Phylomon regarded him coolly, but said nothing.
They set camp under an apple tree at the edge of a meadow filled with vetch and wild pea. The river flowed lazily only a hundred yards off, and the mastodon rolled in the pools for an hour, then wandered about the meadow pulling up vetch in a colossal attempt to defoliate the area.
Phylomon went to the wagon, pulled out half a dozen practice weapons—wooden swords, maces with heads made of cloth, simple wooden shields and spears.
“Gentlemen,” he said to the men, “If we go into Craal, we must pass the Blade Kin. I know you must get some practice in Smilodon Bay, but none of you has received the kind of battle training that they have—yet. Take your favorite weapon, and let’s see what you are made of.”
“Hah, not me!” Scandal begged off. “I’m not one to fight with weapons like that. Just give me a skillet or a cleaver, and I can hold my own!” Phylomon looked at the fat man, and grunted his contempt.
He fought the others in mock battle, running them through their paces. Little Chaa took a wooden scimitar, the only weapon that was light enough to be suitable for him. He surprised Phylomon by using it to thrust with, and once he had it inside Phylomon’s guard, he twisted his wrist so that the curved wooden blade twisted around to nick the inside of his opponent's sword arm. He was not fast, powerful, or graceful, but the child showed common sense and good promise.
Ayuvah took a long spear and danced about Phylomon keeping from his reach, trying to strike at any target. Phylomon used a long sword that let him parry the blows, and Ayuvah could not get past his guard. Phylomon laughed. “You’re fast and clever, but you’ve never been trained by a master of the spear.”
“I’ve seen him kill a tyrannosaur with a spear,” Tull put in.
Phylomon stood back for a moment. “Is that true?” he asked.
Ayuvah nodded. “I use the mammoth stroke, like my father showed me.”
“That explains it,” Phylomon said. “You are too used to fighting big animals. You try too hard to put power behind your blows, and it slows you. You don't need that stroke to kill a human—just concentrate on putting a hole in me. You must be quick and slippery. You need to extend your lunges, try misdirection. When you plan to go for my head, lunge low as if you are aiming at my leg, then pull the spear up quick toward my face. With your style, you will need to commit yourself to an attack, and that is dangerous. When you commit yourself, you need to make sure that no matter how your opponent counters, you can still get your blow. In a few weeks, I can turn you into a dangerous man.”
Tull tried him next, and took a long-handled kutow for a weapon. Tull liked the weight the double ax heads gave him when attacking, and the long handle let him strike deep. In all of Smilodon Bay, no one had ever been able to beat him when he practiced with the kutow. But Tull found that watching Little Chaa and Ayuvah fight the blue man had been no help.
Phylomon took a wooden shield and a broadsword—the classic weapons issued for Craal warriors.
Tull rushed in and swung, and Phylomon put the shield overhead and parried. Tull slammed for the right side, testing the blue man’s sword arm, and Phylomon turned the blow with his sword. So Tull rained blows down from all sides and all angles, looking for a weakness, but he could not swing a blow that Phylomon couldn’t parry.
Phylomon moved in and out, dodging and turning the blows, never taking the counterstrike. Tull kept waiting for Phylomon to take the offensive, but he never did. Yet Tull found that he was afraid of that counterstrike and, therefore, tried to maintain his distance. He wanted to be quick and slippery, like Ayuvah, but it did not let him put his strength behind the blow. After three full minutes of embarrassment, Tull got mad and swung with his might.
Phylomon tried to turn the blow on his shield. The shield splintered in half, and the kutow slammed into the blue man’s arm, knocking him to the ground.
“Oh, God, are you all right!” Scandal shouted. Phylomon sat there, a bit stunned. He looked up at Tull.
“You should always swing with your might. It’s devastating. I think we’ve found your style.” He looked at the men. “From now on, we practice twice a day—every day. We’ve got twelve weeks until we reach Craal. You'll want all the practice you can get before then.”
He glared at Scandal—”Even you!”
With that, he gave Scandal a cleaver and a pan. The old innkeeper was used to hard work, but Phylomon put him through his paces, forcing him to fight a comic battle that left Scandal dazed and sweating.
That evening, as Tull helped set a fire, he thought about Wisteria, about the clean feel of her skin as he’d caressed her that morning, the taste of her lips, when suddenly from the brush just a hundred yards away, a great horned dragon leapt into the air with a roar.
Tull looked up, saw the forty-foot wingspan of the beast as the blue wings flashed above the treetops, and he fell backward on his butt and shouted.
The dragon’s leather wings flapped with a loud whoosh, whoosh. Its long ostrich like legs stretched out behind its short tail. Its thin forearms raked the air, claws exposed. Even though it flew a hundred feet above the men, the wind of its passage beat down on them like blows. The dragon kept climbing, and while Tull tried to decide whether or not to be relieved, he watched the dragon’s flight path. The dragon headed for a copper-colored pterodactyl that soared high above them, letting thermal up-drafts carry it over the mountains.
The pterodactyl watched dully. It must have flown three hundred miles from Dervin’s Peninsula since dawn, Tull thought. It’s too tired to escape.
The dragon winged upward and struck from below, slashing with the poisoned horn at the tip of its nose. The pterodactyl didn’t try to evade, and the dragon grabbed the pterodactyl’s wings with his tiny forearms. The two fell in a tangle, and from the forest floor squirrels began calling Pahaa! Pahaaa!
Moments after the two monsters had fallen behind a screen of firs, the dragon shouted a booming Graaaw, as it began to feed in triumph.
Scandal looked over at the brush where the dragon had hidden. “By God, we were lucky!” Scandal said. “That dragon was stalking us!”
“I’ll take watch,” Phylomon said. “We can't wait until we reach Gate of the Gods before we become wary.”
That night, as they sat around the fire eating kabobs barbecued over the fire, Phylomon said, “I once knew another man named Scandal.”
“Really?” Scandal asked. “It’s not a common name.”
“Ayaah. He was a recluse living in the marshes down in Beckley, named Jessoth Scandal.”
“My great-grandfather!” Scandal said in astonishment. “My dad spoke fondly of him. I even have some of his recipes.”
“I thought so,” Phylomon said. “He was like you—a self-styled gourmet. But he had a fondness for reptiles. He used to keep alligators in a pit. He’d feed them only skunk meat for a month before he butchered them. Claimed it gave them better flavor.”
“Did he?” Scandal asked. His eyes grew round with dismay—quite a feat considering the fleshy folds that nearly covered them.
Phylomon looked over at Tull and winked, then got up and walked out into the meadow with his plate in hand. The sun was going down, and the shadows deepening to purple, but the sky was still light enough to see by. The crickets began their shrill, thrumming music, and the evening smell of warm soil filled the air.
The first stars would soon be “striking their campfires,” as the Pwi said, and Freya floated pale blue over the trees. Phylomon touched one of the medallions hanging from his necklace, stroked it softly. It brightened like a lantern. He held the medallion up and thumped it with his finger. Three bright flashes fired. Phylomon closed his fist over the medallion. The flesh of his hands glowed purple, showing each long bone in his fingers.
Tull came over. “What is that?” he asked, nodding at the necklace.
“A photo-converter. Part of an old lighting system,” Phylomon said, not sure how much to answer. With sixty years of tra
ining Tull might master Hegled’s Theory of Charmed Plasmatic Flow and its Effects on Spin and Shell Mutability, then he could understand the photo-converters, perhaps. He might even comprehend the deeper meanings of the theory—that to travel at the speed of light, a man must become light; that to travel at the speed of a tachyon, man must become a tachyon. Yet he’d never gain the technology to implement these concepts, not in a thousand years.
Phylomon explained the photo-converter. “Around us in the air are many tiny particles that pass through us at high speeds, like stones too small to see. When the crystal is compressed, the particles pass through a zone where their spin and speed are changed, and they emit light.
“Now that we are on our journey, I will use this light to call to the Creators. It is their job to care for the plants and animals of this world. If we can contact them, warn them that the eco-barrier is down, they can give birth to some new serpents and restock them.” Phylomon watched Tull a moment to see if he understood. Many Pwi regarded the Creators as mere legend, beasts of myth. “Perhaps, added to the serpents we catch, it will be enough to rebuild the eco-barrier.”
“Do you think a Creator saw that? Will it come now?”
“I don’t know,” Phylomon said. “Shepherd-One watches over this land. I have not seen him for many years, but once we used to talk often. He creates birds—dumb animals with large eyes, simple brains—to report on plant and animal populations. When the birds finish their journeys, Shepherd-One consumes them, unravels the memories stored in their DNA. In this way he learns what is happening in the world. If I flash my light often enough, one of his birds will see it, and Shepherd-One will know that I want to speak with him.”
“Will he come then?” Tull asked.
“The Creator himself? No. The Creators are much like giant worms in form. They are nothing more than brains and stomachs, with their omniwombs attached. They keep themselves hidden from predators in large caverns underground in the far north. But he could send a servant to come see us, something with a mouth and brain—perhaps a creature that looks like a woman with wings, perhaps a monstrosity unlike anything you have ever seen. And that creature will carry my message to the Creators.” The light in Phylomon’s hand slowly died.
“Was that true, about Scandal’s great-grandfather?” Tull asked.
“No,” Phylomon said. “Scandal blasphemed my testicles this morning, so I felt he needed a ribbing. I knew a Jessoth Scandal, and I seem to remember where he lived. But it was a hundred years ago and the details about the man are so blurred with other memories that they no longer really exist.”
“Only the left one,” Tull said. “Folks around here only blaspheme your left testicle.”
Phylomon smiled. “You people are very bold, very open in what you say to me. I like that. Closer to Craal, people are more … opaque. Their faces are closed, secretive. They keep their feelings hidden.”
“Ayaah,” Tull said. “The sailors say, ‘If you want an honest opinion from a Crawly, it’s not hard to get as long as you’re willing to shove a flaming torch up his ass.’”
Phylomon laughed, and Tull looked at the blue man. “Myself, I always pictured you differently. I always thought of you as some old wizard, working away at your arcane technologies. You’re more human than I’d imagined.”
Phylomon laughed loud from the heart, and his voice echoed through the glade.
Chapter 13: The Dryad's Return
As Tull and Phylomon talked, Phylomon saw the mayor’s Dryad step from under the trees at the edge of the woods. She was small, almost boyish in figure, wearing a dress of emerald green and carrying a long knife in one hand. She watched them for a moment, then ran through the grass to Phylomon. Grasshoppers jumped from her path.
“Tchavs? Food?” she asked in Pwi.
The child’s green eyes were wide with fear, wild with hunger, yet Phylomon could see the beauty she’d become. She reminded him of Saita, a Dryad he’d loved when he was young. He’d met the creature in the mountains during her Time of Devotion, and was unable to resist the aphrodisiac perfume of her body during her mating frenzy. She had been voluptuous, and Phylomon could not imagine Saita ever having been anything like this child—small, boyish. He reached into his traveling pack for a sack of baked and buttered hazelnuts.
“Don’t feed her!” Tull warned. “She might follow us.”
“I will only follow you to the White Mountains, where I hope-with-painful-hope to find the aspen forests. I can pay for the food!” the Dryad said. Her voice was as soft and musical as the tinkling of small bells. Phylomon had to strain to understand her.
“What is your name, child?” Phylomon asked.
“Tirilee.”
“And what coin will you pay for the food?”
“Information,” she offered. “Two men followed from town. They circled you and went on ahead. They’ve got a gun, a big heavy one. It takes both of them to carry it. They tried hard to make sure you would not see them, and they talked of meeting up with others ahead.”
It was much as he had expected she would offer. Dryads were notoriously hard to spot, yet they had tremendously keen senses. Phylomon bent his head in thought. “So … it does not sound as if they came to return our stolen property.”
The Dryad smiled up at him. The mottled coloring of her silver skin gave her face an elongated look. The feral gleam in her eye was uncommon for such a child.
“Do you think they’ll attack?” Tull asked Phylomon.
“I’m certain,” Phylomon said. “I haven't cleaned the slavers out of your town yet. By executing a few, I earned their resentment. By flashing a fortune in gems before their eyes, I stirred their greed.” Phylomon warned. “I certainly don't think that they will attack so near Smilodon Bay. The evidence would be too easily discovered. They’ll wait a few days, until we get into the Rough, beyond Gate of the Gods.
“Tell me,” Phylomon said to the girl, “Do you know the men you saw?”
“The mayor’s brothers,” Tirilee answered. “The stupid one, and the longhair.”
“Those aren’t slavers,” Tull said in surprise. “She's talking about Hardy. He’s a friend of mine—a simpleminded man. And his brother Saffrey is—”
“Willing to commit murder,” Phylomon said. “It sounds as if the brothers were close—if you made an enemy of one, you made enemies of them all.”
Tull nodded. “That’s the way of it.”
“You call Hardy your friend,” Phylomon said, “yet in his eagerness to avenge his brothers, he plans to kill you and your wife. Somewhere ahead, they will point that gun at us, and they won’t kill me and leave witnesses behind. I’d choose my friends more carefully from now on, if I were you.”
Phylomon handed the Dryad the nuts, took some jerky from his pack. “There will be more when you need it, child,” he said. “Keep an eye out for us, and you shall be well rewarded.”
She flashed a feral smile. Some people thought that Dryads were gentle creatures. Phylomon knew better. This girl would enjoy seeing the slavers die.
Chapter 14: The Gate of the Gods
The men camped with a strong wind that night, and they reached Gate of the Gods at noon the next day. The wall of black rock was composed of layer after layer of molten slag, each an inch thick. The gate was a simple arch, thirty feet tall at the center. Men had trampled the ground beneath the arch, while Mastodon Men, a type of giant carnivorous ape, had pounded off bits of the black molten slag for use as crude knives.
As the wagon crossed beneath the arch, Tull noted that Scandal inhaled deeply and seemed to stiffen with fear. Only then did Tull realize that the innkeeper had never traveled outside of his home town. He’d been drinking swigs from a bottle of wine, and now he nervously crawled onto wagon and began singing nervously, like a child trying to keep bad dreams at bay. His was a bawdy song noted for its endless verses:
Oh, with all the time I spent in jail,
I should have been a jailer,
But I love a
whore in every port,
and that’s why I’ll stay a sailor.
Oh, I knew a girl named Dena.
She lived in old South Bay
She so loved to get naked,
She threw all her clothes away.
All the men were so happy,
they began to shout “Hooray!
“Hooray!—”
“Quiet, you fool!” Phylomon hissed, and the blue man hurried ahead, scouting the trail.
No one spoke for much of the day as they marched.
They watched for danger, and signs were everywhere. A dozen yards on the other side of the arch, they found the fresh track of a Mastodon Man—a footprint twenty-one inches long and twelve inches wide. The redwoods were tall and dark, and their bark was often scarred and pitchy twelve feet up where sabertooths had sharpened their claws. In the perpetual gloom under the redwoods, plants grew to enormous heights. Giant ferns stood over six feet tall, and the wild raspberry had selectively bred over generations so that only those with leaves as broad as plates flourished. Moldering serpentine limbs of vine maple climbed fifty feet into the air in an effort to reach the thin sunlight that filtered down, and all the limbs trailed old man’s beard.
The party traveled for hours, following a trapper’s path into the mountains, before they finally found a clearing in the late afternoon where the grass was thick enough to keep the mastodon from straying in search of food.
The clearing was situated on a gently sloping hill. There, a shallow pond, muddied by wild pigs, sat in a fold near the forest floor. They parked the wagon just inside the line of trees, and Scandal and Tull unpacked while the Pwi unhooked the mastodon and cleared an area around camp.
It was still two hours to nightfall. Phylomon took his great black dragon-horn bow from the back of the wagon and strung it, fitting a loop of the bowstring over one end, bending the bow with his knee, and fitting the second loop over the other end. He reached into his quiver and took out two rectangular pieces of leather, like tents, which he fitted over the strung ends of the bow so the bowstrings wouldn’t catch in the brush. “I believe I shall go hunt some swine,” he said quietly, nodding toward the muddied pond where the bank was pocked with tracks.
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