He heard Dale snorting out some sort of inarticulate disgust as he tumbled into his tent next to his. He tossed to his other side and stared to the last embers of the camp fire, trying to gather himself. The courage one gets from the comforts of civilization was rubbing off at an alarming rate.
Looking out of the tent flaps, Chase saw his morose friend Billy on the other side of the fire, leaning so close to a tree that he was barely visible in the shadows. Thinking himself unseen by him, he wore such an annoyed, sad expression that it made his heart sink. Before he realized that he just needed some time to himself, Chase had bounded over the fire and sat with him.
“Mister Chase,” he said, the formality of it confirming that he did not wish to be disturbed.
“The shaman saw that they are still alive,” Chase said.
He might as well have struck him with all his strength full in the face. Instead of nodding at him as the old boy normally would, he broke into wolfish howls of crying.
That sound, brought on by hope and sadness, was as sad a noise as Chase had ever heard. It would ring forever in his ears; and he would have heard nothing of it had he been in his right mind.
“Hulloo! What’s wrong out there?” bawled Mighty Kenzo’s voice from the tent.
“Nothing—false alarm!” Chase called.
“Keep a stiffer hand on your alarms then, boy! Or I’ll step all over your head.”
At that, Chase clapped Billy’s shoulder and retired for the night.
________________________________________
Rising with the first streaks of dawn, Chase was surprised that his thoughts were cleaner and clearer. The wetmen were gone. The river was down to a minor roar. And as their vessel was reloaded, he was anxious to get going.
Strange, what a good night’s sleep can do.
But scarcely had Chase thought this than Dale leaped into the air like a wounded rabbit. An arrow whizzed past his face and glanced within a hair’s-breadth of Gilli’s head. Both fellows were dumb with amazement. Such treachery would have been surprising among the barbarous tribes further west. But there were no “hostiles” within a hundred miles of them. Uncle Jickie would have dragged him pell-mell back to the beach, but Chase needed no persuasion. Robo tore ahead of all of them, getting to the shields.
Dale kept by Chase’s side as they set off at a hard run behind the rest of their warparty. As he ran, Chase peered out in the undergrowth. He saw only the foliage as it bent and rose.
Then Chase tripped, crunching his toes into a fallen log.
That fall saved his life. A flat spear point hissed through the air above his head and stuck fast in the bark of an elm tree. Scrambling up, he gathered his bow to let go two or three shots into the cedar brake.
Then all fell silent again.
They scrutinized the underbrush, but there was no sign of anyone, except the cedars that had absorbed his shots. Chase wrenched the stone spearhead from the tree. It was curiously ornamented with such a multitude of intricate carvings that he could not decipher if it was writing or gibberish. Then Chase discovered that the medley of colors was produced by inlaying the flint with small bits of a bright stone; and the bright stones had been carved into a rude likeness of some birds.
“What are these birds, Dale?” Chase asked.
He fingered them closely. “Eagles.”
“And the stone?”
“Agate.”
Agate… the word called a picture to his mind of a big agate stone between the malicious eyes of some of the wetmen.
“Damn barmaids!” Gilli shouted, not suppressing his anger. “To the frozen depths of hell with you stubborn whores!”
Of course then Chase knew for whom those missiles had been intended and from whom they had come. He almost smiled; it was a clever piece of rascality. Had the assassin succeeded, punishment would have fallen on the river rats.
Chapter 19
Rowing swiftly, beyond the reach of the barmaids at last, the fascinations of the wild once again beckoned like a siren. Vast woodlands, where a dozen Walmarts could be dropped without any hope of finding them, seemed to sweep on forever to the very ends of the earth. With the purple recesses of the hills on one side and the oceanic expanse of the forest on the other, all the charms of clean, fresh freedom were quickening his blood with a strange and fevered delight.
The river, with its greenish waters, flowed placidly beneath their vessels. For two days they went without so much as a hint of another soul existing on Earth.
This was about as far west as Chase had ever traveled. He had been north to Bowling Green, Kentucky, once, following a rumor that inoculations were being produced and dispensed at the University there. The trip had proven fruitless, save a bar of gold he managed to wrest without incident from what was surely a trap of some sort—in fact, the whole rumor had probably been part of the same setup.
He tsked, shuddering to think of the risks that had taken and the resources they had wasted on that journey.
They hugged close to the numerous rocky shores to their left, which stood guard like a wall between them and the heavy winds of a quickly approaching spring.
When at last they passed a north-bound vessel, with men clad in Kevlar, Chase judged they were once again near the habitation of a town. They arrived at a compound called Foxwash at sundown. A banner with a large penis was flying above the courtyard.
“Is that in our honor?” Chase joked up to Mighty Kenzo, who had asked to be at the lead of their party for a while.
“Not much is,” he laughed. “We commandos aren’t oppressed with the weight of honors! In truth, I think it welcomes the prostitutes. Or it used to. Like the boobie statue back in Beergarden, which Gilli thought was thirsty for his cock!”
“She didn’t say no,” Gilli grumbled.
Chase shook his head. Speaking of thirst, though, he could go for a bucket or two of beer, and maybe something hot on his stomach.
“Is this the weekend by any chance?”
Chase suddenly realized as far as they were concerned the past week had been entirely composed of weekdays.
“Out of your reckoning already, sir?” Uncle Jickie asked. “By fuck, boy. Wonder how you’d feel if you’d had ten years of it!”
Everyone looked at each other, some with a few shrugs.
Situated on the riverbank of Foxwash was a typical Dwarvish stronghold. Wooden palisades twenty feet high ran around the whole town and the inner court enclosed at least two acres. Heavily built blockhouses with spears and lances poking through arrow slits gave a comforting to the place, but in truth, such defenses would probably only enable a pack of heps to scamper up the walls more quickly. The blockhouses were apparently to repel attack from the rear, while the face of the fort commanded the river.
Fatigued from the trip, Chase took little notice of the enthusiastic interchange of news and greetings as guards docked the Feisty-Uncle. They were led by yet other stout guard into the gate.
Stores, halls, warehouses and living apartments for an army of clerks, were banked against the inside walls, and the main building with its spacious assembly room stood conspicuous in the center of the enclosure. As they entered the courtyard, one of the chief traders was a young man, perched on a mortar in the gate. The little magnate condescended a thin smile of welcome until Mighty Kenzo came up.
“I say,” blurted out the young clerk. “Now here’s a man of renown! Uncle Kenzo!”
“Oh! Deck the halls with buffalo balls if it’s not the young shithead that thought his neighbor’s cat wanted to play with my rabbits!”
The bearded youth flushed at the sally of laughter.
“Shit. Don’t listen to the growls and farts of that gruff old mastiff. He got himself a pretty daughter and a perfectly fat wife out of that affair!”
“Hold it at that, Mister Tilli! We don’t put treasures on display in the store front like you shortmongers!”
All the fellows, even his fellow sellers, laughed.
“No,” br
oke in the Tilli, “but there is no law against looking at a pretty bit of memory when it comes calling out in this wilderness.”
To which, every fellow of the crowd said a hearty, “Here! Here!”
Chase laughed a bit then shook wrists with Tilli before he walked off to stretch himself full length on a bench. The men began to disperse to back to their vending stalls. The early twilight, the sort unique to evenings this time of year, was gathering in the courtyard, and as the night wind sighed past, Chase felt the caress of warm air on his face and his mind was sent, not any particular memory, but to the innocent, yet terrifying, boyhood days in Gintypool. How far away those days seemed. Yet it was not so long ago. Surely it is experience, not time, that ages a body.
The sky was dark and overcast. Chase gazed high above the sloping roofs for some sign of moon or star.
Without lowering his eyes, he stood.
Then he reached out beside him to keep his balance, fearing he might faint. His breath was gone. What he saw framed in a window of stars, dropping from high in the sky straight towards them, was a nightmare machine.
It was a mechanized devil.
“The helicopter,” Chase whispered airlessly.
The face of the flying machine was shining and the brows were black and arched over windows that glowed bright ginger; the very head was like a venomous cottonmouth snake, and atop the head was a suggestion of sorcery—the devil’s sorcery, arrow-like spikes that writhed, fanning in a crown over the head of the machine. The upper lip was drawing back, revealing a terrible mass of a body, wriggling black, a shivering blue-veined hell on earth with the glow of fire visible in its ass.
“Helicopter!” Chase roared
A bloom of living fire appeared in the cheeks.
Activity exploded all around him.
Why can’t I move?
A loathsome, formidable roar resounded, telling all who would know that it not only rode ahead of storms, it could imitate the very thunder it used to propel itself.
“Hells depths, Chase!” bellowed a deep voice in his ear. “Run!”
When Chase looked around, he had no idea who had said it—all he saw was the enormous head of the beast lunging down into the courtyard, zipping toward him with terrifying speed. Spears were launching everywhere from the window slits, people were roaring old war cries and prayers, but the head remained low, a pair of luminous, evil glass windows beading in on him, as he finally found his legs just enough to run, dizzy from the heat of it blasting breath. Chase grabbed a spear and used it to launch himself, diving behind a stack of mead buckets
“Agh! Fuck!” he screamed.
“Stay down!” bellowed several voices.
Then the machine suddenly drew up into the black night and a small pair of wings fluttered out from the sides and its entire heft rose. The wind ripped shutters of the windows with a huge bang. It must have been over twenty feet long.
Chase leapt from behind the buckets, still shaking, still holding the spear he should have thrown, as it sailed higher and higher into the far southern sky. The tremendous activity around him ceased, and a small army of men stood silently, without moving, staring up at the beast.
Every nook in the fort fell silent, then exploded again with activity.
Men were rushing, half-dressed, towards him shouting questions. For a moment, Chase still stared into the sky, shaking.
It was only then that he noticed the sack in his hands, with blue seeds spilling out of a tear. He picked up one of the seeds, surprised to find writing on it. Pfizer was etched into each and every one, so finely that for a brief flash Chase thought he was imagining things. He was so winded and confused it took him another moment to realize they were pills of some sort.
In the next instant Chase was surrounded by shaggy, ragged-looking rabble, commandos from the mountains, commandos with long white hair, commandos, like him, with beards like avalanches of hair, commandos half-dressed or dressed in ancient Kevlar, or some with gorgeous, sturdy longshirts of armor like the longmongers wore—in all, there wasn’t one manner of man known to him that didn’t surround him at that instant.
“By fuck, young friend! I’ve never seen a soul stand his ground against such a menace!”
“I saw him nearly take the thing’s head!”
“Yanked a damn sack of seeds from its mouth!”
“Bravery like from the songs of old! We’ll plant these sum’bitches in your honor, boy!”
“Frozen hell, son! I ain’t seen balls like that beneath a bull!”
Chase had no idea how to stop the torrent of false compliments, and he justified the silence on his lips by telling himself that even the stoutest of human hearts need something to celebrate every now and again.
“What a heart! What a fucking heart! What is your name, Mister?”
“Chase,” Chase told the onlookers.
“How old are you?”
Uncle Jickie and the rest of his party were gathered nearby now.
“How old? … I was thirty three when I got here. But by fuck I just got scared straight to fifty!”
Every one of looked at each other, silent as snow in the cedars. Then a raucous wildfire of laughter erupted, spreading among the spectators so rapidly that even his Uncle Jickie put his hands on his knees and had a good chuckle.
________________________________________
Chase smiled as a pair of old men examined the blue “seeds”, debating on what might grow from so curious a start. Spectators were lining each side of the path of the banquet that was to be held in his honor. There was a sad side to the clamorous welcomes and handshakes and surprised recognitions, of course. The first part was Billy, seeing him force a smile. The other thing was a question: Hadn’t these stupid bastards seen him shaking, nearly pissing himself from heart-freezing fear?
Now, with hard-working men offering up belongings to help in their quest and, worse, their stores of food for this banquet, Chase had a harder time dealing with his lies by omission. Now and then, strong men would fall in his arms, and they would embrace like women, and they would tell him with covered emotion of someone they had lost to the fearsome devil.
All night, the confusion of false compliments continued. The dull tread of booted feet as river rats and men carried pack after pack of beer and supplies to riverbank for them to choose from on their adventure.
Meanwhile, in the main hall, the compound’s Mister, an old man named Bori, made a motion with his hand. Everywhere, men lowered their voices, and as his party passed along that room to Bori, Chase knew that his fiery uncle was pleased, his determined look begging him now not to spoil the revelry of the night. Faster than the cooks could sort the meats, great bundles were heaped on the table. By midnight, bellies were crammed from basement to attic. Smoked salmon, opossum, pork, chicken, squirrel, venison, goat, beef—these and other rare meats, which were the testimony to the luxury of the kingly meals availed to commandos of the wilderness.
“Are ye Chase Copterkiller?”Bori asked, as beer was poured.
Chase looked at his uncle, and his uncle nodded.
“Yep. That is my name, Mister Bori.”
“Then unbuckle ye belly, ye’ll see the thick of a woman pregnant with twins for you leave my compound!” said the old man, who left them then, holding his already full belly.
“Lucky young bull! I envy you!” someone shouted.
Chase turned to face a tall, dark man with the swarthy complexion and Kenzo’s intensely black eyes. It was his nephew Tilli. Chase had become accustomed to the soft-spoken, melodious speech that betrays wilderness living; if Chase were to encounter a descendant of a cutter in Little America, Chase could recognize the wilderness in his blood by that rhythmic trick of the tongue.
“Then you must not have seen the machine!” Chase answered
At that instant, Tilli made a fanning motion behind. “Indeed I did gaze upon it, Mister Chase. And I got the backside of my trousers all shitty for it!”
At which the assembl
y was sent rollicking into loud hysterics of laughter.
________________________________________
Grand were the tales around the long dining hall that night. Explorers, warriors, and commandos from all over the wilds of Tennessee were assembled four hundred strong. It seemed each had a tale larger than the other, buoyant and unrestrained, enthusiastically given to hilarious fellowship. Their manner and clothing were rough, men who have passed a lifetime exploring southern wilds have much to say, and it is all worth hearing. So the feast was prolonged. And indeed, before the gathering broke up, plastic gallon buckets of beer, as well as candles, had to be renewed. Lanterns swung from the black rafters of the ceiling, and piles of half-eaten foods stood in flippant rows down the center of each table, showing that men, not good barmaids, had prepared the banquet. Stuck in iron brackets against the walls were the pine torches. They had been dipped in some resinous mixture and now flamed brightly with the smell of incense. Tables lined the four walls of the hall and ran in the form of a cross at the middle of the room. Backless benches were on both sides of every table. At the end, chairs were placed, the seats of honor for famous commandos. Family flags were draped across windows, hanging from rafter to rafter.
As his uncle finished one of his tales to a hearty round of, “Here, here,” he leaned back and whispered, “Ah, nephew! Isn’t this fine? Is this not worth living for!”
Chase nodded, drifting into slumber, his drunken face dropping atop pile of alder-smoked salmon.
Chapter 20
It was noon before they woke at the benches where they had been sitting. Fiddles and flutes were striking up again in different parts of the hall, the backbone rhythms of simple ballads, smacking of old delights. Folks were laughing, some were just stirring, and others still were beating time to the rasp of the fiddles. Last night, men had risen and danced wild jigs, or deftly executed some intricate step, and uproarious applause greeted every performer. The hall had throbbed with confused sounds until the din deadened his faculties. But now, that deafening tumult had subsided to dizzy little ditties here and there, and the lights swam painfully through his skull.
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