The Last Pilgrims

by Michael Bunker

  “He is a spy, sent here to infiltrate us!” David exclaimed, pulling on the sleeve of his father.

  “Let’s ask him. If he is as smart as he appears to be, he will not lie to us, given the implications I outlined for him,” Jonathan retorted calmly. “Are you a spy, sir? Are you here to infiltrate our peaceful people? What did you hope to learn?”

  The assassin was clearly nervous, but not to the extent that would be expected under the circumstances. It seemed to Jonathan that all of his actions had led their captive to this moment. He knew what he was doing. He was a short man, but athletic and strong. His black curly hair was in stark and ironic contrast to the very short, almost military hairstyle of the pacifistic Vallensian men. All of the men, both militia and Vallensian, wore beards. The time when men spent hours grooming and shaving their faces and bodies had long passed. He was young, probably a middling like David, who was born five years before the collapse; and the Assassin had obviously been trained in military tactics, probably in some Aztlani school. His voice was steady as he addressed Jonathan. “I am not a spy, but I have been trained as an assassin. I did miss on purpose, and I did use the Aztlani arrow intentionally to signal that purpose to you, sir. My target, at least by orders given to me by my superiors in El Paso, was the post rider and not yourself. The Duke, and the King for that matter, would never assassinate you, Mr. Wall, at least not based on the current situation. You are as safe against Aztlani violence as any man could be. The Duke ordered that the post rider be killed, and preferably in your presence. Your letter was never to reach the King of the South States.”

  The fact that the Duke, over 500 miles away in El Paso, knew of his letter disturbed him not a little, but it was not time to go on a mole hunt.

  “You were to kill the post rider, but it is evident that you missed on purpose.” Jonathan asked.

  “I did”

  “Why is that?”

  “To warn you, sir,” the assassin replied, his eyes staring intently at the Vallensian leader.

  “To warn me of what?”

  “Of war, sir.”

  As the word slipped out of his mouth, a blood-curdling scream froze everyone in the room. The tension had been so thick that it had the men—Vallensian and non-Vallensian alike—hanging on every word. The scream came from the throat of one of the Vallensian men, a farmer, and seemed to paralyze all who were present, including Phillip’s guards, which seemed to be its intent. As the man moved forward, he brought forth a dagger that had been hidden in his belt, covered by his Vallensian vest. In a split second, he struck the bound assassin.

  Almost instantaneously, the sword of Phillip the Ghost flew from its sheath, the finely honed blade slicing soundlessly through the neck of the farmer Ronald Getz. Getz fell to the floor, bleeding profusely from the gaping wound in his throat. He bled out in seconds.

  Jonathan, who had barely had time to flinch, stared at the still twitching Vallensian farmer whose blood soaked into the plank floor. His glance then followed slowly upward until it settled on the Aztlani assassin. The farmer’s dagger had missed its mark and the hilt of the knife stuck out of the man’s shoulder. He was clearly in pain, and appeared shocked, gasping for air, as Vallensian men and Phillip’s soldiers alike rushed to him.

  The eyes of Jonathan the Pastor and Phillip the warrior met as blood dripped from the tip of the sword of the Ghost.

  Chapter 2 - Gareth

  Gareth stirred in his large Vallensian bed. It was an unattractive but comfortable one, consisting of a hand-stuffed mattress of rough woven cotton, amply filled with goose down, and possibly cotton, wool, or whatever else was soft and near at hand. The bed frame was made of tall, gnarled, hand-hewn mesquite posts, serviceably fitted together with oaken pegs. The bed stood quite high off the ground to take advantage of any cool breeze that might flow in through the windows. Handmade mosquito netting hung over the posts at the head of the bed, ready to be draped over all four posts at night, when the windows were all opened to let in the June night air. The mattress rested on ropes drawn very tightly through holes drilled through the frame. Overall, it was a nice bed, Gareth thought.

  The heat was constant, but bearable. Jonathan Wall had designed his house to remain as cool as possible throughout the summer. This part of the house was built mostly below ground level, with only 3 or 4 feet extending above the ground where windows brought in breezes and carried out the heat. In portions of the house—according to Wally the cook—underground “pipes” hundreds of feet long brought in cool air, just like air-conditioning, only without any electrical power. Even in blistering heat, the Wall house remained quite comfortable. Still, for the 25-year-old Gareth, raised at nearly 7,000 feet in the mountains of Aztlan, terms like ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ were certainly relative.

  Outside the window, the ground fell sharply and he could see that the fields on the other side of the drive were ripe for harvest. He watched as the wind made waves in the golden wheat that flowed on for several thousand yards before crashing uneventfully into a pecan orchard. The sky was as blue as any he had ever seen, even in the clear air of the mountains, and unspotted by any clouds whatsoever.

  A sharp pain shot through his body as he tried to twist his torso so he could get a better look out of the window. The wound to his shoulder was healing slowly, but he knew that it would take time before the pain subsided. The injury had been severe, but non-lethal. The infection that set in after only a day in custody was what had nearly killed him.

  Jonathan and his family attacked Gareth’s infection very aggressively, using dozens of anti-bacterial and anti-viral herbal remedies, including large doses of fresh, spicy garlic, ginger, goldenseal, echinacea, sage, peppermint, thyme, cayenne, and aloe.

  The most effective cure, though, to his delight, was copious amounts of beer brewed according to the most ancient traditions. Wally informed him that beer, when brewed naturally—according to the recipes used by the ancient Nubians, Hebrews, and Egyptians—created tetracycline in the human body—a powerful broad-spectrum antibiotic. This fact was discovered in the last decade of the 20th century when archeologists and scientists detected tetracycline in the bones of mummies dating back 3,000 years, and concluded after much investigation that the tetracycline was a byproduct of natural beer production. Subsequently, many historians and scientists concluded that naturally fermented beer was likely responsible for halting many of the plagues that devastated Europe during and after the Middle Ages.

  It seems that when Europeans stopped drinking the infected water from filthy rivers, which were infested with deadly bacteria, and started drinking naturally fermented beer, the plagues were stayed and the populations of Europe stopped decreasing. Even babies and children were given beer instead of water and their mortality rates plummeted. In this way, beer had likely saved the world. As for Gareth—he was mainly just glad that beer had saved him. Jonathan had promised him that after he had recuperated sufficiently, if it were possible, he would show him how beer was brewed at the Wall’s ranch.

  Gareth had been brought to the Wall homestead after the farmer—actually an Aztlani spy named Ronald Getz—had attacked him in the pub. Getz’s bloody death during an attempt to stop him from reporting the pending attack on the Vallenses, had shocked the community, and it was still the main topic of conversation among the Vallensian people.

  He was still not sure exactly where he stood among these plain people, but he was glad to be alive, and to be able to move forward with his personal mission.

  “Good afternoon, Assassin,” Phillip greeted him jokingly.

  When exactly Phillip had entered the room, Gareth could not say. I hate it when he does that!

  “Peace be unto you, Ghost,” Gareth responded, showing exaggerated irritation with Phillip’s manner of entry by spitting out the word ‘ghost’ with emphatic, but almost playful derision. He knew that Phillip hated the name ‘ghost’ as much as he himself hated being called ‘assassin’.

  “One day, perhaps when you
deign to get out of your invalid’s bed, you and I can work out our nicknames in the yard, with swords, like peaceful gentlemen,” Phillip retorted, smiling.

  “I would never fight you, Phillip. I’m told that you never lose a fight, you can walk between the raindrops, you never leave footprints, and you cannot be killed. Only a fool would engage in swordplay with a spectre.”

  “I’m afraid,” Phillip said, rolling his eyes, “that both my prowess and my constitution are highly exaggerated.”

  “They say the infection got into my blood, which is why my recovery has been a bit delayed,” Gareth changed the subject, “but I can tell you that there are worse places and worse ways to spend a summer. The Vallensian peasant food is fabulous, and the beer mugs are bottomless. Who would have known? I’ve gained twenty pounds while almost dying of an infection from a knife wound.”

  “A scratch, really—nothing to cause a grown man to spend a week in bed,” Phillip replied.

  The militia leader was obviously enjoying himself, so he continued. “I’ve had at least two dozen such nicks and I cannot recall a single one that even made me sleepy. You are a strong young man; you should have bounced back in no time at all.”

  “Well, Ghost, I am clearly not the man you are, but then, neither are you. Still, they do tell me that I’m healing and getting stronger.”

  Gareth prodded the knife wound gingerly, testing the area with his fingertips. He noticed that, almost imperceptibly, Phillip showed some satisfaction that he was improving. He sensed from his many conversations with the militia leader over the past week that Phillip was somehow ashamed or angry with himself that he had not moved fast enough to prevent his prisoner from being harmed while in his custody. Maybe that was why he visited so often.

  “If Vallensian hospitality and food have anything to do with it, I’ll be fit enough for hanging in no time.”

  “Sadly, they’d not have you hang. They’d have you as a pet dog, curled up on the hearth, nibbling at their dainties from a bowl. They are pacifists, remember.” Phillip stroked his long, graying beard, looking out of the window as if in deep thought. “As for me, Assassin, I cannot decide whether I would rather see you hanged, run through with a sword, impaled on a pike, or made into a eunuch so you can fetch me beer and apples.”

  “I can tell that you are growing fond of me, Ghost.”

  “Maybe I am. Now, enough fun. We need to talk.”

  Gareth had become accustomed to daily sparring with Phillip. Sometimes Phillip would spend most of the day with him. Still, he knew that the battle of tongues was just a prelude and that the militia leader inevitably wanted more intelligence from him about Aztlan, El Paso, and the Duke.All light jesting aside, he knew that his future would be decided as soon as he was well enough to walk. There were those who still did not believe him. They didn’t believe that he wasn’t a spy, and that he had actually come to warn them and encourage them to defend themselves. Some folk saw his manner and means of arrival as suspicious, and he really couldn’t blame them for those suspicions. They rightfully wondered why he had not just walked up and announced that he was a traitor to Aztlan, and that he had critical information for the militia and Jonathan.

  It is true, Gareth thought, that any number of things in his seemingly complicated plan could have ruined his opportunity to warn Jonathan and the Vallenses. He could have been captured or killed by the Ghost’s militia as he made his way toward Bethany. Confident in his abilities and training, Gareth did not see this as likely as some apparently did.

  Some Vallensian folks said that his stunt with the arrow could easily have been missed altogether or mistaken by Jonathan. If Jonathan had not decoded the message in his mind fast enough; if the pastor had not indicated to Phillip that the post rider was the real target; if Phillip had not noticed that the arrow was from an Aztlani quiver, then the militiamen men might have immediately killed him when they caught up with him as he waited for them by the creek. True, Gareth thought. Any of those things might have happened. But what alternative was there? His goal was not just to warn the enemies of Aztlan. His goal was not even to be believed by Jonathan. His goal was to be trusted, because that was the only way that he was ever going to accomplish his own private objectives.

  To ride up to the Ghost’s militiamen and claim to be a traitor to Aztlan would just as likely have gotten him killed. In Aztlan, it was said that Phillip’s ghostmen generally shot first and asked questions later. The militias were suspicious and paranoid, and—according to some—that is what keeps them alive. The militia might trust information that they extracted from a captured enemy, but they were very unlikely to trust information freely given by an Aztlani traitor.

  So… what if he had snuck through the militia lines, and had gotten to Jonathan without being intercepted? That certainly seemed like the most obvious option; in fact, it was the one he had pondered the most, as he rode over the many hundreds of miles eastward from El Paso. Maybe Jonathan and the Vallensian people would have believed him. They might even have heeded his warning, but they would never trust him, and he would never have gotten to meet Phillip at all. Aztlani refugees didn’t get an audience with the Ghost merely by calling for it.

  Certainly, he never would have gotten Jonathan and Phillip in the same room, which had been the real coup, considering his goal. Phillip would have reckoned it as a trap. Many Aztlani refugees had found a home among the Vallenses, but building trust with the plain people of Central Texas took time. His assailant, the spy Ronald Getz, had apparently been living and farming among them for years. The real message that Gareth needed to deliver was urgent. He didn’t have years to build up trust.

  Yes, his plan was risky, and probably full of holes. At best, there was a 40% probability that it would come off right. Still, it was worth the risk, given that he needed an opportunity to get Phillip and Jonathan together. He saw no other way to accomplish it. It was believed in El Paso and in New Rome that Phillip and Jonathan had not spoken in years—in fact, the Aztlanis wanted the two rebels to stay estranged more than they wanted just about anything else. Above all, then, Gareth wanted to rekindle the relationship between Phillip and Jonathan.

  Even if he had failed, Phillip would have eventually learned of the Duke’s plan, but weeks and maybe months of preparation time would have been lost.

  Yes. It had been worth the risk. Jonathan was a good man with a spectacularly sharp and curious mind and he had pierced through the cloud of confusion and correctly interpreted Gareth’s intentions. Phillip, though he was still cautious, had, at the very least, determined that—regardless of his intentions—an assassin was valuable for gathering new intelligence. Exposing Getz as the spy had been a painful bonus that had earned Gareth a reprieve in Phillip’s eyes—at least for now.

  “Quit staring out of the window you assassin dog,” Phillip snarled, “I need answers from you!”

  “What could you possibly still want to know?”

  “For a good part of the last week, you’ve been rather delirious from your feigned infection. I’ve humored you because you are weak and obviously addle-brained. But now I want to go back over some things again.”

  He sighed deeply, rolling his eyes in exasperation. The game continued. Phillip mixed up his questions, changing directions randomly, asking about various facts of which he already had perfect knowledge, trying to trip him up, or catch him in a lie. The interview was peppered with well-planned diversionary questions, often followed by long stares and a nodding head designed to keep Gareth talking.

  “We’ve had a rolling guerilla war with the Duke for many years. Why has he decided to engage in a full-scale attack now?” Phillip asked.

  “He is being pressured by the King who has some intentions on moving his borders eastward but cannot do so as long as a huge chunk of Central and Eastern Texas remain either ungovernable because of militia activity, or in the hands of the Vallenses. The Vallensian people reject his authority along with that of the Church. There are even rumors that
the Vallensian colonies in the Piney Woods have signed a treaty with the Duke of Jackson in the former Mississippi.”

  Phillip pulled up a wooden chair and sat next to Gareth’s bed. “I guess I just don’t see much here that is new or surprising. Why the change? What is the plan?”

  “You have to understand that the King has both a dream and a nightmare. If you understand those two things, the rest of this is easy,” Gareth said.

  “Then talk to me; explain those royal dreams and nightmares.”

  He rose up in the bed, propping himself up against the headboard. The sounds of cicadas, katydids, and birds drifted in on a warm breeze. He reached down and took a long drink from his ever-present mug of beer.

  “The dream is simple,” he said, wiping foam from his mustache, “the Duke of Louisiana is a very religious man, and he has fully embraced the faith of New Rome. He is secretly allied with Aztlan, even though he is nominally under the authority of the King of the South States. He is also very ambitious.

  “Aztlan and Louisiana have you in what could become a very effective vice, and they intend to squeeze at any moment. The King dreams of uniting the entire South of what was once the United States into a single Southern Kingdom.”

  Phillip shook his head. “Considering that there are tens of thousands of us who will never submit to New Rome, it is a problematic dream at best. In addition, we could rely on the support of the King of the South States, who is friendly to, or at least tolerant of, our religion and overtly hostile to the beast that is Aztlan,” Phillip said.