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West Wheel: The Twin MachinesChapter 6: Cold TrekBy: Joel 'Cop' Furches
Though cold and doubt and deep despair Crawl in and through the soul of man No one walks the path alone, no one is without a voice. When sky and land are just a dream When lake and river are all gone In moments of our bottomless trouble Man walks in the face of God. Man lives in the heart of God.
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Agony. An Isrean is trained from birth to hide or deal with their pain. Stone face, we shrug off any anguish we bear, as a true warrior must. Agony. Agony is all I remember for a long, long time after I awoke. It was snowing upon the plain when my senses returned, and I began to crawl. I had only crawled a few feet when I found the body of Lolcho, who had given his life for me. His attack had thrown the white-skin off his aim, or else he surely would have placed the deadly metal of his weapon in my brain or heart. Lolcho was dead, it was only fitting that I should honor his sacrifice and continue to live. I was in such pain. I could feel, even see in my mind, the gapping mouth of death wheeling beneath me. I teetered on the edge, ready to fall in at any moment. But there was more blood on the ground than just my own and that of my eagle. The ground bore the splatters of the Dead Face’s blood. Lolcho had opened up his dead face with those mighty claws and his hooked beak. The Dead Face had left a trail. I crawled after him.
Much later, I would weep for my eagle, who had been a constant friend for many long years. I had hopped that Lolcho would see me through my Spirit Journey in a way no Isrean could.
There is much about my journey from this point on that I do not remember. I crawled for days, passing out when the pain became too great, and thinking rarely. I saw my dead brothers gathered around me, telling me I was the last Benaquinn, and that when I fell into the pit of death, our race would be no more. I saw my beloved Satu walking beside me calmly. I saw her look at my weakened state in disgust.
“I thought you were a mighty warrior,” she said, “But it is evident you are nothing but a sniveling child. It is unfortunate all your father’s sons have died but you. They would be favored Chiefs. As it stands, our people will be led to their doom.”
As I crawled on one arm, the other too injured and filled with the living rot to move, I thought I saw the entire Benaquinn nation gathered behind me, as if I, the crawling dead-man was leading them. And before me leered the chasm of death, Poi Drodidi itself.
The field I had lay in was covered with bodies of the dead, and this was fortunate for me. When I rose up on my arms from my spot, a great rushing went before me, as vultures rose from carcass after carcass, wheeling high into the sky waiting for me to pass so they could resume their feast. I found a body nearby that was being eaten by maggots. I scooped a great number of these into my hand and poured them into the holes in my shoulder and gut where the white-man’s metal had pierced my body. They squirmed and crawled and wriggled into my body, and for many days they ate away at the living rot within me, killing the infection before it could spread deeper and take what little life I had.
Beyond the field I awoke in was a rise, and beyond the rise the land became more solid and strewn with grass. In the passing of time it became a wide prairie, and the droppings of buffalo lay here and there, dried with the passing of time, with grass growing out of them. These I collected and burnt for warmth at nights. A number of the dark birds, the cursed brothers of the eagle who could eat not but rot, had followed me day and night circling above me. After time their numbers grew thin, and I knew I was to live a season more.
At some point I recalled that my tomahawk still remained in that field of death. This weapon, so precious to me in days past, meant nothing in the light of my anguish and my battle for my own life. It would only hold me down as I struggled to crawl forward.
Night turned to day, turned to night. I crawled and I rested. The blood trail of the Dead Face had dried up long ago, but he left various spore that I could find even in my weakened state. He built fires at night, and occasionally left footprints in the soft earth. The man was unusual. He did not stray or falter as almost any man would. If he hunted for game, there was no sign. He simply slept, rose, walked, and slept again. This inhumanly persistent pace would be his undoing. It made him predictable.
The Dead Face’s trail did not stray far from the plains that stretched out from the foothills. Further west lay the true Desert of the Westlands. My constant fear was that he would stray in this direction, then on to the Wyrdelands before circling back around to the green southern lands where Dead Faces had killed so many Isrean to establish their homes.
I was walking now, and this helped lift my spirit. The wounds left by the Dead Face had healed over with an angry-white flesh that was hard to the touch, and still ached deeply. I was able to find water in roots and lick the dew from the grass, but I had eaten little save grubs and roots I was able to find. I yearned daily for game.
It was a full moon after my battle with the Dead Face when I came upon a thicket of brush cut with deer-paths that was not quite a forest. My quarry’s tracks lead directly to its twisted and shadowy heart.
The thicket gave me a dark and uneasy feeling. Dead Face’s tracks were reckless and uncovered, as if he had danced and thrashed about, leaving the tracks on purpose to tempt and lure me. It seemed like a trap.
I crept to the edge of the brush, smelling the strong, musky odor of the hazelbrush, and grabbed a gnarled branch from one of the low and thorny trees. With a firm grip, I spun pushing into the branch hard with my elbow, letting the power flow from my feet and legs. The branch cracked and came loose with a roar. Bush-birds and small animals screeched and scattered from the sound. It was not them that concerned me, though. I felt cold eyes watching me from deep within the thicket.
Having a strong branch, I next set to digging until I uncovered a heavy stone. I used the branch to dig around it until I had loosened it from the ground, and pulled it up. It was too large, and lumpy rather than sharp. It would never make for a tomahawk, much less arrowheads, but it, along with my large branch, would make a suitable skull-cracker. It would be large and unwieldy, but I was the Prince of the Benaquinn. If I could not handle many weapons, I would be unworthy of my family.
My work was quick, and the large club I made would easily break bones. Satisfied, I began to walk through into the thick brush. I made no meditation to hide my path. I had already made my presence obvious to anything that might be watching, I focused my attention on being alert for any signs of a trap or an attack.
It was the very simplicity of the thing that astounded me. The path lead through the thick branches, a quick walk into a clearing that had been hacked out of the brush surrounding a large ghost-wood. Bad medicine. The clearing had five ugly teepees and a hut made of mud, from which smoke rose in wisps. This was a medicine hut.
It was impossible to tell from the rough work they had done the tribe from which these Isrean hailed. This was Benaquinn land, and many small bands of my cousins still roamed the Westlands, recognizing no honor and no chief. If this was such a band, they’d as likely kill me and eat my heart as they would offer me shelter. Still, if the dead-face had been through here, they may have seen him.
There was no sign of the Isrean that lived here. They may have been out raiding or hunting. But if there was smoke coming from the hut, then there was likely one Isrean within.
The wise would lie in wait. The wise would be patient, let the habitants return from hunting and listen to the talk, taking note of their language, their words, their habits. I was neither wise nor patient.
The inside of the hut showed all the signs of a low sort of medicine. Bones hung from leather straps, and the etchings in the wall and floor were foul things. Entrails of various birds hung from pots and were strewn on the floor in the ancient profanity of tanba, attempting to read the future. The medicine men and elders of the Lilliquoi now taught that God is angry with tanba. We are always to live in the present, make our choices our own, not to rely on witchcraft, looking to some sistra to direct our actions like those with no will. God gave us a will as a gift, it is wrong to turn that will over to the Sistra.
I fell to my knees at the center of this floor so smeared with animal grease, and began to sniff. The entrails were fresh, no older than a day. Whatever tanba had taken place here had happened after the Dead Face passed through. Why would a man so focused on killing Isrean spare this place?
When I glanced up a figure was standing near the buffalo hide that made the wall. How long he had stood there, staring down at me I could not say. I started at his quiet presence in spite of myself. He was a hoary Isrean, wrinkled in the face with gnarled, claw-like hands resting on an equally twisted coup-staff. He was very likely hundreds of seasons old, yet his back was not bent with age beneath the patterned and woven blanket that wrapped his upper body. It bore the brown and white colors of the Lilliquoi and was belted at the waist with many woven, leather cords decorated with a vast assortment of beads that formed the tribal colors of no less than twelve Isrean Nations. It even contained the six legendary nations that had vanished long before the dead-faces ever came to our shores. His legs were entirely swallowed by a tattered skirt that hung to the floor and was made of some woven material, probably cotton. His forearms were wrapped and re-wrapped in leather cords, the ends of which hung with the beaded colors of the legendary tribe of the Joodoo, sky-blue and white. His long, gray hair was braided behind him, and he had two black coup feathers woven into the braid that looked to be from a rook. A fetish hung from his neck, woven over a bent and hardened twig so that it would be round, and about his waist swung a medicine bag, beaded with a pattern I had never seen before. He was smiling at me.
“Hail, Astaquinn, Prince of the Benaquinn. We are honored to have you visit our lowly band.”
I remained where I was, breathless and stiff in his presence. His bright, black eyes stared out at me from beneath the jagged strands of his white hair. He seemed to expect my paralysis, welcome it. He hobbled toward me, leaning heavily on his coup-staff, and fingered my bandolier with his stiff, long-nailed fingers. The last fingers that had touched that cloth were those soft, slender, and loving fingers of Satu. The contrast sickened me. I accord all respect to elders who are long in their years and sage in their knowledge, but this man set me at unease. His fingers stopped just short of the healing wounds in my chest and shoulder. Straining, I saw that where he touched the flesh, it began to move and cloud with blackness. A sort of pity formed on his face.
“Touched by the dead-face metal, we were,” he tapped the hard scar-flesh. Then, without warning, he dug his nail deep into the scar, slashing sideways to open both wounds back to fullness. Blood poured down my chest. Then dark seeds welled up through the slash, sticking at first, then sliding down my chest with the blood. These dark forms wriggled, then crawled, then shook forth small wings and buzzed freely out into the open air of the hut. They were flies.
The cripple smiled. “You were wise to have the carrion-eaters care for your wounds, young Brave.”
At last I found my voice, “Who are you?”
“Those poor wanderers out there,” he extended a finger in the direction of the door, “call me Grandfather Rook. I am but a wandering medicine man, long ago of the Lilliquoi. I even tended to the roots of the tree of life in time past. Now I seek out those tribes brought low by the dead-face to lend wisdom, and by wisdom strengthen our nations.”
He gave a small dip with the explanation, all I expect a man of his years can afford for a bow.
I am ashamed in this moment to tell you that I faltered. I felt compelled to denounce this shaman as a foul practitioner of the dark arts, but at the same moment I knew that the elder in their age and wisdom, know things that are a mystery to the younger. My father taught me strongly never to question or disrespect my elders. For a moment my path was unclear, obscured by confusion. The elder Isrean, the man who called himself Grandfather Rook, suddenly turned his head in the quick, precise motion of the animal for which he was named.
“The Stadduquie have returned early from the hunt. You shall meet them.”
For a moment I believed in horror that the Dead Faces had come upon me. That this was some elaborate trap devised by them. Nevertheless, I was powerless to do anything but what Grandfather Rook commanded. Weakly, I staggered out of the elder’s hoga to see that already a group of lean and hungry-looking Isrean had formed a semi-circle around Grandfather Rook and I. Yet the old one had said they call themselves Stadduquie, and Isrean do not refer to themselves as the quie, our word for the white-skins. Why would a group of Isrean take to calling themselves that? And what manner of Isrean were they? They were all of them dressed in the fur and feathers of predators: bear and wolf, eagle and cougar and hawk. Killing such animals was not the practice of any Isrean tribe I knew, save, perhaps, the Kliech, whose ways are an abomination unto us. These animals are our noble brothers in the hunt, and are only ever killed in self defense by those clumsy and stupid Braves who have not learned the Way of Sympathy.
“Children,” the old man spoke with a calm, deep voice, touched of age, and soothing to the ear, “This is Astaquinn of the Benaquinn. He is the eldest living male child of Choquatta, the great chief.”
The bent and animal-like faces of the Stadduquie leered at me as if I, myself, was their prey. Several of them raised their clubs aggressively. I groped for the handle of mine, ready to make my final stand here.
“Cease your foolishness,” the elder rebuked the warriors calmly, “Astaquinn is our cherished guest. He has suffered greatly at the hand of the Dead Face, as we all have. Now make yourselves hospitable.”
The braves looked cowed at this rebuke, and stonily let drop their weapons. Two of them came and offered me their shoulders to lean on. I refused this debasement. I was weak and weary, but I had not sunk so low as to lean on tribeless outcasts. I was lead to an empty teepee. This much I could not refuse. I would fall, I felt, if I stood for another moment. As much as I did not wish to dishonor myself, I had not choice but to take this comfort they offered me. Sleep came alarmingly easy in this unsettling place.
What came then was the sort of bad medicine you conjure in your own mind. I know not how long I lay in that filthy thicket drifting in and out of fevered dreams while these strange Isrean danced and chanted outside. Several times I thought I saw Grandfather Rook leering over me, sprinkling strange powders above me and chanting a language unlike any I had ever heard. Something resembling the tongue of the Kliech. Once I dreamed I awoke and peered beneath the cloth of the teepee to see not the feet of Isrean dancing around the fire, but the claws and paws of animals stamping and pawing the ground. Howls and growls sounded instead of chanting and singing.
In the darkness there was a vision. A dream so vivid it could only be a vision. Fields flooded with the blood of my people. The whole of our sacred land turned blasphemous by our own blood sacrifice. I saw the dead faces swarming endlessly across the Westland trampling the buffalo herds in their wake, treading on sacred ground with their heavy boots and war machines. Trails became paths, paths became roads, roads became great rivers with beds of false-rock, rushing endlessly with roaring, angry machines. The skies were obscured with poison clouds while the land was piled with great stinking piles of dead-faces dung and the carcasses of the animals and Isrean they had slaughtered. The Isrean name was lost to the world while the dead faces poisoned first the land and then themselves to death.
When I awoke for truth, it was night, and a rain pour outside. The thought that spring may, by now, be well-started, was a frightening one. I wondered how much time I had spent crawling the Westland, consumed by my pain? And how much more time had I wasted lying within this camp of outcasts? My injuries now seemed dull and gone. But so, too, was my strength. All of me felt dull as if the very life had been drawn out of me.
Forcing myself to stand, against the call of the weakness, I considered my surroundings. The floor of the teepee was dirt and rock, the spot in which I had been lying was outlined by white and grey powders and a rut dug by my apparent thrashings. My back ached and I could feel the scratches where rocks and bits of bones had dug into my flesh. In the middle of the tent was a fire-pit. It was cold and grey with ashes. It probably hadn’t been lit for days. The entire tent had a foul smell to it, and the canvas of the tent was smeared with something I knew was neither pitch nor oil.
The smell sickened me, and I stumbled to the tent-flap, thrashing it out of my way as I burst into the downpour outside. As the rain ran down my body, my head cleared somewhat and I sucked in great breaths, then lifted my thirsty head to the sky and drank in of the deluge. I smelled smoke.
This was the first time I had notice the great mound in the ground just outside the teepees. It was boiling over with smoke like some great, over-full blister on the ground. It was an underground Hoga, some sort of meeting place. I had heard of such underground places among the cliffmen, the long-lost tribe of the Eteruwu, who dug such pits as a passage between the spirit world and our own world.
Strong hands grabbed my arms, pulling me forward as my feet drug in the mud. I thrashed free and turned to find the stony-faced Stadduquie warriors, a young one wearing a fox’s head and pelt and what appeared to be a veteran brave dressed in a mountain lion’s hide that barely covered his battle-scarred frame.
They stared at me with wicked pleasure, and grabbed me again. I was pulled into a pit, leading down into a warm cove within the dark earth. All the Braves seemed to be here, Grandfather Rook smiling at them from across the fire pit in the middle of the room. Next to the fire pit was a small hole that seemed to tunnel down forever. This, I knew, was a spirit hole, for the passage of ghosts between this world and the underworld. Bad medicine.
“Bitter Wind,” the old man spoke at me as I was pulled close to the blistering coals of the fire-pit, “You come to us in search of a Dead-Face.”
“Yes.”
“This Dead Face and his kind, they have all slaughtered your people, tearing at the muscles, breaking away the bones of your fathers’ nation, and the greatest Braves of the Isrean people.”
“Yes.”
“Your Father and your people look to the heavens, to God’s great sky to bring them the strength. You fight with all your courage, using the mighty Way of the Brave to defend our promised land. But the Dead Faces always come. They make promises, with sacred bonds they make eternal peace, and then profane their words by breaking their bonds without honor.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have the strength to fight off this great threat to our people?”
“No.”
“If I offer you this strength, will you take it?”
“Yes.”
“Go forth, then, Bitter Wind. Hunt and slay a beast of battle. When you have conquered, eat of all its meat, also its heart and its brain, but bring its hide and head back here to me. I will then instruct you in the Old Ways, in the might of the terrible Tecclitrooten.”
I could think of nothing but my hatred for the Dead Faces as I rose from the ground in front of Grandfather Rook. I tore through the crowd of Stadduquie and ran up the low and crouching path, bursting forth above ground into the torrent of chilling rain. But all the rain in Father Sky could not cool my anger as I loped forward on my hands and feet, not bothering to rise from my crouch, into the dark and briery woods. I could smell the fresh rain running down channels within the choking brush where fox and deer’s passing had made small tunnels. The faintest of light filled my vision, I could almost taste the smallest of smells, and my mind was crowded with a kind of hunger that I could not harness or control. So I let it control me.
The smell was a musky odor that spoke of power and ill temper along with nurture and playfulness. A bear rising early, lean and hungry from its winter’s sleep. I found myself high in a tree where my sure leaps and unfaltering steps took me unthinkingly. A brother of mine used to jokingly call this the way of the squirrel. The joke did not occur to me now. I coiled like a great cat ready to leap with all my weight to knock over this large animal a cold sort of rage filled me and I could almost feel my hands sinking into this creature’s guts, pulling them forth in great tugs until the very life fled its body. I was so hungry I could easily feel myself eating all its meat, a feast of weeks. It lopped under me and I leapt.
Or I nearly leapt. Something worked its way through my focus. It was a chirp, out of place in this thicket on this cold and pouring night. Instead of leaping, I jerked my head in the direction of the chirp.
Sitting on a branch staring askance at me with its bright, black eyes sat an eagle. The word formed in my mind and on my tongue. Lolcho. But, of course, I was confused. This bird, so far from the blue sky it called home, was not my friend Lolcho. But God speaks to us through sorrow as well as joy. The bear lumbered onward, too focused on finding some grubs for her children to notice the Brave in the tree above it. I shook my head as my long, wet hair swing around spraying water everywhere.
“Thank you, friend,” I spoke to the bird. Then it struck me.
In my zeal I had forgotten all my training. The way of the Brave includes rushing fearlessly and headlong into battle, but it is foremost a training of thought. A pack of wolves does not bark and howl while many tracks away from their prey. A Brave is taught to be unseen until he wants to be seen. I had made no meditation to hide my presence or my scent. The bear must have turned about at my words, and it’s paw dealt a blow almost as powerful as the dancing-man’s bullets.
I fell and rolled, trying to find the breath that had been slammed from my body. The tangle of weeds and thorn-vines in the thicket ripped and tore my skin, but they did soften the blow. The bear let out a fearsome roar and lumbered forward to where I lay. I pulled myself up, ignoring the shreds of skin that pulled loose into the brier patch. It was only after I was free that I realized that the pain of the thorns was my best possible hope. Grandfather Rook no doubt led me into a spot where I would be forced to either die or kill the mother bear, which would kill or die to protect her cubs. Without pausing to think, I dove back further into the briers, wriggling through them quickly as my now-raw skin was torn even more by the harsh needles. Further toward the center of the bush, the briers became hardened branches rather than loose vines. The ground beneath me was covered with dead thorns, driving their way through my tough moccasins. The bear reached inward, as I crouched there, thousands of points pricking my flesh, my face, my eyelids, my scalp, tangling through my hair. The tips of its long claw brushed against my face as it swung blindly at me, pressing its sensitive nose against the outside mesh of briers. It grunted and growled, pushing inward with its whole body reaching for me, starting to dig its claws into me.
Then it was over. The bear grunted, pulled free of the vines and lumbered off, nursing a paw that was likely pierced by some thorn or other.
I lay there in the thorns like some frightened rabbit, feeling around me the thousand pin-pricks that dug into my skin. My head was clear, now. Grandfather Rook said that he hated the deeds of the Dead Face. And perhaps he did. But the way in which he was misleading young Braves was unforgivable.
Still, the White Haired Man was still headed back to the land of the pale-skinned riders and their deadly thunder-sticks. I could not linger long. I must move swiftly if I was ever to stop the White Haired Man from rallying his riders to bring death on what remained of my father’s people, for we would be weak, and another wave would surely wipe out the last warriors of the Benaquinn.
No, I thought. This is the first obstacle in my path, and I must deal with the snares I come to, pressing on toward my goal. This Grandfather Rook, elder or not, would know the error of misleading my father’s people. I closed my eyes and pulled forth from the briars, breaking and pulling as the vines sought to pull me back into their womb of pain. My skin was tatters, all my body slick with my own glistening blood. The perfect war paint. My hair was in tangles, filled with the broken brittle vines of the brush. Let this, then, be my headdress.
He stood in gossamer threads, like the weavings of a spider, hanging from his ancient, boney body, like a man who was already a corpse. The rain fell and dripped from his long white hair, straightening it from its gristle and beading in the threads of his clothing. Circling him were the snarling, inhuman Braves covered in animal skins. No words passed between any of us. Talk before or during battle is the way of the Dead Face. There is a time for words and a time for war, and the war medicine was coursing thick and fast through us all.
The first one to leap at me was a tall, thin Brave, draped in the headdress of the coyote. He screamed as he pulled two stone knives that, I saw, had been jabbed deeply into his shoulders. Yet no blood ran from the wounds he had so clearly inflicted on himself. It was as if he had made these gashes long ago and let his body heal around the weapons, using his own shoulders as sheaths. This was an ugly war medicine.
He came faster than I could have believed, running with long, inhuman strides that carried him from across the clearing in two bounds. I almost expected him to leap or weave, as I would have done, to throw my opponent off-balance. Instead he came straight on so that I was able to block his frenzied first slashes at me with his stone knives. Now the rest were in motion, diving and loping in with no subtlety. I jabbed upward, breaking the jaw of my attacker. He was not slowed at all. I was amazed to see him continue to dive at me as if he did not even feel the blow. I rolled away from the bear-brave’s club, which was an entire tree-trunk lifted and swing as if it was a simple stick, then I leapt, smashing my heavy weapon down on coyote-brave’s skull. With his head half-caved in, this boy stumbled, then shook, then lunged forward in another attack. Blood was pouring from his head now, and he was surely blind, but he came anyway. I dove out of the way of the hawk-brave who was coming at me with his bare hands and teeth, looking as if he intended to rip me apart and eat me like some raptor. I hurled my club at the bear-brave, striking him at the breastbone. If my attack injured him, he did not show for an instant that he felt the injury. This was above and beyond the battle-haze we had been taught in so many war-pits. The coyote brave should be dead or at the very least unconscious, yet none of these braves seemed to feel the pain of their wounds. The wolf-braves had been circling on the outside of the battle, and now they all pounced at once, swinging tomahawks. I dodged with all my skill and speed, but there were too many of them and they moved with quick jerks that seemed to take them from one spot to the next without actually traveling between the two places. Such speed was impossible, yet I was seeing it with my own eyes. One of them caught me on the backhand, and though it only brushed me, I was lifted off my feet and thrown tumbling back into the woods. This strength these braves showed was also impossible. If just one of these braves caught me with a blow, I would surely be cut full in-half. The only thing saving me from their demonic speed and strength was my training. These braves were powerful, yes, but they attacked in frenzy, with no thought, but sheer rage. I could see their steps before they took them and weave in and out. Now I scrambled into the underbrush, swinging my club back onto my back and pulling out my bow. Already the fur and feather-covered braves were diving into the brush, moving like animals through the thick vines and bushes. I strung an arrow and shot it into the already damaged skull of the coyote-brave. At last, the brave fell. I was then thrown forward as the bear-brave burst through the hedges behind me.
I slid back into the clearing, where I had room to move and pulled three specially prepared arrows, dipping their animal-fat soaked heads into the fire. They burst into flame and I shot them into the bear-brave who was barreling down on me. One landed deep in his chest, one shot through his neck, and one went deep into his face. Blood poured from these wounds, but did not slow him in the least. I jumped to a tree branch and swung up into the tree, then put three more arrows into the Brave’s head. He pounded the tree-trunk with his shoulder, shaking the whole tree. I tumbled from the branch, dropping my bow and pulling my club up. I swung, shattering his kneecap. The bear-brave fell to one knee and hurled his enormous club at me. I ducked, letting the wolf warrior, who was sneaking behind me, take the club into his face. If none of my blows could fell them, the bear-brave’s club seemed to topple the man. I did not hesitate in picking up this brave’s tomahawks and hurling them into the bear-brave. One nearly severed his arm and the other went deep into his stomach. Still he did not fall.
Without his kneecap, however, he was not able to move very fast, and I still had five braves to deal with. Grandfather Rook seemed to be peering at this battle as if we were all putting on a story-dance for him. Even as I had killed two of his braves, he did not look with bad face on our battle, but with a kind of war-lust in his eyes that was abhorrent.
Something slammed into my back, spilling me to the ground. I was unable to see which brave assaulted me, yet by his size, I guessed it must have been the boy in the fox head dress. He wrapped his sinewy arms around me and sank his teeth deep into my shoulder. I grit my teeth and cried within for the courage of brother-bird who tastes death with stone-face.
The boy-warrior had acted with the cunning of the animal whose hide he wore. He had waited in the brush while all other Braves attacked me immediately. He had pulled me down and exposed my floundering belly to my other attackers. I spotted from under his struggling, boney arms, a group of maybe ten raptor-braves in the trees above me. They, too, had been watching the battle with their arrow’s notched, waiting for me to expose myself to their fire. Now was their opportunity, and they all let loose their volley upon me. I yanked myself around, desperately the moment I spotted them. Two arrows found my legs, driving straight through them with a fiery pain worse than the white-man’s metal. The rest found rest in the body of the boy I had swung between the arrows and myself. He was young, but already he had taken to the warrior’s ways, and I had given him a warrior’s death. They would all have their warrior’s death before the night was killed by Sun-boy.
The wolf-braves had hung back to allow their raptor brothers a chance at my hide, now they circled in again while the bird-men were re-loading.
I had seen enough now to realize how they operated. At first I had thought that they gave themselves entirely to war-rage, attacking in a red river of anger, without thought. While this made them strong of body, it also made them clumsy. But I now saw that they had some measure of intelligence. The wolves attacked in groups from the ground, the birds pecked from the sky, and the bear pounded with all his anger. Each acted as his animal spirit might. And I knew what this meant for me. As the wolf-leader charged in at me first, I grabbed his hand and pulled him close to me, hugging him as if he were my very father. I had seen bear-brave pulling the tomahawk from his belly, seen him pulling back to hurl it at me in blind anger, and wolf-leader shuddered as the weapon sank deep into his body. I then flung him at the other wolf braves, already on top of me. I leaped from their midst, striding on one of their shoulder’s, and catching hold of a tree-branch, I swung up to where the raptor braves had just strung their arrows.
Already my leg felt heavy from where the two arrows had struck. They were possibly soaked with snake venom or poisons from the water-stalks. My tribe used such poisons in our medicine-way, small amounts making our body’s more resistant to all poison’s our enemies might use against us. Still, whatever the venom, it was slowing me down, and I nearly toppled from the tree as I tried to catch my balance.
The brave on whose branch I had lighted fired in a panic, and I caught the hilt of his arrow before it was fully out of the bow, reversed it, and drove it into his face. Like the other braves, he seemed not to feel the pain of this, and struggled as I swung his body in-between my own and the arrows from the other braves above us. This time no arrow caught me, though my unworthy foe was struck by many. As he fell away to the ground, I sprang to the branches above and began driving the birds to ground with swift strokes of my club.
The last brave charged across the branch with surprising agility, screaming a strange bird-call as he dove toward me. I caught him. His hands grappled, driving toward my eyes. We fell and struggled as we tumbled. He swung above me as we fell from the branch, and my back struck a hard branch. The jolt sent him under me and he absorbed a blow himself as we struck ground.
I was gasping as I rolled across the ground and struggled to my feet. I was fighting bravely, but there were far too many of them, and they seemed not to pause at any pain, nor to die by mortal wounds. I was tired, and now the wolves were circling back in on me. I could not continue to fight this way.
Plucking a stone knife that had fallen from the hand of the coyote brave from the ground, I charged at Grandfather Rook. A puff of dust flew from his hand, aimed at my very nostrils. I would have breathed in the foul medicine if my leg, numb from the poisoned arrows, gave way and I fell below the powder cloud. I scrambled to my feet and pulled Grandfather Rook back toward me, pressing the blade of the stone knife deep into his neck. Grinning savagely at the many braves bearing down on me, I let the old man’s situation speak for me.
Grandfather Rook did not cease his smiling, holding up his hands and making some signs toward his braves that I did not recognize. With fierce looks on their faces, these braves backed away and disappeared into the darkness of the thicket.
The old man’s skin was cold as a corpse as I pressed him against me, never once giving him an instant to slip from my grasp. He spoke calmly.
“You disappoint me, young brave. I felt certain you held within you the same hatred of the Dead Face as ourselves.”
“Hatred is not my father’s way,” I replied, “we fight what battles we must, but you have caused me to forget my father. This I cannot do.”
The old man looked to the sky, the rain pouring over his face. He spoke, as if to the heavens, but his words were still at me.
“Then you have abandoned your pursuit of the man who will destroy your people?”
“No. Tell me who he is and where he has gone.”
The old man sneered. “You are weak.”
I stared down at this frail creature, mocking me, kindling my anger. I fingered the knife, then released him.
“There is no honor in attacking an old man,” I said, turning away, “If you will not help me, I will find him myself. I warn you, Grandfather. You may deceive a few outcasts, but you will never win over my father’s very Braves with your wickedness.”
“And you will never catch this stranger without my help.”
“I do not need your low medicine ways, old man,” I said, immediately guilty at the disrespect.
“I do not need medicine to tell me the path to this wanderer. I have seen his path, I know his very heart.”
I turned back to the horrible, enchantingly dark eyes of Grandfather Rook. “Tell me then.”
“This man will continue to travel south, passing through the Sorrowful Sisters and into the Wyrdelands. The Kliech will not attack him for they fear him. Short will be his journey through the Wyrdelands and then he will pass through the stone towers into the deserts. If you do not catch him by this time, you have lost him. He will find the great Iron Horse the Deadfaces drive ever deeper toward our sacred lands and this he will ride back to bring a wave of death on what is left of your people.”
I stared hard at the old man smiling at me. “Moments ago you were doing your best to have me killed. Why would you help me in this quest?”
“The Deadfaces are both our enemies. I tried to give you the power to destroy them. My braves are driven by their rage to a power you could not envision. They would not be stopped by the white man’s metal and thundersticks. But if you will not take the power I offer you, I give you the only other thing I can: my words of wisdom. Now go, Bitter Wind. Go forth and fail.”
Without a word I turned and journeyed forth out of that cursed thicket.
Two days of journey seemed like a mere dream, save for the constant ache in my leg reminding me of my battle in Grandfather Rook’s thicket. I wondered as I lay beneath the cloud-shrouded moon how many Isrean had been brought low through his lies. Certainly he had lied to me as well. Nevertheless, I followed the path he had laid out for me, knowing well it must be a trap. I would simply be glad to have an ending to this journey, even if the story of my death was written by this very devil’s coup-stick.
Hunger was the very real threat that fell upon me first. The spring rains had come, the sky above me was an eternal blanket of grey, rumbling and booming, so that water was delivered daily from the sky, but the plains yield no root or fruit. Only game was to be found here, and my leg was still weak. Rocks gave me grubs, and night crawlers struggled up from the over-moist ground. These were food enough, but I kept my bow at ready as I limped along, prepared for the brush-birds that scattered before me in the high-grass.
I was surprised at how quickly the Westlands were disappearing behind me. I kept my course intimate with the foothills that shot up from the plains unto that great thatch of mountains which, my people say, rises almost to heaven, only to fall into the great pit at the center. When my leg was strong enough I found branches to bind with my deerhide cloak and formed a travois to drag my possessions behind me. At night the cloth became a cover from the rain.
If Grandfather Rook’s tongue was a liar, he had mingled his words with truth, for in a handful of nights the storm broke westward long enough to show the blood-red sunset shining through two stone towers, twisted downward, brush hanging from their drooping tops like witches’ hair. These, then, must be the weeping sisters. These dramba formed the only passing through the walls of rock that swept upward and outward to the West.
Now I knew why the storm had broken. This chain of mountains stood eternally against the north wind, sending clouds backward to the plains. No rain fell in the Wyrdlands.
I could not help but to tremble as I came to this place. I had heard the stories my people tell of the Wyrdelands. This was not, of course, our name for the place. Our people had no name for these lands, for they were cursed of God. The legend says that, in that time before time, as Gabrillu did battle with the great Sistra, both of the great spirits struck one another with stunning blows. Gabrillu, it is said, fell back upon the coastlands, which sprouted green with trees and flowers to cushion his fall. The Sistra fell back in the opposite direction, landing on the Wyrdlands. This land died at once, becoming rocky and barren as God turned his back on the land that would as much as break the fall of the Sistra.
Everywhere I looked was gray plains, swept with dust into a gray sky, also swept with dust. If those clouds that hung so low let loose any rain, it was sucked back up into the sky before it ever reached the ground. I stood in gray and did not wonder that the Kliech who lived here went mad.
I paused for only a moment to gaze upon this new land. The weeping sisters were gazing down upon me and I found such scrutiny unsettling. I plodded onward for there was nothing else I could do.
The white haired killer must have passed this way. But how should I find the road he had traveled when everything in this place was gray and barren? No roads cut across this plain, save the tracts the wind cut deep into the loosened soil. This same wind swept clean away any tracks that my quarry may have left.
I could only trust entirely on his good sense, which I was unable to admit to. Only a fool or a madman would stray too far westward from the mountains. These very mountain faces that in my home of the Westlands had seemed so grand, in this land looked like hateful, broken things. It seemed upon peering at them that some great hand had taken a tomahawk, sky-wide, and smashed it down upon their once-proud faces, now shattered and full of scorn.
A few days hugging the mountains would bring me across this wasteland to yet another wasteland, the Badlands. I did not, however, fear the Badlands. The Badlands were an Isrean dream-place, home to the spirits and to the wandering Nation of the Dan.
I did not fear for food or water, either. I had filled a water-skin with the rain I wrung from my soaked cloths, and if necessary I could go a few days without food. It was the Kliech I feared.
I saw it a long distance off, standing dark against the shifting, gray plain. A horse, it was, so thin and skeletal I would have thought it dead if it were not standing. I began to walk in its direction for no other reason than that it was there. It occurred to me that this could be some trick of the Kliech. This was their sort of medicine, to take a dead and stiffened horse and stand it back on its feet. They were followers of the coyote, the trickster spirit. If they could I am sure they would drown birds and tie fish to tree-branches.
Nearer to the horse, I was certain that I was correct. There was no life in this creature. A fowl stench issued forth from the being, and very little hair remained on its cracked and leathery flanks. It’s tail and mane were almost entirely gone, and I could see clearly its bones around which it’s skin was so tightly stretched, flies crawling in patches across its decimated body. Sure, I was, that if I were to push this thing it would tip and shatter upon the ground. I felt inclined to do so and foil any design the Kliech may have had for this travesty.
As I approached the thing, however, it shuddered, and to my horror, it’s head turned back to peer at me from clouded, blind eyes. Its lips had crumpled and pulled back from its teeth in dryness so that its mouth was fixed in a ghastly grin, while a yellow crust had formed at the edges of its mouth and around the rims of its eyes. It took all my will, then, to keep from crying out, for this sight seemed designed to despair.
I closed my eyes and filled my head with thoughts of the home plains, the healthy, roaming herds of dappled horses and the great, noble Bison. I thought of my father, my brothers and sisters, my beloved Satu and of my greatest friend, Ticgoppa, called Laughing Squirrel. Ticgoppa was two seasons younger than myself, and had always been small. He was very energetic and quick, though, and made up often enough for his small size with his speed. He was always smiling, and forever joking about. Many of the braves looked down on this lack of seriousness, but to me it was a relief among the stone-faced warriors. The thought of his joking, casual manner somehow comforted me in this place of strange horrors.
Ticgoppa was dead, now, I recalled. Dead because he had, for the price of a horse and a thunderstick, traded information to the Dead Faces of my nations traveling route. They had cut us off in ambush, and many Braves were killed. My father personally headed the war party that hunted down and killed Ticgoppa, hiding pathetically behind the corpse of his newly gained horse, firing two shots from his thunderstick before it stopped working.
I had cleared my head, now. This past was no better than the present. Always letting actions follow thoughts as my father had taught me, this is the way of the true Brave. As the spirits bear witness, I hated that horse. Would God allow any good creature to suffer to this degree?
However, it occurred to me that a horse in the Wyrdelands would not be ordinary. This land’s grass was scant and brown, pushing its way up through a soil that looked as if it had been churned up with dried blood, where the thistles all vied for dominance in the dim sunlight.
Trying to keep my distance from the creature, whose leering, blind gaze followed me wherever I stepped, I looked more closely for what I knew I must find. Finally, as I lay down on my side, I could see that its feet had been strapped with the iron shoes of the white man’s horses. This was some stud ridden out by the white-haired devil himself. I believed the man must have left this horse for dead, perhaps continuing on foot or riding some other steed. He may have taken more than one on his journey.
I could take no more of this breathing corpse. It had told me all it could in its speechless, leering way. So I rose up and pressed onward toward the broken foothills.
I was stumbling along in the dreary gray of this endless plain when it first occurred to me that the ground I tread on formed some sort of path. I knelt and examined the hard-packed gray soil. The hoof prints were thoseof the long horns that the Dead-Faces drove on a yearly trek around the wheel. My feet had naturally fallen to treading along this even, well-packed soil. I knew that this path would lead me quickly out of this place, but at the same time I feared the contact it might bring me with the Dead Faces. The Kliech, also, would post war-parties along this path to ambush traveling men. Little did I care, at this point, however. The Wyrdelands were sucking the very life from my bones.
The night fell upon me like an ambush, and it was spans later, stumbling about in the darkness, that I found a suitable crevice in a rock formation some distance from the cattle-path to make nest. I said my prayers and made the meditations to keep my hiding place secret throughout the night, unwinding a cord attached to my belt and stringing it along the ground around me as I did. If anything approached my resting spot, it’s feet would tug the cord at my waste and wake me. I had expected the Wyrdeland’s night to be full of foul sounds alien to my ears that would cause me to jump and rob me of sleep. What came instead was far more sinister to my ears and senses. Silence. The silence of the Wyrdelands was so absolute it filled my head with buzzing and assaulted the walls of my heart with the temptations of terrible imaginings.
I did sleep, though, for my eyes were closed as dawn peeked at the horizon, breaking briefly through the grayness of the sky. As my eyes flickered open I was horrified to discover I was gazing into the yellow-crusted muzzle of that horror-horse, staring with insane gayety from its clouded and sightless eyes.
I cried out and sprang to my feet. Without thought, my mind clouded with terror, I sank two arrows into the creatures flank. It made no sound, but shuddered and collapsed in front of me. Still my heard did not still and I shot arrow after arrow into the carcass of the beast until I could breath steadily again. I ran, my protection-cord ripping away from my belt. Little good it had done me. When the dead thing was finally beyond my sight and far downwind of me, I fell to the dirt and panted. These actions of mine were not fit for a Brave of the Benaquin, far less for a prince. I had shamed my father with my weak heart, yet here I sat, far, far away from family or tribe, any sort of friendly help. Even my eagle sat with me no longer. Slowly this vision-quest was robbing me of everything I looked to for comfort.
Surely God himself turned his back on this dead landscape. But, I thought, gathering my feet beneath me, it would be better to die in this place than to return to bring shame on my family. Satu’s father had once told me that to continue the journey you need only focus on your very next step. This I did, all through the dark day, step after step thinking no further ahead than the lifting of my foot.
The land became stranger still as I traveled on. Boiling lakes of mud lay all around me, some bursting into the air, casting scalding water to the sky from shelves of white salt. The air smelled foul, like some Sistra had chosen this spot for its droppings. The spirits of this place were angry, and might feast on me if I brought myself to their notice.
But these lands, too, passed away. Three days, now, I had gone in these lands with no sign of life, save for the miserable stranger I had killed. My water skin, even rationed, had run out. Some medicine men prided themselves on the ability to lock themselves away without food or water for days and weeks, making their meditations their food. This was not a trick I knew.
Was the creature I had slain a Sistra in disguise? Had I angered the spirits of this place where even God turned his head aside?
It was the fourth day, mouth dry and eyes burning with the constant dust, that I stumbled upon what had clearly been a white man’s camp. The charred remains of his fire, built with the oily twigs and sticks from the brush and thistles of this land. I knelt and brushed the dust with my hand. Here was the spot where he lay, here a strand of his white hair. Another was present at this camp as well. This one wore mochasins. One of the Kliech? Surely not. They wore nothing on their feet save the black skin from the plant oils. A horse had been here, too.
It was a miracle I was able to find these tracks at all. The camp this Dead Face had chosen was guarded from the constantly shifty dust by a bank in the road. It was over this bank the Isrean had crept, lying somewhere near the muzzle of the horse. The horse had taken off suddenly. Two mettle leavings from the white-haired man’s weapon made it clear he had fired upon the Isrean. I saw no blood, though. If he had killed the Isrean, he must have been at a distance.
I was tired and thirsty, but this finding heartened me. I could see the distant form of the Drambadapeyui, and the constant clouds that boiled against them. Another day and a half on foot would have me in the shade of those canyons. There, I was certain, springs would be.
I smelled them before I saw them. Rotting bodies in the heat-beneath-the-clouds. They were high up on the cliff, hanging over where they had been slain on either side of the canyon. One was a white woman, the other a white man. I walked on grimly, and the smell of death grew stronger.
A short way into the pass, I found large pieces of rock from the canyon wall strewn along the passage. Something unnatural had caused a rockslide, and I could tell that some Dead Face weapon had blown a section of the cliff away.
I climbed wearily over the boulders, noting the blood smeared on the ground. Whoever had fallen there had not died there. I could see the blood trailing from the spot, and the limping foot falls as this boot-wearing Dead Face had made his way up the narrow side-passage.
This had been a brutal battle, whatever had happened here. There was no doubt in my mind that the white-haired Sistra had been at its heart. I followed that bloody trail up the passage.
I had to clamor over fallen boulders and debris in order to get up the passage. When I reached the top I saw that this had been some Dead-Face fortress, I could smell the water that must have drawn them to this spot. I could also smell the time-soured blood. Many a thunder-stick lying on the ground with dry and crusted pools of blood all about. It was easy to read the ground here, where the wind did not blow over the high rock walls. The White-Haired man had come up this passage alone. He danced and many men died. I could see a blood splatter interrupting his quick dance-steps. Someone had injured the dancing devil. But still he was the victor against many of his own kind. Someone had removed the bodies after the battle. All this was in the recent past, but for the present, I was in bad need of the spring-water that had once fed this camp, and the feeble cattle-calls from further back in this cove told me there was meat to be had as well. But another sound stopped me in my tracks. It was the creak of metal and a low moaning that did not sound animal at all. Could someone yet be alive in this dead place? The Dead Faces did not honor the spirits of their departed as the Isrean did. Perhaps these restless ghosts still wandered here.
As if in response to my thoughts, I heard a low groan echoing across the abandoned town. Before I could think I was already on the ground, scooping up dust and pouring it over my head. My hair, my head, my entire body was already caked with the dust of the Wyrdelands. Was this soil, so misplaced, an offense to the spirits? I would not be able to reach the water to purify myself with the groaning spirit guarding it.
It was then that I saw it from the corner of my eye. It was a white man’s springhead, made of metal and pumped by hand. I had seen such devices sprouting from the ground at trading posts before.
It was a misery to rise on my aching joints and move to the springhead. The spirit’s groaning had died down, as if it lacked the strength to go on, but now as I pumped the device, all my thoughts turned toward the cold water I could feel rising to the surface that then began to pour out of the fountain.
Everything within me ached to taste the cold water, but before my tongue and thirsty organs could feel this crystal flow, I had to scrub away the filth of the wasteland. Even then, I only allowed myself a few small drips from the fountainhead. I would sample more in time, but my body, so long in thirst, would not do well with the river I wished to pour down my throat.
When the groan came this time, it sounded with a rattle, like the breath of a wounded deer. And then there was the tinkling, metal against rock. I pulled my bow, swift despite my weary pains. This was no spirit that plagued this place. Something was alive.
I could not concentrate to do a meditation, so I pushed my back against the wall as far as I was capable, and peered around the corner. The sounds were coming from high on the rock walls. This was what had made me think they were spirits. But as my gaze rose almost to the dark sky floating over the wall, I saw it, and wondered that I had not noticed it immediately. It loomed like a totem over the whole town. An enormous Dead-Face hung wrapped in chains that had been pounded into the wall on iron spikes driven by some immense force. Speaking pictures had been splashed beneath him in blood or paint, I did not know which.
This man was still alive. I could guess from the drying blood and fresh marks that the slaughter here had taken place perhaps a few days ago. This man was old, as dead-faces age, but he must be strong to have survived so much and still clung to life. I could see from where I crouched that he had me fixed with his eye. Had probably been watching me for a long time. Now that our eyes met, his dried and cracking lips moved, like a living wound in his death mask of a face. No words issued forth. His throat was probably drier than my own. I pondered saving this man. He was slowly fading, would probably expire before I had fully left this place. I was certainly not feeling generous to the Dead Faces now, but it was clear that this man and others like him had shed blood to stand against the White Haired man. And this old man had been disgraced of even the privilege of a warrior’s death. He deserved something. And I would hear what tale he had to tell.
I emerged from my hiding place, and strolled toward this stonewall, my moccasins hardly making a mark in the dust. As I walked, a mighty rushing sound echoed through the canyon and off the wooden walls of this Dead Face town. My eyes turned skyward, and there, from out of the Wasteland, there rose a great black cloud. Out of the wayland, from the direction of my home, from the heart of the Wyrdelands, it rushed, rising like a striking serpent to then plunge over the rock walls, this cloud came. A cloud of a thousand black birds, they plunged then rose, then swirled before roosting, spreading out all over that great rock wall where the ancient white man was chained, spread eagle, over the mouth of the deep spring cave. They covered the man entire, until all that remained was a spreading fluttering infection across the wall, blackest at the center where a man should be.
I shouted. The birds rose, like a curtain, briefly showing the man beneath before falling across him once more. This time I let out the battle cry of my people, screaming with my heart as well as my throat. The birds rose with a ruckus, their own screams mingling with mine. Above me they swooped and twisted in a whirling black cloud of moving bodies above the canyon.
Now that I could see the man again, I saw his leathery eyelids flicker and open. His cloudy, blue eyes drifted down toward me, peering out from behind a curtain of wrinkles. His lips moved, though if words came, they were whispers lost in the fluttering of thousands of wings.
I shouldered my water-skin and began scrambling up the foot and hand-holds on the side of the rock. When I reached the metal ropes, I was able to pull myself up easily to face-level with this man. He was not quite as large as the Gorgo, but he was massive as Dead Faces go, strong, even this old, even this close to death.
Wrapping my wrist in the metal ropes, I used my free hand to tip my water-skin to moisten the stranger’s mouth. His cracked lips now wetted, they began to move again. They formed into a smile.
“Thank you, Astaquin, Prince of the Benaquin.”
To hear my name, in my own tongue so far from the green fields where my father’s Braves hunted buffalo, and coming from this alien looking man; the shock was great. I nearly lost my grip on the iron rope.
“Who are you, Grandfather?” I called him the name of honor in my own language without thinking. The Dead Faces age much more quickly in this wild land than do the Isrean. This man was probably younger than my own father.
“Look into my eyes, boy. Remember.”
And I DID remember. The old white man who stood at the trading post that once. He offered me rock candy, then he and my father separated to speak for a long, long time. It was such a small thing, but the candy was what stuck in my mind for so long. I would think back to the time I received it and remember I had never tasted anything like it, save, perhaps, honey.
This old man had had an Isrean companion. A Dan, of the horsemen. I was, at the time, a small child, and this Dan knelt next to me as I crunched the hard rock-candy between my teeth.
“That’s my father,” I said, sure that we were allowed to speak to the people of Dan.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Who is the hair-face?” I asked, my mouth sticky with candy. The Dan did not smile at my boyish expression, but his eyes twinkled behind his stone-like warrior’s face.
“He is a great road-maker among the Dead Face, and a friend to Isrean.”
“Is he making friends with my father?”
“He and your father share a sadness. I am surprised you did not know. The Road-Maker took your second aunt for his first wife. She died trying to bear your half-blood cousins.”
The Dan would talk to me no more on this subject. On the trail home asked my father if he was angry at this man for taking his sister away and making her bear her death-child. My father did not answer for so long, I thought he never would. Finally, he said, “Anger is a poison to the spirit. But I long for a second time, where your aunt did not take to this Dead Face wanderer. That sadness will never die within me.”
“Then why do you make talk with the Road-Maker?”
“I talk to him when our trails pass to make certain that he feels the same sadness I do, and always will.”
Seeing this Road-Maker now, this memory came strong in my head, and with it the taste of the rock candy seemed to ghost across my tongue.
“Hello, Road-Maker. Tell me how, and I will free you for a time.”
The Road-Maker’s eyes were fluttering closed as I spoke, and I believed he may not be strong enough to continue. His lips opened, then closed, then opened again.
“In the shack of the coffin-man. There should be a file. Metal that saws through metal.” This time he spoke in the white-man’s tongue. I nodded.
“Hold life a little longer, and we will see you free.”
Finding the tool that the Road-Maker talked about was simple enough. The metal rope was one piece, woven and wrapped like a web around the great white-man. Sawing through a section of it was a long and exhausting task, and the Road-Maker’s stillness almost caused me to think that perhaps he had expired while I was working. Still I continued to saw. Metal flakes fell in a snow, shining brightly even though the chain they came from was dull and black. It came to me, only a moment before the chain snapped, that I was hanging by that chain, that in the next moment, me and my old, weary friend would plummet the distance of two braves standing upon one another’s shoulders. And then it was too late, and the metal rope broke with a crack, and there was a great rattle as the entire web began to unravel and unwind from the spikes that held it to the cliff. We fell, then, and with a jolt I fell free of the metal rope, while the rest of the half-unraveled chain caught on something, leaving my friend moaning, dangling and swinging only a few spans above the dusty ground. I struggled to suck breath back into my collapsed lungs and pull my body off the ground. There was as screeching sound, then another crack and the entire mass collapsed, flinging my friend and great coils of metal rope into a heap upon the ground.
I scrambled over to where the man lay, barely visible under the piles of metal. I scooped up handfuls of the great metal rope, heaving it aside and scooping up more, as I struggled to excavate this man from his twofold prison. When the snake-like metal rope was finally off this man, I pulled on his deer-hide shirt, rolling him slowly over until his face gasped upward at the sky, now boiling with clouds of dark birds.
I was there, pressing my water skin against his lips. He took a few more gulps, then his eyes widened and he spit, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“No more!” he gasped, “The water is… desecrated.”
“What happened here, Road Maker?”
“You can see it plain as I can, written there on the dust and blood. A man came to town…”
“The white-haired Sistra—you say devil, ho? The evil spirit that walks like a man?”
The old man nodded and coughed violently. When his breathing resumed, it was ragged and shallow.
“His… name is Jared Mann.”
“You know him, then?”
A shudder wracked the Road-Maker’s body, and I could not tell at that moment whether it was death’s blind-eye opening to this man, or if it was the thought of that evil-spirit that walked as a man that made him shake so.
“I don’t think anyone could know that man. But I met him once, sixty years… seasons, ago.”
I looked into the watery, far away eyes of this man, dying in my arms, denied a warrior’s death by a walking abomination that still had the body of a young man while this old and noble Road-Maker had withered with time and faded. It was nearly enough to move me to tears; I, a Benaquin Prince and master of the Way of the Brave, whose face is granite, whose heart is stone.
I thought of the weary distance I had walked in tracking this sistra, this Manitou that walks like a man. And of the weary distance I had yet to travel.
Then I thought of his power in battle, and my stone heart nearly melted with fear of the power he wielded. To fight this evil, I must know it. This old man before me was breathing his last breaths before he journeyed on to the Hunting Grounds. I would claim those last breaths as my property. I would have his tale.
“Tell me,” I said.
