Spirit Walker

by David Farland

  Tawny flatland sabertooths followed the mammoth herds, and regal lions lounged beneath the occasional tree to watch over the bison. Between the mammoths, pigs, and brush fires, most trees never took root, and the land remained clear for grazing.

  The men surprised themselves in the flat terrain and made twenty miles per day, so that on the second night out of the woods, the eighty-first day of the month of Dragon, they reached the rendezvous at Frowning Idols.

  Other traders had already arrived.

  The party pushed their wagon beside a small lake at dusk. A dozen bonfires burned near deerskin tents and round sod huts, sending their smoke skyward, showing all travelers for miles around where to meet. Two hundred Neanderthal had gathered, and they had covered fire pits to roast slabs of bear and sloth. The air smelled of sizzling fat and smoke.

  “Take heart,” Phylomon said as they entered camp, eyeing the wagons with domestic oxen grazing nearby. “If we can’t buy cattle, perhaps someone will know where we can get a mastodon.”

  Someone shouted, “Phylomon! Phylomon of the Starfarers is among us!” and nearly everyone in the crowd came running to see the blue man.

  Tull’s heart sank as he realized that it was the same cry that had been raised in Smilodon Bay three weeks before. It was so innocent, so full of excitement.

  Tull took Wisteria into the crowd, and they weaved among the tents, where goods were often laid out on trading blankets. A woman passed them wearing a hundred bracelets of electrum and silver, advertising her wares on her arm. Most Pwi had brought their trade goods on their backs—intricately carved jade bowls, copper pots, raw dragon horn that was prized for bows. But there were also some human traders: a burly bearded wild man from the north who had a wagon-load of mammoth ivory. Another who’d taken the easy trail up from Benbow to bring in a wagonload of Benbow glass. These two traders drove wagons using domesticated bison—the most common draft animal in this corner of the Rough. Although goods were displayed everywhere—laid out on hides or blankets on the grass—no one was buying. It would not be polite to begin bargaining until everyone was fed and rested.

  Wisteria and Tull strolled among the goods, and Tull became concerned: among the dainty earrings were jade pipes, the kind the Okanjara—the Free Ones, as they called themselves—used to smoke opium and hashish. The Okanjara were escaped Thralls from Craal, and generations in slavery had left them changed from the Pwi, more brutal. Many of them, it was said, were in league with the Pirate Lords and worked as slavers. One Neanderthal with black paint beneath his eyes had his arcane drugs all laid out with the paraphernalia. He displayed dried mushrooms, seeds, and pouches of dried leaves. Tull had never seen such things.

  He walked softly, feigning interest in the items out of courtesy, but his hand tightened on Wisteria’s arm, and he steered her forward, always heading toward the famous idols at the center of the camp—two gray stone statues carved into frowning Neanderthal faces, some twenty feet tall.

  They passed a Neanderthal wearing a lion-skin vest, a heavy man with a thick golden beard who wore his leather war helmet and kutow as if he were planning to go to battle any minute. The man knelt, setting ivory spoons onto a deer hide.

  Wisteria stopped to look at the spoons, and the man reached for his kutow and looked up. His eyes were blackened, so his face looked like a skull. “How much do you want for the woman?” he asked Tull.

  It would be impolite to offend, Tull knew. The man had a defiant, crazed gleam in his eye. Tull spat at the man’s feet. “Pwi do not sell their women,” he said, deciding that he did not care if the man was offended. He walked on.

  “Careful,” Wisteria said under her breath. “He is Okanjara.”

  “He is an Okanjara warrior,” Tull corrected, loud enough for the man to hear. “Bastard son of some pirate. Probably a slaver himself. It does not give him the right to offend us. I will kill him if he does so again.”

  “Excuse me if I have offended,” the warrior said loudly at their backs. “I did not know you were Pwi!”

  They reached the idols, huge monoliths. Tull rested his back on the down turned lip of a statue and sighed.

  Scandal hurried over, spoke quietly. “Did you see the mammoth tusks over there? A trader brought them down from the north just this morning, escorted by fifty Okanjara warriors. They’ve caused no small stir, mind you. Those tusks didn’t come from wild mammoths. They came from domestic herds. All of them are painted with Hukm totems!”

  “Hukm!” Wisteria said. The great furred Hukm were fierce warriors, each nearly as large as a Mastodon Man but vastly more intelligent. They never killed their sacred mammoths. To slaughter a Hukm’s mammoth was an act of lunacy, akin to slaughtering his children—a declaration of war.

  “Only fools would kill such mammoths,” Tull said. “I just called one of them the bastard son of a slaver. He begged forgiveness for offending me.”

  “Ayaah,” Scandal said quietly. “You should see the stir Tirilee is causing. Every one of these animals is willing to pay his left testicle for a night in bed with a Dryad. If Phylomon wasn’t with her, I don’t know how we’d stop them. Right now, they’re outnumbered, so they won’t start anything now. But sleep light. Ayuvah says this place has bad kwea. The hand of Adjonai reaches even here. For once, I feel the kwea too.”

  That night, Phylomon held an execution. The party had settled in for dinner, a feast where supplies were shared abundantly. They sat on logs around several huge bonfires, laughing and telling jokes. Tirilee crouched next to Phylomon, clinging to his arm, for many Okanjara had gathered, leering at her.

  The harmless-looking old glass trader from Benbow, a fat man with a hint of peach fuzz left on his head, slapped Phylomon’s back and introduced himself. Phylomon asked if he’d once lived at a place called Starving Woman.

  The fellow sat up straight and in surprise, and said, “Ayaah, but how’d you gather it?”

  Phylomon said, “I have a message …” and reached for his pack. He pulled out a weathered piece of paper and read, “I Deman Haymaker, was taken slave two years ago—”

  The fat man pulled a knife from his boot, and started to rise. Phylomon smashed the man’s esophagus with an elbow. The fat man stood up straight, then fell backward over the log he’d been sitting on and kicked his feet, retching as he strangled.

  “This man forfeits all property for his crimes. We’ll be taking his oxen when we go,” Phylomon said. “The rest of you can take his glass as you please.”

  Wisteria and Tull sat within a few feet of Phylomon. Wisteria stood, holding her stomach. “God damn you,” Wisteria shouted at Phylomon. “God damn you! Is it going to be this way everywhere we go?”

  “Perhaps,” the blue man said, watching her calmly.

  “Because if it is, I can’t take it!” Wisteria said. “I swear, I'll stab you in your sleep!”

  “It wouldn’t work,” Phylomon said. “Others have tried, but where are they now?”

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Wisteria said, staggering off into the darkness. Tull followed, somewhat in shock. He'd known Phylomon for only three weeks, yet the blue man had killed nearly a dozen people in that time.

  “Did you see what he did?” Wisteria asked after they left the camp. She shook her head, held her stomach as if she would vomit.

  Tull remembered the gagging sounds Wisteria’s father had made in the water as he strangled. The same sounds the glass trader had made only a moment ago. “I see the kwea of it. I’m sorry.”

  They were standing by a wagon, and Thor came up, half-full. The gas giant was huge, and its light threw a blue haze over the plains. Tull could see little desert jackals slinking near camp, outside spear range, waiting for the people to sleep. Fireflies flickered in the air. A warm gravitational wind kicked up, and clouds scudded over the mountains. It looked as if it would be a dark night. Several people gathered around a wagon, pulled back a tarp, and began searching it, and Tull realized it was the slaver’s wagon, and the people had com
e to haul off his goods as fast as they could.

  “God, can’t they even wait for him to finish dying first?” Wisteria said in disgust and stalked away.

  Tull looked to follow her but she had been so cold lately—hardly speaking to him, avoiding his touch. He knew that she wanted to be alone. In the pale moonlight, as people pawed through the wagon, he saw a blade—a sword made of pale green Benbow glass that looked black in the moonlight, gracefully curved, yet even the back edge was jagged and sharp, in a wave design.

  It was the most wicked-looking weapon he’d ever seen, something that only a princeling among the Pirate Lords could afford. He picked it up and held it. The dense crystal blade was heavy, as heavy as his kutow, but more finely balanced. He swung it in the air a few times, and liked the feel. It was heavy enough to strike through a parry, yet light enough to be fast. He imagined that he could swing that blade all day and never tire. Measuring the knowledge that it would anger Wisteria if he took the sword against his own desire to own it, he grabbed the scabbard for the blade and carried it back to his wagon.

  He walked back to the campfire. A Neanderthal woman was talking wildly to Phylomon, gesticulating, speaking in an accent Tull recognized as Okanjara.

  “Quick, come quick! The baby is not coming out as it should! I push on her stomach, but the baby refuses to come.”

  Phylomon looked up at Tull. “You said you studied once under a doctor. Did you ever help birth a child?”

  “Three,” Tull said.

  “Well, let’s make it four.”

  “I don’t have the hands for it,” Tull said.

  “Come along anyway,” Phylomon said.

  They found the Okanjara girl in a tent near a small campfire, away from the main group. She was perhaps fourteen, sweaty, wearing a goat hide. Her husband was young and handsome, no older than Tull. Three girls crowded around, leaving little room for Tull and Phylomon.

  “Who are you girls?” Phylomon asked.

  “We are her sister-wives,” one girl said. The thought sickened Tull, that four girls should marry one man. It was not uncommon in the Rough. A man could seduce a Neanderthal woman so fully that the kwea of the time they spent together overcame her sense of decency, and she became one of his wives. Human trappers did it often to women. Tull felt that it was unscrupulous.

  Phylomon washed his hands in scalding water, and Tull did the same. He checked the girl’s cervix for dilation, found a bit of blood running from it, and the smell of salt. Her water had broken.

  “She’s halfway there,” he told Tull, and then asked the girl. “How often have you been having contractions?”

  “She started two days ago,” her husband answered, “but the baby decided not to come, not until tonight.”

  “We will have to take the baby soon,” Phylomon told Tull. “What would your doctor have done?”

  Tull said, “Have her massage her nipples so she will release oxytocin to get the contractions started. Perhaps have her sit up, to put more pressure on the cervix, thin it.”

  “I agree,” Phylomon said. They helped the girl to her feet, took off her top, and put her husband to work stroking her nipples. They were small and pink, the nipples of a woman who’d never suckled a child.

  Tull walked out of the tent, embarrassed at the sight, and sat by a small campfire with a dozen Okanjara. They were speaking of inconsequential things: purchases they planned to make, mending shoes, the perpetual chore of mending shoes. A burly Okanjara in his forties asked Tull, “How is she doing?”

  “She will not go into hard labor for several hours,” Tull said.

  “Then in the middle of the night, we shall have some screaming,” the man said, slapping Tull’s shoulder. “It always reminds me of my childhood in Bashevgo, eh? Sleeping above the slave pens. If only someone would crack a whip!”

  Suddenly, lightning crackled in the clouds on the horizon, and the Okanjara laughed nervously. “Ayaah, Adjonai cracks his whip!” the man said. “I am Tchupa, leader of this caravan.” He reached out to clasp Tull’s wrist.

  Tull felt strange clasping wrists with him. He’d never touched a Thrall, free or otherwise.

  “We have been bringing our caravans farther east and south every year,” Tchupa said. “Someday we hope to walk freely among the Pwi, let them know we are not enemies.” Tull looked at the warriors in the circle, their eyes, lips, and noses darkened so that they looked like skulls. They did not look like friends. “Yet I fear we brought too many men. Your people are uneasy. We will come in fewer numbers next year, but we had a surplus of goods to trade.”

  The practice of honest Pwi required the Tull speak openly to this man of his fears and hopes, and so he said, “Our people fear you because you come from Craal. Here in the Rough, the Pwi say that Adjonai, the God of Terror, rules in Craal. It is said that many Thralls work for the Slave Lords. It is said that some Thralls eat the flesh of the Pwi.”

  The big man frowned. “You are blunt. Truly Adjonai does rule in Craal,” the big man said. “And some day, his hand will reach out and take the Rough. I have known Thralls to eat the flesh of Pwi in the ghettos of Bashevgo because they were hungry and had nothing else. The human Slave Lords left them no choice. That is why some of us, like my tribe, have escaped here into the wilderness. And every day, an Okanjara dies to keep this wilderness free. Know this, man of the Pwi, the Okanjara are your guardians, and should be your friends!”

  Tull looked into the big Neanderthal’s eyes, eyes as yellow as a cat’s, and saw only honesty there. “Then I will not sleep with my sword tonight,” Tull said, and the warriors laughed. “But, I must ask you: I have not heard of Okanjara traveling so far to the east. You say that the Okanjara die to keep the wilderness free, and I have heard that you battle the armies of Craal. Shouldn’t you be on the other side of the Dragon Spine Mountains?”

  The big man frowned. “We have battled on the far side of the Dragon Spines in the past, but the armies of Craal are many. After this winter, we will battle the armies of Craal here.”

  Tull’s face paled. “Your words cut me with painful fear,” Tull said. “You must be mistaken. The armies of Craal are seven hundred miles from here.”

  Tchupa shook his shaggy head. “Great armies move in the White Mountains—men with cannons and guns. They have put armor on their mastodons, dressing them for war, and they train dire wolves for battle. Their warriors, the Blade Kin, have sorcerers.…”

  Chapter 20: Ananoi and Shape-Changing Woman

  At the Okanjara camp, lightning cracked in the distance, and a young girl not more than three years old came out of her tent crying.

  “Bad dreams are walking around! Bad dreams are walking!” she said, her eyes wide with fear. For some reason Tull could not imagine, the girl chose to come to him, crying for comfort, so he pulled her up on his lap and hugged her, and told her, “Do not worry. The bad dreams will soon go away.”

  A moment later, the girl’s mother came, sat beside Tull, and took the girl.

  “There are no bad dreams walking around, it is only the Okanjara and the Pwi walking,” the girl’s mother said. The child looked about in dismay, and because the shadows were deep around the tents, and greasy smoke of cooking meat obscured the camp, she was not inclined to believe that only men were walking around.

  In order to comfort her, the mother pointed at the two great Frowning Idols and said, “Would you like to know why these stones frown?”

  The little girl nodded, and the woman told a story Tull had never heard, the tale of Ananoi and Shape-Changing Woman:

  Once, long ago, a Shape-Changing Woman was a widow and head of her tribe. All people thought her wise, and because she was wise, it added to her beauty.

  However, she had an evil son, Xetxetcha, who used his shape-changing power to fool the animals and slay them against their will. Xetxetcha believed himself to be a great wrestler, for he could wrestle in any form—be it cave bear, sloth, or giant deer.

  In this day, there lived a mam
moth, named Vozha, who shook the mountains down to hills when he walked. Redwoods grew in the dirt on his back, yet they were shorter than his giant hairs. Even the fleas on his back were enormous and grew to the size of wolves. Only the sea was large enough to be his water hole, and when he sprayed water from his trunk, it rained on the far side of the world.

  Now each fall, as the mammoths went into their mating frenzy, their eyes would glaze and turn red. The bulls shook the mountains as they charged one another, butting heads, and their trumpeting could be heard to the ends of the earth. But none could withstand Vozha, for he picked up the other mammoths two and three at a time with his enormous trunk and he threw them over his back, and he alone mated with all of the dainty mammoth women.

  So, one day, the mammoths came to Shape-Changing Woman and asked her advice, saying, “Zhofwa has blown her kisses to us, and we love the beautiful cow mammoths, but we never get to sleep with our sweet lovers. How can we defeat this monster?”

  Shape-Changing Woman sat and thought upon it, for it was a tricky question, so she told the mammoths to wait for a month while she considered the answer.

  But when her son, Xetxetcha, heard of the question, he thought, Aha, now I have found a wrestling opponent worthy of me, and he immediately turned himself into a giant mammoth and trotted off to the north.

  Meanwhile, Ananoi, that great hero who destroyed Bashevgo and put the red drones in heaven so the Pirate Lords would not escape this world, also had some mammoths come to him and complain saying, “Vozha has taken all the sweet women mammoths as lovers, and though he is a mighty fighter, this is not right.”

  So Ananoi decided to go speak with this monster. Everyone knew that Ananoi was the mightiest of the Okanjara, and he did not want to frighten the monster into submission, yet he knew he needed a weapon, so he took a cattail reed as a spear, and he carved petals of a lily to be the spear tip, and with that as his only weapon, he set off north.