He pointed out the bank of windows on the south wall. “But how do you suppose Southporter, over at the south gatehouse, will feel about that arrangement? He has no great estate. All he has is Corenwald. And, by the way, he fought as hard for that dream as anyone in this room did.”
He put his hand on the shoulder of one of Lord Bratumel’s sons. “Or what about our sons? The next time Pyrth decides to invade some little kingdom—some little kingdom that once looked to Corenwald as a beacon of hope and freedom—they will call on our sons to do the fighting. And our great estates will seem mighty lonesome when they’re gone.
“You say there are worse fates than being citizens of a great empire. But what could be worse than surrendering a dream to an enemy who was never able to take it by force?”
Errol was shaking now. His speech was finished. He seemed fifteen years older than he had looked that morning. He walked unsteadily back to his bench.
King Darrow rose to his feet. It was the first time he had moved since the young Pyrthen’s speech. It seemed ages since he had last spoken, when he presented Samson to the Pyrthens. He was obviously moved by Errol’s speech. He saw the futility of appeasing the Pyrthens any further. Yet the Darrow who stood on the dais wasn’t the decisive leader who led the mighty men of Corenwald in four campaigns against the invading Pyrthens.
“We will meet the Pyrthen army on the Bonifay Plain.” He spoke slowly. There was more resignation in Darrow’s voice than resolve. The Corenwalders looked nervously at one another. “Summon the cavalry. Begin the shire-musters.”
As the king spoke, the tension visibly left Errol’s body. His shoulders relaxed, and his head tilted forward. At first Aidan took this change in his father’s posture to be a sign of relief, even pleasure at the persuasive effect of his own speech. Aidan, too, was relieved and pleased. But his pleasure turned to horror as he watched his father slump forward onto the table, unmoving and unconscious.
Chapter Twelve
The Bog Owl Barks Again
The Brothers Errolson
Hustingreen Regiment
Corenwalder Battle Camp
Bonifay Plain, Corenwald
Dear Brennus, Maynard, Jasper, and Percy—
I hope this letter finds you in safety and good health. Father and I pray for you daily, as do Ebbe, Moira, and the rest of the servants and farmhands.
You’ll be happy to know that Father is doing much better. Most of the feeling is back in his arm and leg, and yesterday he even took a few steps. The surgeon thinks his stroke was caused by too much agitation the night of the treaty feast. I’ll say!
Anyway, the surgeon says he needs to stay in bed, but every time I turn around, he’s standing at the western window, staring out as if he could see the Bonifay Plain and look in on you from his bedroom.
Please write to us soon. Please, please, please! You’ve been gone two weeks, and we still haven’t heard from you. You can’t imagine what torture it is to be here on this quiet farm while everybody else is off at war. To have no news at all is worse than miserable.
Well, I hear Father stirring in the next room. I’d better go bring him some breakfast, or he’ll be up trying to fix it for himself. You know how he is.
Write soon. And make us all proud.
Your devoted brother,
Aidan
P.S. Now that Father is almost recovered, and because he has a houseful of servants, he doesn’t really need me here anymore. I hope he’ll let me join you at the encampment. I know I’m too young to make a soldier, but do you think you could get me a job as a messenger or horse boy?
Shepherd, nursemaid …” Aidan mumbled to himself as he carried Father’s breakfast tray. “How do I always get stuck with these jobs?” He put on a cheerful face, however, as he entered Father’s bedroom with a breakfast of fruit and boiled grain.
“Good morning, Father,” he said, putting the tray down on a table beside his chair. “You’re up already. You look stronger every day.”
“I feel stronger,” Father answered. “I think I’m ready to fight some Pyrthens today. Bring me my armor.”
Aidan’s eyes were wide with alarm “Father! You just took your first steps yesterday. You can’t—” but he saw a sly grin forming on Errol’s face and realized his father was teasing. He quickly changed directions. “What I mean is, you should wait another day or two before you go to the battlefield. That way, you won’t even need armor.”
“Or sword and shield either,” added Father. “I’ll just gobble up Pyrthens, two or three at a gulp.”
Father and son both laughed to think of Errol of Longleaf devouring his enemies like a dragon. But Errol’s laughter broke off, and he stared out the western window. Half to himself, Errol quietly spoke: “I do hate to be laid up while the armies of Corenwald are in the field.”
“Surely they can manage without you this once,” offered Aidan. “Besides, you sent four warriors to the fight.”
“Why have we heard no news of the battle?” Errol asked, still staring out the window. “Two weeks, and no news yet.”
Aidan looked out the window, too, envisioning the Bonifay Plain beyond the western horizon. “I found Percy’s favorite lantern yesterday,” he said.
Errol came out of his trance and smiled at his son. For a week now, Aidan had been conjuring up excuses to visit his brothers at the battle camp. “Hmmm … Percy’s lantern?”
“Yes. It gets dark on the plains, you know.”
“Oh, indeed,” answered Errol, pretending to be serious. “After the sun goes down, it gets as dark as night.”
“I was just thinking, maybe I could take it to him. It’s no trouble, really.”
Father was laughing now. “What a generous brother! And if you’re making the trip anyway, perhaps you could carry Jasper’s notebook that you found the day before yesterday and Maynard’s hat that you found the day before that and Brennus’s pouch that you found the day before that.”
Aidan frowned. “You’re making fun of me. But it’s hard to stay here when all my brothers are gone.”
“I know it is. But there is a reason you are here and not on the Bonifay Plain: You are only twelve years old.”
He tousled Aidan’s hair. “You will fight one day for Corenwald—and sooner than you think. You will fight because you love Corenwald, because you love the freedom to live and worship as you see fit, because you love your family and your fellow soldiers. But you must never fight because you love the battle. You must never love the battle.”
“Yes, Father,” answered Aidan, a little embarrassed that he had been so eager.
An awkward silence prevailed as Errol turned his face back toward the western window. “But now I am going to surprise you,” he said. He faced his son again. “Go find an empty flour sack. Fill it up with some of Ebbe’s new cheeses and loaves of Moira’s fresh-baked bread. Then I want you to carry that sack to the Bonifay Plain. Your brothers will be glad to get some food from home, and I will be just as glad to get any news you can bring me from the front.”
Aidan’s mouth dropped open with joy and astonishment. He kissed his father on both cheeks, then ran from the room to gather up his things for the trip. He was eager to get on the road before Father could change his mind.
Soon, Aidan had left Longleaf Manor and was walking north on the River Road. The sun had hardly been up two hours. On foot, it was a two-day trip from Longleaf to the Bonifay Plain—up the River Road to Tambluff, then along the Western Road from Tambluff to the plain. He couldn’t ride to Bonifay. Except for a few plow mules, every horse, mule, and pony on Longleaf Manor was already there, on loan to the Corenwalder army.
He had packed light. Besides the bread and cheese for his brothers, he stuffed a clean tunic and two days’ rations in the flour sack.
Aidan squinted against the glare of the summer sun reflecting off the white sand of the River Road. To his right the River Tam flowed in its black coolness. To his left, beyond the floodplain, the ancient longleaf pines t
owered like the pillars of God’s own house, straight and smooth for eighty feet or more above the palmetto and tufting wiregrass, then opening into a deep green canopy of pine needles like green, graceful fingers. An occasional breeze brought the slightest relief from the sun’s heat, as well as a piney whiff of the turpentine that oozed from the longleafs.
Just below the village of Hustingreen, Aidan rested on the white bank of Bayberry Creek where it flowed into the Tam. Leaning against the swelling buttress of a black gum tree, he remembered something Father had shown him once on the Western Road. Just east of the Bonifay Plain was a little pond—a limestone sinkhole, actually— about thirty strides off the road. According to Father, that pond formed the headwaters of Bayberry Creek, which followed a southeasterly path to the very spot where Aidan now stood.
Aidan faced the northwest, sighting upstream along the Bayberry. If he could follow the creek to its source, he would come out on the Western Road, only a league or two from his destination. It wouldn’t be easy going, for there was no road that way, but surely the shortcut would save him at least four or five leagues. And besides, in the shady creek bottom he could avoid the direct sun of the open road.
He decided to try it. He left the River Road and made for the tanglewood. The bottomland forest quickly enveloped Aidan in its twisting branches and trailing vines. The trails he followed were not made by people, but by deer and bear and wild boar. In places there weren’t even animal trails, and Aidan had to make his own.
The sun filtering through the dense treetops cast a greenish light on Aidan’s surroundings. The shade of the big gum trees and water oaks took the edge off the heat, but still Aidan’s tunic was soaked through with sweat, for the air was heavy and damp in the creek bottom.
Insects were the one thing Aidan had failed to consider when he quit the road and took to the deer paths. In the swampy bottoms, the bugs multiplied like a plague of Pharaoh. Aidan trudged along in a humming cloud of mosquitoes, slapping, swatting, and waving his arms to fend off their attacks. The gray sweat bees, though much less numerous than the mosquitoes, tormented him. Their big sting was out of proportion to their tiny size.
But no sound in the forest was more immediately terrifying than the whining buzz of the yellow flies. They came in hard and fast, flying an erratic spiral that made them impossible to swat. They were so fierce and persistent that they didn’t even need bare skin to sting. They thought nothing of landing on Aidan’s thick hair and boring straight through to his scalp. A couple even pierced through Aidan’s tunic, raising angry red welts on his shoulder. These were the sort of bugs that one seldom met on the big road. They were known only to the adventurous soul who left the well-worn path to explore the swamps and river bottoms.
But Aidan’s shortcut also revealed to him many wondrous things that he could have never seen on the road. Every bend in the creek brought some new delight: a pair of otters cavorting in the water, a parade of wild hogs snortling and rattling through the saw palms, a regiment of turtles lined up side by side along a fallen log. The woods were dense and tangled, but Aidan was in little danger of losing his way. He had only to keep near the creek and continue upstream, and he would eventually reach the lime sink at the head of the creek.
After two hours’ hike upstream, however, things got more complicated. The creek spilled into a broad swamp. Only now did it occur to Aidan why there was no road through this part of the country. The sandy track that he had been following deposited him on a smelly mud flat, and he sank to his ankles in hot mud. He strained to free his feet, and the muck made a loud sucking sound, then a pop as each foot came loose. Watching his footprints slowly fill with oily, putrid water, Aidan mulled over his dilemma. He no longer had the convenient option of trekking up the creek bank, for there was no more creek bank, only a sunken morass of deep, sticky mud punctuated by a maze of rivulets and a few stunted cypress trees. Unless he wanted to swim up the creek, his only choice was to turn north and circle around the swamp along the sand hills and meet back up with Bayberry Creek wherever he could. Not knowing how big the swamp was, he didn’t know how much time he would lose on this detour. But he had little choice.
Coming out of the creek bottom, Aidan found easier traveling among the sparse pines of the sand hills. But it was past midday, and the sun glaring on the sand was a stark contrast to the shady green of the creekside. Aidan sought shade in a stand of big magnolia trees.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the smooth, gray bark of a big magnolia. Just as he began to doze, he heard a rattle in the stiff, waxy leaves overhead. And yet there had been no breeze to rustle in the treetop. He stood and craned his neck to peer into the branches above. He sniffed the air. Was that pungent, fishy smell wafting up from the swamp or down from the tree? He circled around the tree, ducking beneath its low limbs. The deep green leaves were thick, but he could see movement of some sort in the highest branches. Something up there—or someone—was circling the trunk opposite him, keeping itself hidden.
Then Aidan heard a sound he had been waiting all summer to hear: Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo … Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo.
The bark of the bog owl! It thrilled Aidan just as it did the last time he heard it in the bottom pasture. He threw back his head and answered as best he could: “Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo.” Then he belted out the battle cry that Dobro had sung when he took off after the panther: “Haaaawwweeeeee!”
Aidan mounted a low limb of the magnolia and started scrambling up, overjoyed to find the friend he had been seeking all summer long. “Dobro!” he shouted. “Dobro! Dobro! You stinking mudfish! I’ve been looking all over for you!”
He was halfway up the tree when another call echoed from a few feet away in another magnolia: Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo … Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo. He turned toward the second call, then he heard a swift rustle coming down the trunk of his tree. He jerked back around, just in time to glimpse the soles of two flat, gray, hairy feet flying toward him. Aidan’s chest caught the full force of the blow, which propelled him out of the tree. When his head hit the sandy ground below, Aidan’s world went black.
Chapter Thirteen
A Trial
When Aidan woke up, his head was throbbing and he couldn’t see. He was on his back, facing skyward— at least, he thought he was. At the same time he felt as if he were moving. His wrists and ankles ached. The air was so stuffy he could hardly breathe, and his mouth was tight and stretched. His parched tongue felt furry in his mouth.
Aidan’s senses were returning slowly. He was confused and found it difficult to figure out where he was. It occurred to him that he had been hearing a steady splashing, as well as voices, one near his head and one near his feet. As the fog cleared, the words he heard began to make some sense.
“You don’t reckon you kilt him, do you?” asked the voice near his head. It was a high-pitched, grating voice.
“Course not, Rabbo,” said a nasally voice near his feet. “He’ll be all right … for a little while, anyway.”
Both voices laughed. Aidan didn’t get the joke and wasn’t sure he wanted to. A sudden jolt shook his whole body, and a new ache shot through his wrists and ankles.
At his head he heard a shrill laugh from the voice called Rabbo. “Watch out for that cypress knee, Jonko. The prisoner might not appreciate you dropping him in the swamp.”
“Shut your feeder, Rabbo.”
“You shut your own feeder.”
“How ’bout you make me?”
“How ’bout I take this tote-pole and learn you some manners?”
“Awwww, dry up, Rabbo. We’ll be at the Meeting Hummock in no time. I’ll settle up with you there, where the whole tribe can watch the whupping.”
Aidan was beginning to put the pieces together. Two men named Rabbo and Jonko—feechiefolk, by Aidan’s estimation—were carrying him on a pole between them, the way hunters carry a stag or a boar. His wrists and ankles were tightly bound; they bore his weight as he h
ung face-upward. His kidnappers had put a heavy bag over his head, probably made from an animal skin, from the smell of it; that explained why it was so dark and why it was so difficult to breathe. He couldn’t cry out because they had gagged him with vines. The fuzzy sensation on his tongue was a leaf from the vine gag.
Jonko, who held the end of the pole near Aidan’s feet, was leading the way. They were slogging through a swamp on their way to a place they called the Meeting Hummock. But what sort of things happened at the Meeting Hummock? Aidan’s stomach tightened as he imagined the possibilities.
Before long the splashing stopped, and Aidan heard instead the tramp of his captors’ feet on dry land. They were on an island—the Meeting Hummock? Rabbo and Jonko were no longer on speaking terms, so Aidan could glean no more from them. But in the near distance he heard a feechie call, “Haaawwwweeee,” and Jonko’s answer, “Haaawwweeee.” They were coming up on at least one feechie, maybe more than that.
As Jonko and Rabbo continued on their way, Aidan heard a buzz of voices in the near distance. The farther they went, the louder and more distinct the voices grew. But just as they drew close enough that Aidan could make out a few words, and even a whole sentence or two, the conversation abruptly broke off. Aidan pictured a crowd of feechiefolk watching in silence as he was carried in like a hunting trophy.
Aidan could feel himself being lowered to the ground. The tote-pole was pulled away, though his wrists and ankles were still bound. A voice at his ear, Rabbo’s, he thought, whispered, “On your feet, young civilizer,” and he felt a hand grab his wrist and pull him up to a standing position.
The Bark of the Bog Owl Page 8