“Oh, yes. Your father. A good man. Yes, a good man. Well, maybe he was your father.”
Jonnie suddenly looked a little dangerous. He was standing there at ease, but he was wearing the skin of a puma that he himself had slain and he had his kill-club on a wrist thong. The club seemed to jump of its own volition into his palm.
Parson Staffor abruptly sat up. “Now don't take it wrong, Jonnie. It 's just that things are a little mixed up these days, you know. Your mother had three husbands one time and another, and there being no real ceremonies these days-'
“You better get up,” said Jonnie.
Staffor clawed for the corner of an ancient, scarred bench and pulled himself upright. He began to tie the deerskin he usually wore, and obviously had worn far too long, using a frayed wovengrass rope. “My memory isn't so good these days, Jonnie. One time I could remember all kinds of things. Legends, marriage ceremonies, hunt blessings, even family quarrels.” He was looking around for some fresh locoweed.
“When the sun is straight up,” said Jonnie, “you're going to call the whole village together at the old graveyard and you're-”
“Who's going to dig the hole? There has to be a hole, you know, for a proper funeral.”
"I'll dig the hole,” said Jonnie.
Staffor had found some fresh locoweed and began to gum it. He looked relieved. “Well, I’m glad the town doesn't have to dig the hole. Horns, but this stuff is green. You said meat. Who is going to kill and cook it?”
“That's all taken care of.”
Staffor nodded and then abruptly saw more work ahead. “Who's going to assemble the people?” "I’ll ask Pattie to tell them.”
Staffor looked at him reproachfully. “Then there's nothing for me to do until straight-up. Why'd you wake me up?” He threw himself back down on the dirty grass and sourly watched Jonnie walk out of the ancient room.
Chapter 4
Jonnie Goodboy sat with his knees to his chest, his arms wrapped around them, staring into the remains of the dance fire.
Chrissie lay on her stomach beside him, idly shredding the seeds from a large sunflower between her very white teeth. She looked up at Jonnie from time to time, a little puzzled but not unduly so. She had never seen him cry before, even as a little boy. She knew he had loved his father. But Jonnie was usually so tall and grand, even cold. Could it be that under that goodlooking, almost pretty face he felt emotions for her, too? It was something to speculate about. She knew very well how she felt about Jonnie. If anything happened to Jonnie she would throw herself off the cliff where they sometimes herded wild cattle to their death, an easy way to kill them. Life without Jonnie Goodboy would not only not be worth living, it would be completely unbearable. Maybe Jonnie did care about her. The tears showed something.
Pattie had no such troubles. She had not only stuffed herself with roast meat, she had also stuffed herself with the wild strawberries that had been served by the heap. And then during the dancing she had run and run and run with two or three little boys and then come back to eat some more. She was sleeping so heavily she looked like a mound of rags.
Jonnie blamed himself. He had tried to tell his father, not just when he was seven, but many times thereafter, that something was wrong with this place. Places were not all the same. Jonnie had been– was– sure of it. Why did the pigs and horses and cattle in the plains have little pigs and horses and cattle so numerously and so continuously? Yes, and why were there more and more wolves and coyotes and pumas and birds up in the higher ranges, and fewer and fewer men?
The villagers had been quite happy with the funeral, especially since Jonnie and a couple of others had done most of the work.
Jonnie had not been happy with it at all. It wasn't good enough.
They had gathered at sun straight-up on the knoll above the village where some said the graveyard had been. The markers were all gone. Maybe it had been a graveyard. When Jonnie had toiled– naked so as not to stain his puma-skin cloak and doe britches-in the morning sun, he had dug into something that might have been an old grave. At least there was a bone in it that could have been human.
The villagers had come slouching around and there had been a wait while Pattie tore back to the courthouse and awakened Parson Staffor again. Only twenty-five of them had assembled. The others had said they were tired and asked for any food to be brought back to them.
Then there had been an argument about the shape of the grave hole. Jonnie had dug it oblong so the body could lie level, but when Staffor arrived he said it should be straight up and down, that graves were dug straight up and down because you could get more bodies into a graveyard that way. When Jonnie pointed out that there weren't any burials these days and there was plenty of room, Staffor told him off in front of everybody.
“You're too smart,” Staffor rapped at him. “When we had even half a council they used to remark on it. Every few council meetings, some prank of yours would come up. You'd ridden to the high ridge and killed a goat. You'd gone clear up Highpeak and gotten lost in a blizzard and found your way back, you said, by following the downslope of the ground. Too smart. Who else trained six horses? Everybody knows graves should be straight up and down.”
But they had buried his father lying flat anyway, because nobody else had wanted to do more digging and the sun was now past straight-up and it was getting hot.
Jonnie hadn't dared suggest what he really wanted to do. There would have been a riot.
He had wanted to put his father in the cave of the ancient gods, far up at the top of the dark canyon, a savage cleft in the side of the tallest peak. When he was twelve he had strayed up there, more trying out a pony than going someplace. But the way up the canyon had been very flat and inviting. He had gone for miles and miles and miles and then he had been abruptly halted by giant, vertical doors. They were of some kind of metal, heavily corroded. One couldn't see them from above or even from the canyon rims. They were absolutely huge. They went up and up.
He had gotten off his pony and climbed over the rubble in front of them and simply stared. He had walked all around in circles and then come back and stared some more.
After a while he had gotten brave and had walked up to them. But push as he might, he couldn't open them. Then he had found a latch-like bar and he had pried it off and it fell, just missing his foot. Rusted but very heavy.
He had braced his shoulder against one door, sure that it was a door, and pushed and pushed. But his twelve-year-old shoulder and weight hadn't had much effect on it.
Then he had taken the fallen bar and begun to pry it into the slight crack, and after a few minutes he had gotten a purchase with it.
There had been a horrible groaning sound that almost stood his hair up straight, and he dropped the bar and ran for the pony.
Once he was mounted, his fright ebbed a bit. Maybe it was just a sound caused by the rusted hinges. Maybe it wasn't a monster.
He had gone back and worked some more with the bar, and sure enough it was just the door groaning on the pins that held it.
An awful smell had come out of the cracked opening. The smell itself had made him afraid. A little light had been let in and he peeked inside.
A long flight of steps led down, remarkably even steps. And they would have been very neat, except...
The steps were covered by skeletons tumbled every which way. Skeletons in strips of clothing– clothing like he had never seen.
Bits of metal, some bright, had fallen among the bones.
He ran away again, but this time not as far as the pony. He had suddenly realized he would need proof.
Bracing his nerve to a pitch he had seldom before achieved, he went back and gingerly stepped inside and picked up one of the bits of metal. It had a pretty design, a bird with flying wings holding arrows in its claws, quite bright.
His heart almost stopped when the skull he had removed it from tipped sideways and went to powder before his very gaze, as though it reproached him with its gaping eyes for h
is robbery and then expired.
The pony had been in a white-coat lather when he pulled up in the village.
For two whole days he said nothing, wondering how best to ask his questions. Previous experience in asking questions had made him cautious.
Mayor Duncan was still alive at that time. Jonnie had sat quietly beside him until the big man was properly stuffed with venison and was quiet except for a few belches.
“That big tomb,” Jonnie had said abruptly.
“What big what?” Mayor Duncan had snorted.
“The place up the dark canyon where they used to put the dead people.” “What place?”
Jonnie had taken out the bright bird badge and shown it to Mayor Duncan.
Duncan had looked at it, twisting his head this way and that, twisting the badge this way and that.
Parson Staffor, brighter in those days, had reached across the fire in a sudden swoop and grabbed the badge.
The ensuing interrogation had not been pleasant: about young boys who went to places that were forbidden and got everybody in trouble and didn't listen at conferences where they had to learn legends and were too smart anyway.
Mayor Duncan, however, had himself been curious and finally pinned Parson Staffor into recounting an applicable legend.
“A tomb of the old gods,” the parson had finally said. “Nobody has been there in living memory– small boys do not count. But it was said to exist by my great-grandfather when he was still alive– and he lived a long time. The gods used to come into these mountains and they buried the great men in huge caverns. When the lightning flashed on Highpeak, it was because the gods had come to bury a great man from over the water.
“Once there were thousands and thousands living in big villages a hundred times the size of this one. These villages were to the east, and it is said there is the remains of one straight east where thousands lived. And the place was flat except for some hills. And when a great man died there the gods brought him to the tomb of the gods.”
Parson Staffor had shaken the badge. “This was placed on the foreheads of the great when they were laid to rest in the great tomb of the gods. And that's what it is, and ancient law says that nobody is supposed to go there and everybody had better stay away from there forever– especially little boys.” And he had put the badge in his pouch, and that was the last Jonnie ever saw of it. After all, Staffor was a holy man and in charge of holy things.
Nevertheless, Jonnie thought his father should have been buried in the tomb of the gods. Jonnie had never been back there again and thought of it only when he saw lightning hit Highpeak.
But he wished he had buried his father there.
“Are you worried?” asked Chrissie. Jonnie looked down at her, his reverie broken. The dying fire wove a reddish sheen into her hair and sparked in her dark eyes.
“It’s my fault,” said Jonnie.
Chrissie smiled and shook her head. Nothing could be Jonnie's fault.
“Yes, it is,” said Jonnie. “There's something wrong with this place. My father's bones...in the last year they just crumbled like that skeleton's in the tomb of the gods.”
“The tomb of the what?” said Chrissie idly. If Jonnie wanted to talk nonsense it was all right with her. At least he was talking to her.
“I should have buried him there. He was a great man. He taught me a lot of things– how to braid grass-rope, how to wait for a puma to crouch before you stepped aside and hit him as he sprang: they can't turn in mid-air, you know. How to cut hide into strips...”
"Jonnie, you aren't guilty of anything.”
"It was a bad funeral.”
“Jonnie, it's the only funeral I remember.”
“No, it was not a good funeral. Staffor didn't preach a funeral sermon.”
“He talked. I didn't listen because I was helping gather strawberries, but I know he talked. Did he say something bad?”
“No, only it didn't apply.”
“Well, what did he say, Jonnie?"
“Oh, you know, all that stuff about god being angry with the people. Everybody knows that legend. I can quote it myself.”
“Quote it.”
Jonnie sniffed a little impatiently. But she was interested and it made him feel a little better.
"And then there came a day when god was wroth. And wearied he was of the fornicating and pleasure dallying of the people. And he did cause a wondrous cloud to come and everywhere it struck; the anger of god snuffed out the breath and breathing of ninety-nine out of a hundred men. And disaster lay upon the land and plagues and epidemics rolled and smote the unholy, and when it was done the wicked were gone and only the holy and righteous, the true children of the lord, remained upon the stark and bloodied field. But god even then was not sure and so he tested them. He sent monsters upon them to drive them to the hills and secret places, and lo the monsters hunted them and made them less and less until at last all men remaining were the only holy, the only blessed, the only sure righteous upon Earth. Hey man!'
“Oh, that one. You say it very nicely, Jonnie."
“It’s my fault,” said Jonnie morosely. “I should have made my father listen. There is something wrong with this place. I am certain that if he had listened and we moved elsewhere, he would be alive today. I feel it!” “Where else is there?”
“There's that whole great plain out there. Weeks of riding on it, I am sure. And they say man once lived in a big village out there.”
“Oh, no, Jonnie. The monsters.” "I’ve never seen a monster.”
“You've seen the shiny flashing things that sail overhead every few days.”
“Oh, those. The sun and moon sail overhead too. So do the stars. And even shooting stars.”
Chrissie was frightened suddenly. "Jonnie, you're not going to do something?”
“I am. With first light I am going to ride out and see if there really was a big village in the plains.”
Chrissie felt her heart contract. She looked up at his determined profile. It was as though she was sinking down, down into the earth, as though she lay in today's grave.
“Please, Jonnie." “No, I’m going.” “Jonnie, I’ll go with you.”
“No, you stay here.” He thought fast, something to deter her. “I may be gone for a whole year.”
Water got into her sight. “What will I do if you don't come back?”
"I'll come back.”
"Jonnie, if you don't come back in a year, I’ll come looking for you.” Jonnie frowned. He scented blackmail.
"Jonnie, if you're leaving, you see those stars up there? When they come back to the same place next year and you haven't returned, I will come looking.”
“You'd be killed out in the plains. The pigs, the wild cattle...”
“Jonnie, that is what I will do. I swear it, Jonnie.”
“You think I’d just wander off and never return?”
“That's what I will do, Jonnie. You can go. But that's what I will do.”
Chapter 5
The first dawn light was painting Highpeak rose. It was going to be a beautiful day.
Jonnie Goodboy was completing the packing of a lead horse. Windsplitter was sidling about, biting at the grass but not really eating. He had his eye on Jonnie. They were obviously going somewhere, and Windsplitter was not going to be left out.
Some wisps of smoke were coming from the breakfast fire of the Jimson family nearby. They were roasting a dog. Yesterday at the funeral feast nearly a score of dogs had gotten into an idiot fight. There had been plenty of bones and meat as well. But the pack had gotten into a fight and a big brindle had been killed. Looked like the Jimson family would have meat all day.
Jonnie was trying to keep his mind on petty details. And off Chrissie and Pattie, who were standing there watching him quietly.
Brown Limper Staffor was also there, idling about in the background. He had a clubfoot and should have been killed at birth, but he was the only child the Staffors had ever had, and Staffor was parson after all
. Maybe mayor, too, since there wasn't any now.
There was no affection whatever between Jonnie and Brown Limper. During the funeral dancing, Brown had sat on the sidelines making sneering remarks about the dancing, about the funeral, about the meat, about the strawberries. But when he had made a remark about Jonnie's father-'Maybe never had a bone in the right place,”– Jonnie had hit him a backhand cuff. Made Jonnie ashamed of himself, hitting a cripple.
Brown Limper stood crookedly, a faint blue bruise on his cheek, watching Jonnie get ready, wishes of bad luck written all over him. Two other boys of similar age– there were only five in the whole village who were in their late teens– wandered up and asked Brown what was going on. Brown shrugged.
Jonnie kept his mind carefully on his business. He was probably taking too much, but he didn't know what he'd run into. Nobody knew. In the two buckskin sacks he was roping on either side of the lead horse he had flint stones for fire, rat's nests for tinder, bundles of cut thongs, some sharp-edged rocks that were sometimes hard to find and cut indifferently well, three spare kill-clubs-one heavy enough to crush a bear's skull just in case– some warm robes that didn't stink very much, a couple of buckskins for spare clothes...
He gave a start. He hadn't realized Chrissie had come within a foot of him.
He hoped he wouldn't have to talk.
Blackmail, that's what it was– plain as possible and all bad. If she'd said she would kill herself if he didn't come back, well, one could have put that down to girl vaporings. But threatening to follow him in a year put another shadow on it entirely. It meant he would have to be cautious. He'd have to be careful not to get himself killed. It was one thing to worry about his own life; he didn't
care a snap for risk or danger. But the thought of Chrissie going down on the plains if he didn't come back made him snow-cold at the pit of his stomach. She'd be gored or mauled or eaten alive and every agonizing second of it would be Jonnie's fault. She had effectively committed him to caution and care– just what she intended.
Battlefield Earth Page 2