Spirit Walker (22 page)

Chapter 22: House of Dust

The men ran back to the wagon, retrieved their weapons and battle gear. Following the Okanjara was not hard. The recent rains had left the ground soggy, and the prints were deep. The tracks led along a winding stream, lined with willow thickets, back to Frowning Idols.

A half mile from the camp, Phylomon strung his bow and the party began stalking in earnest. They soon found themselves bellying through the tall summer grass.

Three Okanjara milled outside a makeshift tent, faces painted in skull masks—a woman, a young warrior, and Tchupa. Tull heard a baby crying. The adults kept their eyes downcast. Tchupa kicked the ground, turning over broken bits of pottery. If the three were guilty of kidnapping the women, they did not act like it. They had no guards. Instead, they picked through the remains of the camp, gathering their scattered belongings. Yet their footprints led directly to camp.

Dead bodies lay everywhere—men, women, children—bashed again and again with heavy war clubs until the bodies were pulped to nothing but tangled flesh and protruding bones. The Hukm had been thorough in their destruction, breaking bowls and pots, smashing weapons and ripping tents—even the ox team the party so desperately needed lay crushed. The wagon belonging to the ivory hunter seemed to be the lone exception—it appeared to be merely overturned. But as he got close, Tull saw a man nailed to the bottom of the wagon, the ivory trader himself, Tull assumed, but he had been completely skinned, showing only white fat and pink flesh. Other than the area behind the wagon and behind the idols, there was no place for anyone to hide.

If only we could see into the tent,
Tull thought,
to see if the women are guarded.
As they edged closer, the grass was so trampled by mammoths that Tull could not go forward and still maintain cover. He listened a moment, heard the child cry. The others edged up beside him.

The Okanjara were talking softly, and a small wind blew away from them. Tull could not catch their words.

The woman walked into the tent and brought out the baby. Its cries seemed to double in volume. It was the child Tull had delivered, wrapped in the red blanket he’d put around it the night before, his right arm strapped down.

Tchupa held the child up as if to display it, then set it on the grass and stomped its head.

The child’s cries ceased.

Tull found himself rushing forward, a shout of outrage ringing from his throat. He pulled his sword of Benbow glass, swung it in an arc over his head.

Tchupa looked up, pulled his kutow, and when Tull reached the big man, Tull swung.

Tchupa made the mistake of trying to parry the blow, and from his training over the past two weeks, Tull knew to throw his weight into it, to bash through the parry. Tull’s blade sliced through Tchupa’s wooden weapon, continued through his shoulder, spilling out bits of lung. Tchupa's eyes widened in surprise.

“Why?” Tull shouted, but the Neanderthal sank to the ground, dead.

Phylomon and Ayuvah rushed up beside Tull. The young Okanjara warrior had his spear at ready, and Phylomon knocked it to the ground.

“We had nothing to feed the child,” the woman explained. “It would have died slowly.”

The young warrior smirked at Tull. “We waited until we knew you were watching, so you could see what you had done. If you’ve come for your women, you can have what’s left of them—in there.” He pointed to the tent.

Through the tent’s open flaps, Tull could see Wisteria and Tirilee sprawled naked on the ground, flies crawling on them. Their eyes were glazed. Tirilee moaned, and the flies rose from her, then settled again on her belly. Tull looked back to the young warrior with his painted skull face, uncomprehending.

The young warrior said to Phylomon. “Everyone says that you are a great man, and we hoped you would someday throw down the Slave Lords. You could have saved us from the Hukm. But because of your cowardice, our families are dead!” the warrior said as if reasoning with a fool. “Now we will seek the House of Dust. But even if we live, we have been forever robbed of peace. So, in return,” the man gestured with his hands as if he were bestowing a gift, “may you be forever robbed of peace!”

“You’re lower than the dung on my moccasins,” Scandal said in bastardized Pwi. He slugged the warrior in the belly, doubling the Neanderthal over.

Phylomon grabbed Scandal’s arm. “Leave him,” Phylomon said. “The kwea of what has happened here will kill him.”

Tull saw it then—the defeat in the man’s posture, the dullness of his eyes. He’d lost everything, and the pain of it was so great, he would not be able to eat.

Even the Okanjara let themselves starve if a spouse died.

Phylomon reasoned with the warrior, “You call us cowards for running,” he said. “Yet you ran, too. I imagine it did not take you long to wipe off your skull paint in the dark.”

The young man frowned, as if Phylomon’s words had been a blow.

Ayuvah and Scandal stayed outside to guard the Okanjara while the Tull and Phylomon went into the tent to retrieve the women. They were both unconscious, yet had their eyes open. Beside them lay the drugged pot that the Okanjara had eaten from.

Phylomon looked them over. “They’re in a nasty storm,” he said. “We’ve got to get that poison out of them.”

He flipped Tirilee on her side, put his finger down her throat until she gagged up bits of mushroom, tiny white cucumber seeds, and bilious green leaves from the stew.

Tull did the same to Wisteria, then ran out and found some bits of blood-stained tent. They wrapped the women up and carried them back to camp, leaving the last two Okanjara to grieve at Frowning Idols.

When they returned to the wagon, Phylomon felt as if he carried a great load. He had wanted so much to get some cattle to pull the wagon. Between the two teams at the Idols, there’d been a dozen oxen. And now all the oxen were dead before he’d got a day’s pull from them.

We’re still seven hundred miles from the river,
he mused.
Perhaps farther. By coming north to Frowning Idols, we’ve lost four good days.
He could think of no place to get another animal—except from the Hukm, the giant ape-men riding their woolly mammoths.
There’s a place to get draft animals, if you’re bold enough.

But would the others go for it?

He looked at Tull: the face of the young Tcho-Pwi was drained white. The boy worried for his wife.

Frowning Idols, with the flayed ivory trader and children smashed to a pulp, was among the most grisly battlefields Phylomon had ever seen—enough to scare the wits out of a Pwi. Add that to the shock of watching a child’s murder, and the fact that the boy had just killed his first man—the image flashed through Phylomon’s mind of the first man he had killed some 640 years earlier, a slaver who was acting as guard to the estate of a powerful Slave Lord. It had been different then, an official war with devastating casualties on both sides, and Phylomon had knifed the man at night, from behind, in the dark.

Phylomon looked at Ayuvah. There is only so much you can ask a Pwi to do. The kwea of this place was bad enough. If he were alone, Phylomon might try to steal a mammoth, but you couldn’t ask the Pwi to steal one and then ride it all over hell with the Hukm chasing you.

Still, there was another chance.

Tull took the women to the wagon, and he filled their mouths with wine again and again, making them vomit.

Phylomon made a pretense of examining the women. “Those Okanjara, they’re not too smart,” he said. “The effects of their stew won’t be permanent—not on a human. The wild cucumber seeds are the worst. Might take as much as a week for them to wear off. Still, Tull’s got the bulk of the stew out, and the women didn’t have time to digest it. I’ll bet they break free of the worst effect by morning.”

Tull knelt and gingerly held Wisteria’s shoulders, studied her face hopefully for sign of recovery.

“Ayaah,” Scandal said, gazing at Tull. “Maybe. Most of this stuff will wear off by morning. Sure wish to hell I knew what the leaves in there were, though.”

“A mild narcotic, a pain killer,” Phylomon said. “That’s why they stare without blinking. It wears off quickly.” He didn’t know for sure what was in the stew, of course. The Okanjara were notorious for adding anything to their “dream pots” that would cause hallucinations.

Ayuvah put his arms around Tull’s shoulders. “They are right, little brother. The women will be fine by morning.”

“We should bundle them up warm and take them down to Benbow—if not back to Smilodon Bay,” Scandal said quietly, looking to Phylomon for confirmation. “We can reoutfit. It will put us a month behind, but if we hurry …”

“If we hurry, we’ll miss the serpent hatch up on the Seven Ogre River and we’ll all freeze trying to climb the Dragon Spines,” Phylomon said. He’d hoped to avoid this. “But if we put our backs into it, we can push this wagon ten miles by sundown and get over the mountains before the snow flies.”

“What in the hell would be the point?” Scandal said. “We might as well leave the wagon, reoutfit in Craal!”

“I suppose you’ll carry the food while we carry the women? We need the wagon if only to cart them.”

“Why bother?” Scandal asked. “Let’s go home.”

“We’re going east,” Phylomon said, “to Sanctum. If we hurry, we can catch the Hukm on their migration south at Sanctum. Perhaps they’ll give us a mammoth.”

“Hah! The four of us push this wagon over the Dragon Spines? Three hundred miles? We’re already four days behind schedule, and Sanctum’s another hundred miles off our course. Without draft animals, we’ll just get farther behind! We’ll miss the serpent run by two weeks!”

Phylomon countered, “By the time we reach the Dragon Spines, the women might be better. That would make six of us to push. We’ll have less food, and we can tear off the running boards, lighten the wagon. If we push fast and keep at it all day long, we can make up the time we’ve lost. We won’t miss the serpent hatch. We can’t miss it!”

“God bugger you with a carrot, you’re a stubborn man!” Scandal shouted. “You think the Hukm will just give us a mammoth? Right! And maybe they’ll give us their daughters while they’re at it! We’ve had enough bad luck. My belly's aching for a decent meal and I haven’t had a woman for so long that even you are starting to look pretty! Tull, Ayuvah, let’s go home!”

Phylomon slugged Scandal in the mouth, pulling his blow just enough to loosen the man’s teeth. Scandal fell back on his rear, and jumped up, but Phylomon pulled his long knife from his leg sheath, and Scandal just stared. Until this moment, Phylomon had been content to leave Scandal in charge. Now, they needed someone with internal fortitude.

“Get the women bedded down on the wagon,” Phylomon said. “We’ve got ten miles to make by sundown. You’re going to push! And if you try to run away, I’ll gut you!”

By sundown, they’d made fifteen miles. Phylomon didn’t tell them, just pushed them harder, and most of the time he felt as if he were pushing the wagon alone, yet whenever he checked, the others were grimacing under the strain, sweat flowing freely.

By evening the women regained enough control of their reflexes to scream in terror at their hallucinations. When Phylomon signaled for the Creators that night, standing on a lone hill with his photo-converters, he flashed for hours with a new sense of desperation.

For a moment, Tull came to Phylomon and said, “In the camp, two nights ago, I spoke with Tchupa. He said that the armies of Craal are moving in the Rough, that he believes that next year at this time, we will be fighting them here.” Tull let the meaning of his words hang in the air. They’d have to be careful, keep a good watch.

His signal lights would likely draw any Crawlie within miles. Sometimes, there is no right thing to do.

Phylomon gritted his teeth, flashed his lights into the night air. “One always hears such evil rumors out of Craal. Try not to worry.”

Tull looked significantly at the lights, then made as if to leave. Phylomon stopped him, grabbing his arm a moment. “Try not to worry the others.”

“We need them to worry,” Tull answered. “We must all be careful.”

Phylomon studied Tull’s profile in the night. The young man stood tall. He was big chested, and over the past week his muscles had grown strong and knotted.

This trip is changing him,
Phylomon thought.
He’s seen more horror in a week than some men witness in a lifetime. I wonder what it is that Chaa is trying to make of him?

He must become a general. That is why Chaa sent him with me.

Phylomon promised, “We’ll keep our eyes open. And we shall practice your battle training more heavily.”

That night, by the light of triple moons, Phylomon brought a new level of intensity to the training. He was no longer satisfied with Tull’s bashing attacks and Ayuvah’s feints. Those might suffice in a brief skirmish, but not in a drawn-out battle.

He watched the young men fight, circling and thrusting, jabbing and leaping away. After a bit, their technique seemed dull, repetitive. How many men had Phylomon seen in his lifetime who could fight better?

Too many.

“Both of you are getting stiff from all this work,” he observed. “You need to learn dexterity, work on stretches. You must be capable of moving in ways that your enemy can't anticipate.

“Here, Tull, when you bring that sword in, a smart opponent could still turn your attacks. Instead of just hitting him, you must practice your strike angles. Power is fine, but it must be controlled.”

He grilled Tull and Ayuvah ruthlessly, making them twist and dodge, teaching them various attack and defense routines, methods for gaining initiative in battle, deflecting attacks, and a series of ripostes.

Ayuvah complained, “No one can learn this much. My head can’t remember it all.”

“Nonsense,” Phylomon countered. “The body oft learns what the head cannot. Besides, if you remember a tenth of what I teach you, you will do well.”

After practice, Ayuvah and Tull stayed up with the women, talking softly, trying to feed them. For once, Ayuvah showed compassion even for the Dryad.

The women would have none of it—neither food nor comfort. They were too far gone into their hallucinations. They cried out against the blood, the maggots, and the heads.