring that Aidan probably wouldn't want him to wait, dug in. Like tooth brushing, eating with utensils was one of those civilizer niceties Dobro hadn't yet embraced. He had just shoved a fistful of collard greens into his mouth when a big farmhand sat down across from him in Aidan's chair. “Say, stranger,” he said, “where you come from anyway?”

Remembering what Aidan had said, Dobro just
looked blankly at the man. He didn't speak. He didn't smile. A drop of green pot liquor dripped from his chin and back onto the pile of collard greens from which it had come.

“What's a matter with you, boy?” the big Ryelanite asked. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Get after him, Lumley,” one of the diners urged.

“Come on, Lum,” yelled another.

Dobro just shrugged and thumbed a glob of sweet potato into his mouth.

“You stuck up or what?” Lumley leaned across the table and put his face just inches from Dobro's. Dobro remembered Aidan's warning about breathing on the locals, so he put up a hand to shield his mouth and nose.

“Oh, so my breath stinks, does it?” Lumley was yelling now, and everybody in the place was watching intently to see what would happen next.

“Well, stranger,” Lumley continued, “I 'bout had it with outsiders coming here and looking down their noses at us Ryelan folks.”

Dobro looked down at his plate. There was no stopping the big field hand now. “I may not be from Tambluff or Middenmarsh or whatever fancy place you come from, stranger, but I mean for you to know that Ryelanites is as good as anybody. You gonna howdy me and be neighborly, or I'm gonna find out why.”

Lumley was off his chair now, looming over Dobro with a fist drawn back. “Am I gonna have to learn you manners the hard way?”

Dobro's shrug and close-lipped little smile was more than Lumley could tolerate. He roared like a bear as his left fist rocketed toward Dobro's right ear. But Dobro was much quicker than any big field hand's fist. He easily ducked under it, and Lumley's knuckles cracked against the timber that held up the roof above them. He screamed with pain and lunged at Dobro with a sweeping right. Dobro dodged that, too, and Lumley's momentum sent the table crashing to the ground.

Dobro leaped onto the nearest table and headed for the door, dodging from tabletop to tabletop as the diners dove for him and grabbed at his ankles. Food, crockery, forks, and knives tumbled to the floor with a crash and a clatter. Tables tipped, and people slipped on the smashed sweet potatoes and greasy collard greens that littered the floor.

When Dobro reached the door, he found it to be guarded by three very large Ryelanites. Dobro felt confident he could whip them, but he had orders not to fight, so he jumped from a tabletop to one of the exposed rafters above. He pulled himself up and ran from rafter to rafter, dodging broken plates and mugs the diners were hurling at him.

By this time, Ma Pearl had waded into the fray, swinging her black iron skillet like a battle ax, trying to subdue the rowdies who were tearing her public house apart. Big men fell like mown wheat under Pearl's skillet; their thick heads rang like gongs.

Dobro, meanwhile, found a way out onto the
thatched roof. Aidan was coming around from the stable leading two horses. His face was a mask of horror when he heard the uproar coming from Ma Pearl's inn. The very walls were shaking.

“Aidan!” Dobro shouted. “Time to leave these neighborhoods!” Aidan led the horses across to the eave where Dobro was waiting for him. Dobro dropped onto the horse's haunches, and they took off at a mad gallop as angry Ryelanites came boiling out the front door of Ma Pearl's.

Aidan rode easy in the saddle as his horse weaved through the villagers who came into the street to see what the ruckus was. His horsemanship returned naturally after so many years. Dobro, on the other hand, rode standing up like a circus rider. As the village receded in the distance, he waved his thanks to Ma Pearl, who was still brandishing her black skillet.

“I told you not to get into any fights,” Aidan yelled when they were out of immediate danger.

“I wasn't fighting,” Dobro said. “I was just running away from the fight. But that only seemed to make them more angrified.”

“What did you say to those people?” Aidan asked hotly.

“I didn't say a word the whole time I was there,” Dobro insisted. Then he confessed, “But, Aidan, when them old boys was chasin' me acrost the tabletops, I did grin a little bit. I just couldn't help it.”