by Tom Reamy
Blue Eyes: “Robert Sullivan. Don’t go away from me. What am I gonna do? You know what an ignorant barbarian I am. You have to teach me about the Old Ones and about Science. We have to educate the Clans and kill the Overlords. We have to learn about the people in the bluecities. We have to put it all back together again.”
Blue Eyes (novel)
Chapter 1:
The Wizard Child Blue Eyes of the Wolf Clan scratched his nose with a dirty fingernail and yawned. He lay in a shallow gulley, his chin on his folded arms, looking over the edge through tall grass. The air was heavy and warm, honey-sweet with the aroma of new growth. The prairie was green with plump grass. Spring wild-flowers were strewn over it like a shattered rainbow. Blue Eyes wallowed in comfortable lassitude and lazily watched the encampment by the river.
The Weavers were the first in, as usual, and apparently had been there since the day before. Their wagons were drawn in a circle and positioned, because they were the first in, nearest the river and the graybeards growing in thick clumps at the water’s edge. Blue Eyes counted sixteen wagons; they had acquired a new one since the last Gathering. The small herd of horses tethered and greedily grazing nearby had increased. The number of goats in the graybeard-stalk corral seemed larger also, but Blue Eyes, a hunter of the Wolf Clan, could hardly be expected to count goats.
The Weavers seemed to be prospering.
“Sniffer shit!” Blue Eyes hissed softly and brushed an ant from his bare thigh. He scratched at the small, reddening welt. He frowned, wrinkling his totem, a blue dot within a blue circle, painted on his forehead. He licked the tip of his finger and rubbed the sting, making a lighter spot on his browned skin. He flicked two more ants from his wolfskin boot and saw the trail near his foot. He crouched in the gulley and moved a short distance, still scratching his thigh.
He found another spot that looked comfortable and, checking around a bit more carefully, lay down on his stomach. He shifted his knife and carry-pouch from under his hip, repositioned his bow and quiver of arrows, and squirmed around fitting his body to the contours of the ground. He pressed the grass down in front of his face and resumed his survey of the encampment.
There was almost no activity in the warm, still afternoon. Only the Weaver women at the pots were visible. They fed graybeard stalks into the boiling water while others pounded stalks on flat rocks, separating the fibers, hanging them on drying racks made of other graybeard stalks. The smoke from the fires under the pots rose straight up in the stillness. The silence lay heavy like an old blanket, disturbed only by the lazy, rhythmic pounding of the Weaver women on the graybeard stalks, but even that seemed far away and halfheard.
Blue Eyes yawned again, scratching at the sting on his thigh.
It would be a good Gathering—the Overlords willing, Blue Eyes added hastily. The rains had come early; the sky was clear and cloudless. It probably meant a dry summer, but now, at the Gathering, it couldn’t be better.
Weaver tents were erected both inside the ring of wagons and out. Those outside sported trading banners, but they hung like beards in the motionless air. Those inside, Blue Eyes knew, shielded the Weaver looms from the weather and the eyes of the curious. He grimaced. The Weavers and their silly secrets. Why would anyone care how the Weavers fashioned the cloth used by all the clans? Blue Eyes’ own short, sleeveless tunic was made of the simple bluish-gray cloth woven on the Weaver looms from the graybeard fibers, but he had not the slightest interest in weaving it himself.
He did, however, like most young bucks of any clan, want a tunic made by a Master Weaver instead of the unadorned ones made by the Weaver women. But he was much too young to have amassed the fortune it would need to get one.
The pavilion was set up a short distance from the encampment with the Weaver totem, a spread-legged spider, occupying the central position. The other clans, with the exception of the Badgers who always made camp up-river away from the others, would circle the pavilion, setting their totems as they arrived. But always there was some extra privilege to the clan that arrived first and did the set-up.
A fat horse-fly suddenly found Blue Eyes’ cheek to be irresistably delicious. He brushed it away, but it would not be discouraged. He waited until it settled, then swatted it with the palm of his hand. His preoccupation almost made him miss the new sound.
He listened intently and immediately made out the sound of horses and the creak and rattle of wagons. He looked to a low rise a mile away to the southwest and, after a moment, saw a rider come into view. Behind him came other riders, then the first wagon; three small boys drove a herd of goats; other wagons followed; trading banners swung lazily from swaying poles made of polished graybeard stalks; shorthaired slaves walked beside the wagons; children too excited to ride ran ahead; yapping dogs raced about, spooking goats and irritating riders.
The lead horsemen carried the clan’s totem and Blue Eyes squinted to make it out. It was an eagle, wings spread and claws extended.
The Weaver encampment suddenly came to life. People emerged from the tents and wagons to watch the newcomers; children ran out to meet them; dogs scrambled from shady spots to bark and run with the children.
Blue Eyes slipped from his vantage point and sprinted in a crouch down the gulley away from the encampment. His horse, a dappled gray mare with Blue Eyes’ totem painted on her flank, was tethered in the shade of a concrete bridge where a roadway of the Old People crossed the gulley. The black roadway was buckled and broken, bleached and crumbled by weather; grass and brush grew through the cracks, and a fair-sized tree had pried away a corner of the bridge. The earth had settled at either end, but the bridge had not collapsed.
The mare raised her head from nibbling sweet grass and snorted softly. Blue Eyes untied her and mounted with an easy leap. He sat on a blanket and used a rope bridle, both made from the fibers of the graybeard. He nudged the horse with his heels and clicked his tongue. The mare moved down the gulley at a trot. Blue Eyes swung his arm and grinned broadly, his long, almost-white hair bounced on his back and his pale eyes sparkled. He wasn’t yet old enough that the Gathering was no longer a place of excitement and adventure.
He rode the horse out of the gulley and nudged her in the flanks again. He felt her muscles bunch as she raced across the prairie at full gallop. Blue Eyes yelled for the pure joy of it and swung his head, making his hair flop across his shoulders. Then he slowed the gray to a walk and stroked her neck. She snorted softly and bobbed her head. Blue Eyes laughed and lay forward, putting his arms around her neck.
He patted her again, then straightened up and rode to the waiting Wolf Clan caravan with the dignity of an adult hunter and scout.
The Wolf Clan caravan differed little from the Weavers or the Eagles. It included fifteen wagons, fifty-three people (counting slaves), thirty-two horses, an uncounted—at least by Blue Eyes—number of goats, and an ever-changing supply of dogs. The people paused in their preparations for the Gathering and watched Blue Eyes as he approached. Two men mounted their horses and rode to meet him.
He reined the mare and waited respectfully for Red Tooth, the prez of the Wolf Clan, and Three Toes, his vice-prez. Red Tooth was a tough, leathery man nearing middle-age. He had been Prez for as long as Blue Eyes could remember. He was well-liked and no one seriously considered challenging his office. Three Toes was young, only ten years older than Blue Eyes, and there were those ready for a challenge should something happen to Red Tooth. Both were dressed much like Blue Eyes, in the short sleeveless tunic, though Three Toes wore riding leggings. Each had his personal totem painted on his forehead. Unlike Blue Eyes, they wore bracelets and necklaces of wolf claws and teeth. Red Tooth wore a skirt of wolf tails, the symbol of his office. They both wore knives and carry-pouches. Everyone except babies in backpacks, even the short-haired slaves who were allowed nothing else, wore carry-pouches at their waists.
“Blue Eyes!” Red Tooth shouted as he reined his horse. “How goes the Gathering?”
“The Weavers ar
e the first in—since yesterday. The Eagles are just pulling in. No others are in sight.”
“No sign of the Badgers?” asked Three Toes who had earned his name from a Badger and had even less affection for them than anyone else.
“No,” said Blue Eyes. “The ground is clean and the grass untrampled. We’re the third ones.”
Red Tooth nodded. “All right. Let’s go in. May the Gathering be peaceful and prosperous—the Overlords willing.”
He signaled the caravan. A horseman raised a ramshorn and blew a call. Women and children scrambled aboard the wagons and set them in motion; trading banners swung limply from graybeard poles; men mounted horses; slaves scurried about picking up dropped objects and keeping the goats from scattering; a rider raced ahead with the clan totem, a snarling wolf’s head with bared teeth and curled lips, and gave it to Red Tooth. Children laughed and squealed; dogs yapped and goats bleated. The caravan rattled into motion.
Blue Eyes dug into his carry-pouch and rummaged around. He pulled out a wolf-tooth necklace and slipped it over his head, pulling his long hair outside it. He found, after more rummaging, the wolf-claw bracelet under the sniffercloth and pulled it over his hand. He would have preferred a greater show of wealth, but he was young.
Red Tooth waited for the caravan to catch up, then took his place at the head, the totem held majestically in the air. The Wolf Clan rattled and clattered and creaked and yapped and bleated across the prairie to join the encampment at the river.
The Gathering became organized chaos with the arrival of the two clans at almost the same time. Slaves scurried to and from the river carrying bundles of long graybeard stalks for the cooking fires, carrying clusters of graybeard pods to the women at. The cooking pots, putting horses out to graze, helping the traders put up tents and set up the wagons to display wares. Children and dogs ran laughing and barking underfoot and paid little attention to adult reprimands.
Weavers and Eagles, anxious for the wares of the Wolves, waited impatiently, trying to get advance looks, trying to spot the choicest furs or leather boots before someone else got to them first. The Wolves were hunters; they traded in pelts, leather, tooth and claw ornaments, meat—salted or dried, boots, quivers, leggings, and bow strings, though there was some competition from the Weavers on bow strings. Most hunters preferred those made of gut, but those made of graybeard fibers were less expensive.
Blue Eyes led the mare to the river. As a hunter and scout he was not involved with the menial tasks of setting up camp; that was left to the women, the traders, and the slaves. There was almost as much activity in the river as in the encampment. Slaves and women from all three clans chopped the graybeard stalks with long-knives and caught them as the heavy cluster of pods at the top pulled them over. They hacked off the pods and set them aside, then peeled away the two-foot-long silky gray tendrils that hung beneath the pod cluster and stuffed them into bags for later use as bed-stuffing. No part of the graybeard was wasted, even the roots left in the ground sprouted new graybeards.
The mare drank from the shallow river and snorted at the naked children splashing and playing in the water. Naked adults bathed in deeper pools, laughing and splashing with almost as much hilarity as the children. Other hunters watered their horses, not wanting to trust them to slaves, and looked with anticipation at the bathers.
Blue Eyes plucked a graybeard pod from a cluster carried by a Wolf woman. She scolded him and then laughed when he grinned at her. Blue Eyes had known for quite a while that his grin was the key to many doors, especially with women. He peeled the thin gray skin away and bit into the chicken egg-sized pod. He liked the graybeard pods even better than the potatoes the Digger Clan would be bringing to the Gathering, though the taste was entirely different.
He heard a feminine giggle behind him and turned. A Weaver girl with a jug of water on her shoulder pretended not to notice him. Blue Eyes chewed elaborately, grinning at her with his mouth open, letting juice dribble down his chin. He tossed the half-eaten pod casually into the water and walked back toward the encampment, watching the girl. He swaggered slightly, still grinning at her, letting his hips roll. He had known the effect he could get with that since he was fourteen; it had opened doors even his grin could not breach.
He matched his pace to hers, but still she pretended not to notice him. She wore her dark, silky hair loose to indicate that she was unmarried, not in the bun of a widow looking for a new husband, or the elaborate braids of a married woman.
Her knee-length tunic was made of a soft, thin fabric, not the coarse trading-cloth. Her arm, raised to support the water jug, stretched the cloth across her breasts, making the nipples stand out like hard little beads. She was slender and graceful, just about the prettiest thing he had ever seen. He wondered why he hadn’t seen her at a previous Gathering. Then he caught her looking at him from the corner of her eye.
Blue Eyes lurched aside suddenly and grabbed the arm of a small boy of the Wolf Clan racing toward the river. The boy yelped and stared at Blue Eyes with fright until he saw the expression on his face. The boy looked at the Weaver girl, who had stopped at the sudden movement, then grinned up at Blue Eyes with pure hero worship. Blue Eyes smiled benignly and handed the boy the reins. The boy trotted away, tugging at the unresisting mare, taking her to the ramuda.
The Weaver girl had gone on, but glanced shyly over her shoulder to see if Blue Eyes was following. He hurried to catch up with her, walking beside her a few steps, then going ahead and walking backward ahead of her. He followed the line of her hips with his eyes, then up to her slightly bobbing breasts, then over the soft angle of her neck and cheek. Her eyelashes were lowered. She pretended to keep her eyes demurely on the ground, but he was reasonably sure she was watching the way the muscles moved in his legs.
Then he stepped in a shallow hole and grunted as his foot came down hard. He took a quick step backward and threw his arms out to keep from falling. The girl quickly put her hand over her mouth to hide her smile.
Blue Eyes scowled at her, feeling his face getting red, but her smile vanished instantly to be replaced by a look of concern. He watched her a moment through narrowed eyes, but her expression did not flicker. Then he laughed and shrugged his shoulders and was so pleased with the girl he was just opening his mouth to ask her name when the ramshorn blew.
The sound caused Blue Eyes to stop, and he suddenly felt a sinking in his stomach. He had almost asked her name, the first step to an offer of marriage. He was interested, but not that interested. He turned and trotted toward the Wolf camp.
The Weaver girl watched him with a pleased smile. He turned once and smirked at her.
When he reached the encampment, the official protocol party was forming. Red Tooth was standing impatiently, fidgeting as women and slaves arranged his finery. He was petulant and cross; the attendants darted in quickly, made rapid adjustments, and departed just as quickly. He wore his state tunic, red with an intricately woven Wolf totem on the chest, and with elaborate patterns crowding each other for the remaining space. The huge head of a timber wolf rested askew on his head with the pelt hanging over his shoulders and down his back. Little Hand, a Digger slave the Wolf Clan had been unable to trade back to the Diggers because of his crippled leg, attempted to straighten it, but he couldn’t seem to get the movement of his hands coordinated with the movement of Red Tooth’s head. With a growl the Wolf Prez cuffed him aside and secured it himself.
Red Tooth’s long graying hair was in two braids, each caught in an intricately tooled band of wild-cowhide. There was a small red nick on his chin where he had cut himself shaving. He wore the skirt of wolf tails over the red tunic and was laden with tooth and claw oranments. Satisfied with the result, a slave handed him a staff decorated with more wolf tails.
Long Ear, the emdee of the Wolf Clan, was in a simple white tunic with the Wolf totem on the chest and a bit of broken mirror from the time of the Old People glued to his forehead. He was a man of about fifty, short and rotund, but in
no way was he jolly. He spoke softly and rapidly to his apprentice, so rapidly his painstakingly curled beard quivered. The apprentice, a boy almost to the age of manhood, stood silently with eyes downcast. His lips were pale, but he was stoic from years of practice. Blue Eyes felt sorry for him; it didn’t pay to get on the bad side of the emdee.
Even less would he want to be on the bad side of Night Runner, the proff of the Wolf Clan. He was ten or so years younger than Long Ear, tall, with the face of a hawk, his beard almost to his waist, black and shiny and laboriously braided. His apprentice was a boy of twelve who basked in the older man’s smiles as he helped arrange the proffs flowing black robes. Blue Eyes had seen the boy in tears more often than he had seen him smiling. Blue Eyes thanked the Overlords that he was a hunter and not an apprentice to these men whose minds had been made strange by the secrets of the Old People.
Blue Eyes joined the other hunters to form the honor guard. Water Foot, his best friend, was among them and they rolled their eyes in resignation, grinning at each other.
Red Tooth looked them over to see that everything was as it should be and shooed away the women and slaves who frantically tried to make perfect details more perfect. He signaled and one of the honor guard blew a pattern on the ramshorn. Similar ramshorn calls drifted in from the other encampments. The procession began to move with Three Toes leading the way, carrying the Wolf totem. Red Tooth followed, then the proff and emdee. Long Ear still berated his apprentice, then snatched the satchel of herbs and ointments from him. He composed himself into an official demeanor and the apprentice beat a hasty retreat. Blue Eyes, Water Foot, and the other hunters brought up the rear. The women, slaves and apprentices breathed sighs of relief and retired to the nearest shady spot.