“Do you want me to come?” Tull asked, knowing what game Phylomon stalked. “I’m handy with a spear.”
“No,” Phylomon said, as if grateful for the offer. “I can handle them by myself. I’ve done it often enough.”
Scandal said in a bluster, “We’ve plenty of meat. I don’t want to be up butchering all night!”
“I don’t believe that even you know a recipe to make this particular breed of swine palatable,” Phylomon told Scandal. He ducked off into a thicket of vine maple and began stalking toward the hilltop without a sound, into the deep woods where “pigs” would sleep until early evening.
“You’re damned right I don’t want gamey wild pigs,” Scandal admitted. “but by the Blue Man’s left test … I mean, if you kill one, bring the backstraps back. They might be all right.”
Phylomon made his way up the hill so quietly that not even Scandal’s squirrel would have heard him. He’d kept to the old trapper’s trail all day and figured he would find sign of the Goodman boys to one side. The only sounds were the occasional rap of a woodpecker in a distant tree and the drone of bees. Far away, the snarl of a scimitar cat echoed through the hills.
A hundred yards into the woods, it was so dark that the heavy brush dissipated for lack of sunlight. The ground was pocked and furrowed where wild pigs had rummaged for mushrooms. Phylomon found cat prints larger than his hand with his fingers spread wide, and on a branch he found a tuft of yellow-white hair from a sabertooth. The hair was dry and old, and from the bones that moldered beneath the redwood needles, it looked as if the sabertooth had killed a moose calf here in the spring.
He followed the trail, walking north of it a hundred, two hundred yards, scouting the ground for human tracks. It did not take long to find them in the thick humus. The ground was springy, covered with leaf mold. In these woods, a walker could hide his sound, but not his tracks.
Phylomon deduced that the men had watched them strike camp, then headed away. The slavers had been kind—they’d even marked their trail here and there with bits of bright yellow cloth so they could follow it by torchlight. They'd scrambled over fallen redwoods, waded through dense ferns. Phylomon followed them.
A mile from camp he found a small hill where he could watch a trail that wound down into a bowl-shaped valley. Phylomon crouched by a blackened log and placed a small convex mirror in the bark above him so he could watch his back.
Fear. I taste your fear, the blue man’s skin said to him.
Phylomon’s muscles began to twitch in tiny electric jerks. Phylomon often told others that his skin was a symbiote, but he did not tell them how intelligent the being was, nor did he tell them of its powers.
“Gireaux, my old friend,” Phylomon whispered. “We have strong enemies.”
Kill? Shall I kill them? the symbiote asked.
“We shall fight them together,” Phylomon answered. “Weave your armor about me now and prepare to strike. Feed from me. You must be strong for this fight.”
Dizziness struck as the symbiote began to feed.
Phylomon’s heart raced. He could feel the creature drain him, siphoning his energy. His skin began to darken. The symbiote was stretching, drawing static energy from the air. It was a good day for it—storm clouds scudded across the sky. He felt his skin tighten, binding him as if in leather, and the symbiote tightened his eardrums, tuning them to the small sounds of the woods.
Phylomon sat, and for a time he replayed a memory in his mind. When he was young, he’d loved a woman, one of the poor short-lived temporaries. He’d been taking drugs to enhance his learning abilities at the time, so he recalled every moment of his youth. He replayed the memory of a visit he’d made to this forest with his wife. It had been in his youth, just after he’d led the Neanderthals in the attack that decimated the Slave Lords in Bashevgo. Those had been happy times, for Phylomon believed then that he'd destroyed the slavers forever.
The trees had been young, their trunks narrower. He’d made love to his wife in a bed of ferns, and they’d watched Thor rise. Green storm clouds had played across the face of the tan moon, strung out like pearls on a necklace, and when blue Freya had risen and overtaken Thor in its flight, the two moons shone from behind a banded cloud and colored the sky like opal.
Phylomon replayed that night, perhaps for the thousandth time. In a way, though his wife was long dead, she remained immortal within him.
Phylomon heard the slavers from Smilodon Bay long before he saw them. They’d sent a scout, a large fellow in a green tunic and tan pants.
Phylomon made sure that the man saw him, by walking about and stretching in a patch of sunlight, then sat down in a bed of ferns. The scout immediately dropped upon spotting Phylomon, then went crawling back to the others.
An hour later, the scout returned. Phylomon spotted him two hundred yards off to his left. He was a big man, grunting and sweating as he carried the gun. By that Phylomon expected that he was the simpleton that Tull had spoken of, for he had a simple man’s strength. He wasn’t an imbecile, but he was none too bright, either.
He circled Phylomon on stealthy feet, staying out of sight, then carefully crept in close to set the unwieldy gun down in the brush, taking long careful aim.
Phylomon watched the scout in his mirror, careful to pretend to be looking down in the valley. The scout kept ducking behind the ferns.
The swivel gun was made of crude iron and had a three-foot barrel. Pirates sometimes mounted such guns on boarding vessels. It held a single cartridge that fired a four-inch bullet. It was a clumsy weapon, meant for shooting on a ship at point-blank range.
Phylomon considered what to do. If he attacked the scout, he could surely kill him, but more slavers were out there, and Phylomon feared that some might escape. Phylomon did not believe the scout would try to shoot him with that clumsy old gun just yet. No, he’d wait until the other slavers gathered.
Although Phylomon felt the presence of the symbiote, could speak to it, he could not explain the exact nature of his enemies, nor could he communicate the concept of gun to the animal. Instead, he let his fear course through him and felt the skin harden like bands of steel.
Men began walking up through the woods along the trail, five of them pacing slowly. Their heads swiveled back and forth stealthily, as if they were hunting. They offered a simple diversion for the real threat behind. Phylomon watched the men, nocked an arrow as if he’d taken the bait, and then he scrambled ten feet to the left. He imagined the gunner scurrying to correct his aim, and then he whirled and fired his arrow.
The gunner had been kneeling and rose as Phylomon fired. An arrow that should have taken him in the chest lodged in the simpleton’s hip. He jerked the barrel of the gun, pointing it vaguely in Phylomon’s direction, and dropped the hammer. Smoke boiled from the barrel.
Phylomon dodged, but the ball slammed into his ribs, and the blue man was flung backward. He spun several times and dropped.
“On him, boys!” the gunman shouted. “He’s down!” Phylomon grabbed his side, felt a bloody mess. It was numb. He could see nothing, for he was blinded by pain.
He coughed, and tasted blood running from his throat, swallowed it. He heard the men charging toward him in the brush, and he pulled a long ragged piece of flesh from the gaping wound.
He had never been hurt so badly. His ribs were split and pulped, though the symbiote anesthetized him. He heard ribs cracking as the symbiote manipulated them back into position, felt hot burning as muscles regenerating. Phylomon pulled the knife that he kept strapped to his right leg, and cried out at the pain.
Fear. I taste fear, the symbiote said.
He heard the gunman limping toward him, and several men drew around him in a circle.
“He’s wounded,” one man said. “Look at the hole! It's closing! Quick, shoot him again!”
Fear. I taste fear.
The gunman popped the chamber of the swivel gun open, grunted and swore as he pulled the red hot shell from the chamber. One fel
low rushed forward and swung an ax down on Phylomon’s neck. It connected with a dull thud, and the man swore. “I can’t cut through!”
Why do you fear?
The gunman dropped another heavy shell into the chamber, and Phylomon’s vision cleared so that he could see a second fellow move toward the gunman. The two men grunted as they lifted the barrel, taking aim.
“Kill them,” Phylomon told his symbiote.
The evening air crackled and filled with ozone and white lightning as the symbiote earned its keep.
Before dinner, Scandal took Ayuvah downhill to pick blackberries, leaving only Little Chaa to watch the mastodon. Yet Little Chaa had called a crow to his hand and stood feeding it and talking softly while the mastodon foraged.
Tull stayed with the wagon and kept staring into the forest, listening for the wratcheting call of jays, the snap of a twig. He got into the wagon and pulled out his battle armor—a leather band for his head, an iguanadon-hide shield painted in forest green and brown, leather leggings and wrist guards. He pulled out his kutow. For a long time, he watched Ayuvah and Scandal pick berries down by the pond.
The orange-haired Neanderthal was a premier woodsman who hunted by scent, as some Blade Kin were said to do. Ayuvah’s presence made Tull feel safe. He wondered if he should tell Ayuvah what Phylomon was up to. But who knew what Phylomon would find? Perhaps the men would not be out there. Even if they were, would they really harm anyone in the party? Hardy Goodman the simpleton?
Wisteria saw Tull looking at his kutow and asked “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Tull said, taking her hand. He considered. No, he’d worked for Hardy many times. Hardy would never hurt him. Tull dropped his war gear, then led Wisteria to the wagon and hid within its shelter. Tull held her delicately, as if she were a bouquet of roses that he did not want to crush.
He’d seen the way Chaa and Zhopila treated one another, and he’d often admired their tenderness toward one another. They were not only affectionate, they’d found countless and often ingenious ways to serve one another: Chaa would hunt in the mountains in winter for merganser ducks to make pillows so Zhopila could have something soft to sit on while she ground her grain for dinner. Zhopila grew a patch of mint, which she then dried and brought into the house to make it smell sweet in Chaa’s meditation lodge.
Now as Tull stared at Wisteria, he wondered how he could show her the type of love he held for her. For the last two days he’d tried. He’d watched Ayuvah clear rocks and pine cones from Little Chaa’s bed, saw the way he kept his brother’s water jug filled, and Tull followed Ayuvah’s example, hoping that by emulating myriad small acts he could learn to love.
Yet, he sensed something odd in his relationship with Wisteria. She seemed cool toward him at times, cooler than newlyweds should feel. Oh, he felt something. The caress of her fingers as she teased the hairs at the nape of his neck gave him delicious chills and filled his loins with fire. The smell of her breath pleased him more than Scandal’s finest banquet. To lay his hand on her hip and know that Wisteria was his wife filled him with joy. Yet he could tell that she did not reciprocate, and this scared Tull, for he wondered if he was losing her because he did not know how to love.
He kissed her slowly. They were hidden here in the darkness of the great barrel, so he let his hand ease along her blouse till it cupped her breast. She pushed him away.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I'm not in the mood.”
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Tull said. “My timing is bad. I should not be thinking of you now. Yesterday, we saw the mayor’s Dryad, and she said that men from town are following us, and they have the swivel gun. Phylomon went to hunt them, yet the men from town may well be hunting us tonight. I should go and warn the others.”
Wisteria smiled up at him. “Make love to me quickly then,” she said. She pulled him to the bottom of the barrel and her kisses grew passionate, insistent.
The sun was setting. Tull heard a squirrel bark pahaa, pahaa, and sat up. The squirrel barked from the woods on the west side of the clearing.
Wisteria pulled him down, kissed him, and said, “These last few days with you have been the best of my life. I’ve never felt such peace and joy as I feel in your arms.”
Tull gazed into her brown eyes. Her pupils were dilated, and her lips and cheeks were ruddy from kissing. Her breath was warm on his throat. He kissed her softly again, as a deep boom filled the woods to the east, echoing and re-echoing off the hills.
“The swivel gun!” Tull said. He grabbed his war shield, pulled his kutow, leapt from the back of the wagon and ran downhill to camp.
Little Chaa stood with the mammoth beside the brush, peering into the heart of the woods. He shouted, “I heard someone yell!”
Tull stood, not knowing what to do. Little Chaa raced back to the wagon, tore through the weapons, and picked a long narrow spear. Down near the pond, Scandal and Ayuvah waded cautiously through deep ferns toward the forest’s edge.
Tull heard a definite shout, someone barking the word “No!” But the voice did not seem to come from the woods; instead it seemed to come from a small hill on the other side of the valley. Tull realized that it was only a trick of acoustics, the voice echoing off the hill, but Scandal and Ayuvah scrambled off toward the apparent source of the sound.
Tull took a few hesitant steps into the forest and shouted back to Little Chaa, “Stay with the wagon.”
Wisteria ran up behind Tull. He peered into the growing shadows of the redwoods, and he could hear jays and squirrels shrieking their warnings, too many warnings. Something nearby had them stirred up. He would have raced forward, but he knew that if their enemies had set an ambush, it would be set right in front of him. He studied the shadows behind the trees, tuning his senses to that area.
Just behind him, Little Chaa cried, “Oh, no!”
Tull heard a single slap, and the sound of a body sliding in the grass. He whirled, thinking that men from town had come up behind them, but in the shadows not twenty feet back stood a giant with a long sloping forehead and massive jaws. It had a pale brown body lightly covered with coarse fur. Tull stared into the chest of the beast and watched its rib cage expand and shrink as it breathed.
The beast stood nine feet tall and was at least four feet broad at the shoulders.
Kwea struck Tull—an old terror more powerful than anything he’d ever experienced. He felt as if he’d been climbing a hill and the ground suddenly broke beneath him. He was slipping, falling.
His heart leapt in panic. His legs collapsed, and it seemed to take forever to drop to the ground. He could not breathe, dared not breathe.
The beast bent forward, its arms so long that its knuckles swept the ground. It picked up what was left Little Chaa, and Tull could see that the boy had nearly been ripped in half at the stomach by a blow from this creature’s fist.
Tull’s lungs clogged with the smell of sour sweat and carrion.
Wisteria cried, “Mastodon Men!” and took off running, and someplace in the back of his mind, Tull realized that their mammoth was trumpeting and stampeding away.
The sound of Wisteria’s voice seemed to startle the Mastodon Man, and it turned toward her and roared, flashing yellow fangs, shaking the corpse of Little Chaa in the air with one mighty fist.
Tull couldn’t move. In his mind’s eye, he was a toddler again, cowering in his bedroom. Instead of a Mastodon Man, Jenks stood before him. And instead of rattling the corpse of Little Chaa in the air, Jenks rattled shackles.
Tull heard the distant sound of a child wailing in terror, like a tea kettle as it boils.
He knew that this wasn’t Jenks standing before him, knew he should strike with his kutow or run. Waves of nausea and fear crashed against him, slapping him to the ground. And somewhere beside him, a child was wailing.
The Mastodon Man turned and peered at Tull, casually ripped Little Chaa in two at the waist, then bit deeply into his liver and chewed tentatively, as if to decide whe
ther it liked the flavor.
Suddenly Tull saw two other Mastodon Men stalk across the clearing, stopping to sniff at the wagon. They began pulling out barrels, shattering kegs of wheat and beans with their fists.
Tull wrapped his arms around his legs and curled in protectively, too terrified to move.
Beside Tull, a child was whining.
The Mastodon Man that dined on Little Chaa studied Tull, then stepped forward tentatively, reached out with one giant finger as long and thick as Tull’s jaw, and lightly thumped him on the chest, knocking him over. Tull felt as if he were falling through deep water that crushed his lungs, making it impossible to breathe, where the air carried the cold weight of many atmospheres.
He fell into a world of alternating bands of light and dark, light and dark.
Tull woke to the sound of a child wailing, a keening sound both distant and perilously close. Phylomon stood before him in the dark, swinging a medallion that flashed as if it were an ember from a fire.
“Come now, come,” the blue man said softly, taking Tull by the shoulder. “Terror is for children.”
Tull’s chest began to heave, as if he were coughing heavily, and he realized that there was no child crying beside him, that the sound came from his own throat, and he began to shout. His limbs trembled uncontrollably.
Phylomon held him for a moment. “So, you have met the Mastodon Men before? The kwea of old fear is upon you.”
“No! No,” Tull gasped. “Father. My father!”
Phylomon studied. “Ayaah,” he said. “How old were you when you fled home?”
Tull shook with the chills of old fear and considered. He could not remember, only wanted to vomit. Yet he pondered the question, focused on it. “Thirteen.”
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