Deathlands 071: Ritual Chill

by James Axler

  The medicine man paused, unwilling to go further. If this man was truly who he said, and not some clever ruse by the insane one to try to save himself—a lurking doubt of that McPhee still harbored in the depths of his mind—then he would know of the old ways.

  McPhee wasn’t to be disappointed. The stranger looked at him with a faraway glint in his eyes.

  “Aye, I know that. Back in the day, before our religious beliefs saw us driven from our own shores to find solace and a new life out here, we used to worship the Almighty, but we also knew that he gave us Mother Earth, and the seasons had their own demands. Sometimes we would have bad harvests that decimated the lands, blight that meant no food for our children. We would pray to the Lord, but we also knew that what we take from the land we must give back. To insure that the land would give us food, we had to feed it by returning one of our own to it. Their blood, the ashes of their flesh and bones, these are the things that would nourish the spirit of the earth and encourage it to give forth to us once more.”

  “Ashes?” McPhee asked, silencing his chief with a gesture as Thompson was about to speak.

  “Aye, ashes. Surely ye must know, must ye not, that to sacrifice in the way ye intended is not the proscribed manner of the old ways?”

  McPhee agreed. “That’s something we can’t do here. The rituals had to be adapted from their old form…” He trailed off expectantly.

  Catching his drift, the stranger smiled. “I see. Ye do not trust me entirely, and think that I may be in some manner shamming for ye.” He nodded slowly to himself. “Aye, aye, I can see where this idea comes from. It must be as hard for ye to accept as it is for myself. But if I have to tell ye this to prove myself, then tell ye I must…

  “In the old lands, we would build a giant made of wicker. The sacrifice would be led willingly to it in a procession, and there—along with animals, birds and whatever pitiful crops had been yielded—he would be offered up, put into the wicker giant and set afire. He—for it was always a man, which may be, if I may be so bold, where ye have been going wrong—would go willingly, with no drugs to quell him. He would be a warrior, offering himself in the battle against nature, and he would go with pride and honor that so befits going to die in battle.”

  McPhee nodded gravely. This fitted in with old legends to which only the shamen of the tribe were privy. There was no way that the mad old man would have known any of this.

  The stranger could see that the medicine man was being won over, and so decided to share some more history with which the shaman may be familiar.

  “So ye know about how we came to be here?” he asked.

  “You told us outside,” the medicine man remarked blandly. Thompson, eyes going from one to the other, decided to stay quiet and let the two men battle this one out between them: the medicine man had been passed on stories about the tribe and its origins that were purely the preserve of the shaman. If this was genuine, then he would know. For his own part, Thompson was convinced. This was something big.

  “Ah, that was just how we came to be here, in this place,” the stranger replied easily. “There was more to it than that. Ye will be knowing, I presume, that we came from the old lands of Hibernia—what they used to call Scotland and Ireland, though what they call them now I have no idea. Perhaps they no longer even exist after these things ye speak of. We lived in hard, cold lands, where the living was difficult. Up to the north of our country, some of us lived on islands that were barely big enough to support our communities. We were tied together by our belief in God and the way in which we worshiped the Almighty. By the sounds of things, ye don’t have to worry about such things now as the idea of a God is an alien one in your world; but back then, people would have wars not over whether or not they believed in God, but in how they worshiped him. Who was right and who was wrong. It all seems a little pointless now, but back then it seemed important to be able to worship how ye wished. So we set off for what was called the new world, where we were told that life would be easier, there would be better places to farm and we would be free to worship how we wished. That was how it had been for over a hundred years before.

  “All lies, of course. It’s true that there were less people to fight over ways of worship, and it’s true that there was better land to farm if ye wished, but that was because it was a bigger land and the people were farther apart. So was the good land. And there were no maps to help ye find your way around. Ye just started out in any direction and kept going until ye found somewhere, which is how we ended up trying to trap furs in a land that was harder and colder than the one we had left. But we had not the money or the wagons to go back, so we had to stay and try to make the best we could of things. Which is how come ye found us, and how I came to see the light and so…” He finished with a shrug.

  “You could have picked that up from things we told you about when you were first here,” the medicine man said in a deceptively offhand manner. “Maybe if there were details that—”

  “Ye still doubt me?” the stranger interrupted. “After the things I’ve said? I suppose your suspicion does ye credit. It would be a great shame if ye were willing to hand over the running of your wee town so easily.”

  “What?” Thompson sat forward, alarm obvious in his voice, even if he managed to keep it from his face.

  The stranger grinned. “Aye, ye heard right enough. D’ye think that I was sent here by the Almighty just to sit around and do nothing? If I have any task at all, it’s to save ye from the mess ye’ve gotten yourselves into. But I’ll prove who I am. I came from a place known as Fairbanks, which was on the mouth of the river Clyde back in Scotland. We were on the same river as the city of Glasgow, but we had none of their wealth and only a fraction of their size. Years of famine in the 1860s led to me and many others emigrating with our families. We took the Pride Of Liverpool from that very port in July 1868, having traveled down over a period of weeks by foot, saving money by walking and doing odd jobs along the way to earn extra silver. Not that we were welcomed anywhere, only by a few who knew what Christian charity truly was. We were at sea for nearly three months and landed in Boston. From there we made our way across and up the Americas, somehow losing ourselves in the vast spaces, wandering ever farther north as well as west, before hitting these lands over a year later, in November 1869. It was during that month that ye found us, and that I saw the light. Ye can, of course, verify this. We were not the sort of people who didn’t keep records.”

  The stranger looked from one to the other. Thompson was nervous. Like nearly all the tribe, he couldn’t read, even though he had maps and books that had been passed down through the generations, surviving skydark. McPhee, on the other hand, was able to read. It was something that was handed down from shaman to shaman. It was a skill that he hadn’t had to use for a long time, but he was ready for the challenge. He indicated this with an inclination of his head.

  Thompson reluctantly rose and walked over to the far side of the room, where an iron chest lay against the wall, covered with an old, supple hide. It was the only piece of furniture in the room that seemed to have no purpose. However, it held the key to the stranger’s assertions.

  Thompson uncovered the chest, unlocked it with a key kept around his neck on an old chain, and extracted from its depths a crumbling book. With infinite care he took this across to the table, and laid it down, inviting the shaman to open it.

  With the stranger looking over his shoulder, McPhee delicately turned the crumbling pages until he came to the relevant year. He was rusty, not having had to use the skill for some years, but with a hesitating voice he read out the entry in the history of the tribe relating to the time that the Scots first came among them.

  It was as the stranger had said. The archivist who had started the record had faithfully transcribed the detail of how the Scots and Irish came to be traveling through the wastes of icy lands and how they had stumbled upon the Inuit. Some of the initial party had passed away, the cold and exposure being too much for them
. But those who had survived had left the Inuit temporarily, fetching their families to join the tribe and begin a joint quest for survival that had seen them settle into a hunting and trapping existence that remained largely undisturbed until the coming of the nukecaust.

  Thompson watched the shaman carefully as he read, then their eyes met as the medicine man gently closed the tome.

  “I have no more doubts,” McPhee said softly. “The mad old man could not have seen the book. And yet everything he says now is true. I believe that the Almighty has sent him to guide us.”

  “Now isn’t that just that I’ve been trying to tell ye?” the stranger said heartily, clapping both men on their backs. “And if we’re trying to get somewhere, the first thing we need to do is forget about sacrificing the people I came here with.”

  “Why?” Thompson asked, failing to keep the suspicion from his voice.

  “Because they have two women, and women are not good sacrifices. They must be men, unafraid to go to their deaths. And I traveled with them in this body, e’en though it was not me who walked their paths. I owe them that much, for in loyalty given is loyalty returned in times of trouble.

  “Furthermore, we shall need their skills to help us find greater sacrifices. Tell me, is there still a big town near here?”

  “Ank Ridge lies away on the coast, if that’s what you mean,” Thompson replied.

  “Fairbanks is nearer,” the medicine man cut in. “Not a big ville these days, but it must have been when you were first here—and it must have been named for your home ville.”

  “That’s the one I mean,” the stranger replied. “No doubt it has changed much over the years, but if they are of the old stock, then they will know something of the old ways like yourselves. We take them by force, and they will understand the nobility of their demise.”

  McPhee looked at Thompson. Fairbanks was the next substantial stop on the trading trail to Ank Ridge and the inhabitants outnumbered the Inuit by at least two to one. It would be a hard firefight if they were to go. The stranger caught their mood and laughed.

  “Come now, ye are not the sort to be that easily deterred, are ye? We shall fight them and win. I’ve never lost a battle yet, and I don’t intend to start. After all, I’m here, am I not? Look—” He took the book and flipped the crumbling pages to the point where McPhee had been reading. “There I am,” he said triumphantly, pointing at a list of those lost during the hunting trip that first crossed the Inuit settlement. “It says I died, but yet I am risen and still here…it’ll take more than a few men with rifles to kill Joseph Jordan a second time around!”

  * * *

  Chapter Thirteen

  By the time that darkness had descended on the day they were supposed to buy the farm, the companions were actually alive, well, and returning to their former selves. Although still far from a hundred percent physically—strains and contusions still making muscles ache when moved too swiftly, stretched too far—the herbs that had clouded their senses were now beginning to clear from their systems, and they found themselves able to think more quickly and clearly, and to react with greater clarity to what was said and done around them.

  Not that, in truth, this amounted to much. For several hours, measured only by the lazy manner in which the sun made its way across the relatively clear chem-tinged sky, they had little to do except talk idly among themselves and to try to clear the confusion that clouded their minds and the situation in which they now found themselves.

  But without full possession of the facts, they could do little about either, giving up when discussion took them full circle time and time again, always arriving at the same point, from which they would then, in confusion, have to depart.

  The salient facts were these: they were supposed to have been sacrificed; they had been saved by Doc; Doc appeared to have a new personality, either assumed or the result of insanity.

  That was all that they knew for sure, and it was very little from which to attempt a construction of the truth. Their hut was guarded by a lone Inuit with a Sharps rifle who stood at the gap between the fencing that delineated their prison. Beyond him, they could see that the sacrificial and ritual area in the center of the ville was being deconstructed, torn down and left as it had been a few days before, as little more than an empty space. The Inuit moved swiftly and with a sense of purpose. Their deportment suggested that the sudden cessation of the sacrifice hadn’t downcast them in any way. To the contrary, it seemed that the events that had led to the cancellation of the sacrifice had imbued them with a new sense of hope and purpose.

  What that could be was a complete mystery to the five inhabitants of the guarded hut. The only thing they could conclude with any sense of certainty was that this was, in some way, down to Doc Tanner…or to what Doc now was.

  For a long time the old man hadn’t been visible. After disappearing into the chief’s hut with Thompson and McPhee, there had been plenty of activity going on in the ville, but no sign of the three men. Although they had still been partially immobilized by the effects of the herbs they had ingested, the companions had been just about aware enough to mount a watch at the window, so that at least they would have some idea of what was going on. J.B. had drawn the short straw and had spent most of his time glued to the filthy pane, trying to link up what was occurring from seemingly random events.

  At one point he saw an Inuit rush to one of the huts near those they had vacated, entering and then emerging again quickly, bearing what looked like clothing across to the chief’s hut. He disappeared inside, then emerged a few moments later empty-handed. That one wasn’t too difficult to work out. Doc, in his new persona, had demanded his clothes. What’s more, he’d received them on the double, which suggested that—whatever he was saying—it was more than impressive to Thompson and McPhee.

  As nothing else happened for some while, J.B. had gazed down at his own naked body, covered haphazardly by the skins and furs, idly wondering in his still partially drugged state if Doc would be able to get them back their own clothes. Glancing across to the others, huddling by the stove, he was sure they felt the same way.

  The Armorer had iron determination and he returned his attention to the outside world. He would make sense of what was happening out there, even if it took forever.

  It seemed that long, but in truth it was only an hour or two before he saw the door of the chief’s hut open and the two Inuit emerge, with Doc in the vanguard. Except that it wasn’t Doc. At first appearances, the old man was unchanged, especially now that he was in his usual clothes, with the long fur he had taken from the redoubt stores flapping around him as he gesticulated across the width of the ville and out to the wastelands beyond the slopes. All the while, he was talking. J.B. could see his lips move, although not well enough to pick out anything he said. Certainly, sound didn’t carry across the ville well enough, and the thickness of the glass and the wood surrounding it made any attempts to try to define what was being said nothing more than futile.

  At first appearances… But there were things that seemed strange and set off alarms in the Armorer’s rapidly clearing mind.

  Doc had weapons. Certainly he carried the silver lion’s-head sword stick, with which he gestured broadly. Not, however, with his usual Tanner-like flourish. And J.B. was sure that he got a glimpse of the LeMat stuffed into Doc’s waistband when his coat swirled around him during one particularly broad gesture. Again, a gesture very unlike Doc; as was the location of the LeMat.

  Why had he been given back his weapons, seemingly without any qualms? What kind of bargain had he struck?

  The other thing, which was a little less definable but—perhaps because of this—all the more eerie, was that Doc didn’t seem to be moving like Doc. It was the bearing of the man, the way he held himself and the way he moved. The gestures and posture were so unlike Doc that it seemed strange to be watching him strike them. It was as though someone who bore a resemblance to Doc had been dressed up in the same clothes and made up to look exac
tly like him, but hadn’t been briefed in how the man moved or acted, so that to those who knew Doc only too well—such as the watching J.B.—the result was strangely disorienting. It looked like Doc, but yet acted like someone else, creating a bizarre impression.

  The gesturing figure that looked like Doc pointed over at the hut where the companions were being kept—almost as though he could read the Armorer’s thoughts and wanted to let him know this—and made some emphatic arm movements. What his meaning was, J.B. could only guess, but he figured it meant that they would soon be brought back into the fray, in one way or another.

  J.B. withdrew from the window.

  “What is it, John?” Mildred asked. The Armorer was glad to hear that her voice was returning to its old, sharp tones, the muzziness of the drugs now clearing. He wanted her to be sharp, because he wasn’t too sure of how any of them would take what he was about to run by them. As succinctly as possible, he reviewed what had happened while he was at the window, and apprehensively relayed to them his impressions of the “new” Doc.

  “So he look you and you draw back?” Jak asked when J.B. had finished. When the Armorer nodded, Jak continued. “Maybe he not know you looking, but got hunter instinct for being watched and just turn.”

  “Which doesn’t sound like Doc, right?” J.B. questioned.

  Jak nodded. “Whatever else, Doc no hunter.”

  “So this new personality that has overtaken him has that kind of instinct,” Mildred mused. “I don’t like the sound of that. If he was making a new him to protect the old Doc, then it’s not likely to have traits that he never had before.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re coming ’round to the idea of him being taken over by someone else,” Krysty said, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.