Chapter Eight: Death March

            "It was during the great war between the Isreen and the whites," the old man spoke, his language switching between his tongue and my own at intervals. 

 

I remember just how it happened.  Every little part.  I was just finishing up my first cabin.  When I had started, I knew nothing about building cabins.  I dug a foundation, and found out almost immediately that it became flooded and muddy whenever it rained.  Then I moved my cabin sight up to a high, shaded spot and tried digging again only to find that it was mostly stone.  So I just started stacking logs.  Water still came in when it rained.  So then I started sealing the holes with mud.  It was a long and miserable spring, but I was finally figuring out what I was doing.

It was around mid-day and I was chopping a tree with an axe that had been sharpened so much, it hardly had a head left.  It was a bright, sunny day, and all manner of birds and critters were making noises on the mountainside.  Most of the mountain was scattered with dead trees, some standing, some lying flat.  The ones I was cutting were further down the hill, near the valley stream. 

I was hauling back to take another wack at a tree that didn't look close to falling when I felt what seemed like someone shoving me on the shoulder.  I started to turn around, only to discover that my left arm didn't want to move, it looked like I had hit a branch with my shoulder.  I tried pushing the branch away, and that's when the pain hit my like a stampede.  I fell to one knee and dug my teeth into my lip to keep from screaming.  When I had touched the stick, I remembered feeling the feathery tip.  I had been hit by an arrow.

            I knew what I needed to do next, and I did it without stopping to cogitate on my raw, seering pain.  I ran.  I ran uphill toward the cabin I was building.  I dived over the wall, then lay flat, gropping for the rifle I had stached up there with my sleeping gear.  I heard a sharp bird call answered by another closer to me.  Then there was a slight whooshing sound and I felt heat pushing against my ear.  In the ground past me was an arrow set afire.  I kicked it, and pushed the muzzle of my rifle up over the unfinished wall of my cabin.  I only had one shot before I had to reload my rifle, and with an arrow sticking out of my arm, I was not entirely sure I could finish the task before I was dead.  Another arrow flew over the wall, and another, and I heard several sinking into the wall beyond me.  It was clear that the Scraelings were aiming for where I was just by the bit of gun they could see peeking over the wall.  With that kind of accuracy, I knew I didn't stand a chance of sticking my head over the wall.

            I poked at the mud sealing the cracks until I got a bit of a hole and peeked out.  I could see nothing but hill and trees.  I concentrated, looking for movement, but while the arrows kept flying, I saw no Scraelings. 

            I had to curse to myself.  I knew their game.  The arrows were just to keep me busy while one of their braves crept around the hill and got me from behind.

            There was a town not too far from here.  A few miles.  That's probably where the savages were heading.  I was just recreation on their path.

            I looked at the blackened outer wall of my unfinished cabin and grimmaced.  So much for this project.  I looked down at my supplies.  Canteen, powder horn, rifle, bed-roll.  So that was the plan.  I wanted to cry, but a beautiful cabin in the woods would do me no good with an arrow in my gutt. 

           

            When the fire hit my black-powder horn, it made a dull thumping sound like a big boulder hitting the sod.  I was too busy scampering away down the other side of the mountain to pay it much mind, but the very surprised-looking Scraeling Brave that I trundled past seemed mighty fascinated with the heap of black clouds billowing up from where my cabin used to be.  I reckon that kept a tomahawk out of my back.

 

            The town of Tack was tidy, and on most days I would have appreciated that.  It was layed out in three neat streets, with a town square at the center that had a neat fence of stones that looked like they had been stacked by a mathematician.  The green grass in the town square seemed to be mowed, and there was what looked like the beginning of a statue being carved out of an upright peice of lumber. 

            In spite of the abundance of time some of Tack's more creative citizens seemed to have on their hands, the people were hard working, and their green gardens spoke not only of the richness of the land, but of the hours of backbreaking work everybody put into cultivating and harvesting the bounty.

            I had come into tack often enough for the trading post that the people there knew me enough for a howdy-doo.  I found out later that they all thought I was a crazy man.  I reckon I didn't help that perception none when I came flying into town hollering my head off.

            Clancy, a puffed up man who had been one of the first to form a town counsel to give the lazier gentlemen an excuse not to work on anything useful, tried to step in my way.  I knocked him over and kept on running.

            I have to confess I wasn't exactly the picture of calm-thinking in this moment of crisis.  I reckon I must have run up and down all three of the town's streets before I finally found the meeting bell.  I had passed it twice.

            It was built up on a little pedistool of stone right next to the town well.  As I leapt up to clang the bell with all the ferver of tick-riddled hound-dog, I had the absurd image of a child ascending the pedistool and promptly tumbling into the well play idly through my head.  That exact thing happened two years later.  I wonder sometimes if I have the gift.

            It didn't take but three or four shouts of "Scraeling attack!  Get your rifles!" before the whole town was scampering like an ant-hill.  The laudable town-counsel had organized and re-organized a town militia, at some point deciding it would be better to have all the guns and powder in one building on the edge of town.  Citing fire-hazard, I imagine.  The depths of their wisdom was evident as it took them a good five minutes to find the key that kept the building locked.  They were still searching when I kicked the door in and started passing out guns to anxious farmers.

            Arrows were already raining down from the hillside, and I had to shout to get the women and children inside.  When people still looked confused, I strolled over to Clancy, grabbing him by his frilly, abundant collar and told him to get the women and children out of danger.  Since that presumably meant he, also, would get to remove himself from danger, he seemed eager enough to take that duty.  Then I shouted for the men to start packing powder in the rifles, and grabbed a group that already seemed to have had that idea, and got them kneeling behind the stone wall, waiting for the savages to descend. 

            It was a hopeless effort.  No one could see the attackers, and their bows seemed to have better range than our rifles.  We fired anyway, blindly into the hills.  It wasn't long before I realized the problem we faced.  These were farmers and their ammunition would not hold out long.  Blindly firing into the hills was the best way to run out of ammunition and get ourselves killed.

            There was really only one thing I could think to do that might stop this thing, and it was a risk.  I went down the line instructing the men to stop loading shot into their rifles and simply fire blank rounds of powder to preserve the illusion that the line presented a danger.  Then I grabbed five of the better shooters, men I had hunted with this last winter, and we began sneaking the long way out of town.

            It took a spell to round the mountain and come up behind our attackers.  From the hilltop I could finally start to pick out the Scraelings from the tall grass.  They were still difficult to catch with the eye.  They moved in a way unnatural for men, swaying with the tall grass as it was brushed by the breeze.  It was hard to tell where the ground stopped and they began.  I had heard rumors, of course, of the Scraeling blending meditations, but to see its effects was something entirely new to me.

            I was surprised to see that our attackers were, perhaps, a dozen strong.  From the number of arrows, I had assumed a large war-party was assaulting the town.  I whispered to my men to each choose a target and line him up.  We hunkered down into the grass, and I fired the signal shot.  The men in town stopped shooting.  If they followed my instruction, they would be loading shot into their barrels now and moving toward the edge of town to surround our opponents.  The Scraelings were clearly surprised by the flanking maneuver, and showed it by dropping their concentration and becoming more visible. 

            "You're surrounded, Chief!" I shouted.  "Leave your weapons and git, and we'll forgive you this time."

The men from town were starting to show, poking their heads and rifles out from the cracks between the buildings and over the picket fence.  The tension and fear showed in their faces, even from the top of the hill.  I wondered how much use they would be if the Scraelings decided to press the attack.

            One particularly impressive specimen stood up, tall and muscular and trussed up like a bird with all his feathers.  He had a sort of holy rage standing out with all the muscles in his body.  His eyes flashed white.

            "Dead Faces build homes all over Torakit hills!  Dead Faces do not move with the seasons!  Animals become few, and Torakit will starve!"

            "The Torakit are farmers," I called back, "You all are just picking a fight without a good reason.  Go back to your hoga and raise fat babies on maize."

            "Well said," came a smooth voice from behind me.  I spun around to discover several horsemen had apparently managed to sit themselves at the crest of the hill without me ever noticing them.  My mind must have been otherwise occupied.  The speaker continued, "We saw your little hassle just now.  I must confess, I was about to step in and lend you my humble assistance, but it seems I underestimated your tactical skills mister..."

The man who was speaking was tall and thin, with a feathery main of grey-white hair that fell back over his shoulders.  He wore a faded-grey riding coat with boots so polished, I could see my face in them.  His face was smooth and pale, and impossible to read.  He could have been thirty or sixty.  He had no weapons out, but he could have easily kept something hidden beneath his riding coat.  The men with him, perhaps twenty in all, were dressed in what might have once been uniforms, but were so ripped, dirty, and heavily patched, that it was hard to tell what they had once looked like.

            "Davey," I answered, "Bo Davey.  And you all would be?"

            "I'm Captian Jared Mann and these used-up, pathetic rags are the forth national.  You know, I believe I've heard mention of a Bo Davey in these parts.  Bit of a local trailblazer aren't you?"

            I shrugged modestly.  "I reckon I've blundered about in the woods some.  I suppose others have followed me enough to make the walking easy."

            Jared looked across the valley, taking in the small settlement.  "These people are lucky to have you as a neighbor, Mister Davey.  The Torakit tribes have become restless, and I have come across a half-dozen towns this size burnt to the ground in their wake.  I wouldn't be surprised if this little war-party here was responsable for more than a few of these tragedies."

            I was shocked to hear this.  The Torakit were largely known as docile farmers.  I had assumed that this was simply a hunting party gone sour because they found a city where there used to be deer.  To hear that they had burnt towns, that they were on the war-path, was nearly impossible to take in.  I realized that Jared was smiling at me.

            "You did such an excellent job with Ho-ban-tin here, I wonder if you might assist us in stopping these attacks?"

 

            I will never be able to say for certain how he managed to convince me to lead a militia, but for the next three months, thats just what I did.  Most of that time was spent chasing war-parties around the woods without anything I could honestly call a "fight". 

            Scraelings... sorry, Isreen, are difficult to track or find.  I know now that the warrior I was after was named Picquon, and he managed to stay a step ahead of me for months.

            He was progressing steadily along the green valley floor, further and further away from the Torakit traditional lands.  We only caught up with his traces when we found another farm or town burned and pillaged. 

            There was a kind of honor to his method, and I begrudgingly learned to respect him for it.  Picquon seemed to attack farms and take the food.  He would kill the men that chose to defend the farms, but he always seemed to leave the women and children untouched, which is more than I expected.

            Another thing I grew to respect and hate at the same time was the sly way Picquon managed to slip past me and my men again and again without ever confronting us.

            After twelve weeks, my men were cold, exhausted, and nearly starved, and we still had accomplished nothing.  It was about that time I decided to start doing things the smart way, and I got an old codger who had run the green valley his entire life to make me a map of the settlements.  That way I could try to beat Picquon to his next target. 

 

            We had a tasty target all picked out.  It was a large farm in a clearing on the top of a hill that was run by one large family that had been there for probably three generations.  Their barn would be full of maize, sweet hay, and turnips.  That alone was enough to encourage my men to get there before the Scraelings did.  We had come to the opinion that they were destroying all the places with food just to starve us out.

 

            We approached the hill from the north-west, cantering on our ponies who weren’t hurting none from all the riding.  They could eat grass and drink from the crystal stream that ran the length of the valley.  We needed more to quiet the burning in our bellies. 

            Telly, a trumpet player and poor excuse for a sharpshooter, was nipping at my heals with an idiot grin and white knuckles clenching at the leather-strap reigns of his pony.

            “C’mon, Davey!  Let’s charge the hilltop!  Worst we can do is show up too early for a fight, and then it’s good eats all the way in!”

            Telly always had this approach, leading me to the strong opinion his mother had dropped him on his head once too often.  I kept him at my left for the fights.  To my right, taking all the time in the world sat Sidleman.  He was the slowest man I had ever met.  Everything he did was done with a sullen look of concentration, and when he spoke, which was rarely, he did so with a deep, thoughtful voice.  He gave me some of the best advice any man ever had, and he helped balance out Telly’s guns’n’glory approach, wanting to rush ahead into everything.  Both had their uses.

            I had made my mind to come up on the ranch from the woods that hedged the field opposite of where the wagon trail came into the clearing.  This was a risky move, as it was the direction the Scraelings would most likely come, but that was the train of my thought: catch them at the backside.

            So there we came, a band of maybe a dozen men, mostly farmers, itchy and scared.  The birds were chirping and the crickets were fiddling, and there was nothing about the hill that gave us the least impression that trouble might be brewing.  Not that we would see the Scraelings if they were on top of us in the woods, but we held the hope that maybe this once we had been as cunning as they.

            As we continued to rise up the hillside, scaly with brown and rotting leaves, and the arrows and spears continually failed to fall, it became clear we were either late or early.  Then Telly smelled fire, and squeaked this discovery to me.  I urged my men into a charge!

            When we finally broke the brushy and unyielding edge of the forest where the brown yielded to green, we had a surprise awaiting us.

           

            I suppose the first thing that came to my attention was the man on the slender, dappled-grey horse that sat so tall in the saddle, he might have had a fencepost shoved up his spine.  He had a wide-brimmed black hat and longcoat in the tradition of the Gunslingers of old. 

            With him were a handful of men dressed about the same.  And in front of them were THIRTY SCRAELING WARRIORS, all with their hands on their heads!  This man and his few partners had somehow rounded up Picquon’s entire war party, and then built himself a little bonfire with their spears, bows, and arrows!

           

            The tall, straight man, so clearly the leader here, gave me a smile as my ragged little force came stumbling into the field and shouted, “Weeeell!  Looks like we got us some reinforcements!  Good job, too!  They nearly had us whipped!”

I grinned back at the good-natured jibe. 

            “Us?  Nawww… we just came for the fire.  My boys feet are near froze off with all the wading we been doing through the Green Valley River.”

            My men, possibly the rowdiest group of ruffians I ever had the pleasure to prod into military service, stood in unnatural silence, gapping unconsciously at what they knew to be legends among men.  The Gunslingers, for their part, never showed for a moment that they regarded us as less than equals.  They seemed enormously human to me.

            “My name is Jack Rider,” the man announced, reaching a gloved hand down from his black-and-gold leather saddle.  I wiped my dirty hands against my buckskins, and reached up.  Back then, my hands were strong and meaty, but this man’s narrow fingers held my hand with enough strength to cut into the meat of them. 

            “It’s a pleasure, Mister Rider.  I’m Bo Davey.  This is Telly, Siddleman.  And these are the boys.”

            Jack Rider gave a rough smile and gracious nod in their direction.  “I understand your boys put aside their duties to come save their homes from the Scraelings.”

I looked at the Scraeling ‘menace’ that stood, faces stoney and downcast, staring at their weapons going up in flames as if it was their very freedom that they watched.

            “I can’t comprehend it, myself, Mr. Rider,” I puzzled.  “These are the Torakit.  They’re farmers.  I’ve never heard of them leading more than a hunting party to kill a few white-tails.  Suddenly this fella up and starts killing whites and burning towns like it were the end of the world.”

            “I’m afraid I am not sufficiently informed to answer your puzzle, Mr. Davey,” Rider replied, frowning.  “My men and I were headed north when we heard of your difficulty.  We would have left the job handling the insurgence in your more-than-capable hands, but fortune brought us into the path of these warriors, and we did as I thought best in capturing them alive.  If you need us to, we can spare a few weeks to attempt to negotiate a settlement with these people.”

            What happened then actually began while Rider was still speaking.  The heads of the Scraelings began to turn and bob like nervous sparrows sipping from a puddle, and a sound like a roaring wave began as the Gunslingers all slapped leather as if they were of one mind.  Jack Rider I noticed in particular.  In a flash of movement his trail-coat was swept back revealing two gunbelts winding their way down from his waste to his hips, buckled and fixed just so.  They were beautiful in the way that a coiled copper-head is beautiful.

            The guns were gone before I could rightly have said they were there in the first place, and both were pointed in a sort of semaphore toward the woods behind where the Gunslingers sat.  Jack did all this without actually breaking his speech.  But as I looked at his face, any sense of friendliness was gone, and I could see he was fully prepared to take a life at that very moment, if the need arose.

            It was me and my men who were last to realize what it was that the Scraelings and the Gunslingers already knew well.  Emerging from the path beyond the barn rode a group of men.  They were men that I had seen before, but it took me a piece to place them rightly in my head. 

            Jared Mann rode at the front of his men, who looked rougher than ever.  The hint of a smile curled his thin lips, and his eyes were entirely hid by the brim of his hat.

            “Very well,” he commented, dryly, “We surrender.”

Jack lowered his guns slowly and signaled his men to do the same.  I could not help but notice the distrust still etched into his features.  It also occurred to me that Jack Rider had not drawn in such a way on me and my boys when we came stumbling out of the forest in our badly-planned flanking maneuver. 

            “Captain Mann?” I asked, unbelieving.

            “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Jack commented with a reserved tone.

            “Oh, believe me, the pleasure is entirely my own,” Mann said, all manners.  “You must be the Gunslinger of some moderate fame.  Jack Rider, yes?”

            “You have the advantage.”

Jared Mann chuckled dryly.  “I imagine that’s what has kept me alive this long.  As our mutual friend, Mr. Davey, has already alluded, my name is Jared Mann.  I am the current Captain of the forth national.”

            “I see,” Jack Rider replied, now unreadable in his expression.  Jared Mann shifted his own expression so that nothing showed their either, and it suddenly came to me that I was watching what added up to a Poker game with words.  The rest of the Gunslingers, for their part, kept their eyes on the Torakit Braves. 

            “It was not my intention,” Rider said, “to interfere with your jurisdiction, Captain.”

            “Not at all, Mr. Rider.  Your assistance has been greatly appreciated.  I believe, however, that my men and I have the situation under control now.  I may detain the services of our friend, the trailblazer and any volunteers he can spare, but as I understand your time is precious, feel free to be started.”  He cast his grey eyes to the sky and continued, “It’s only now past mid-day and you can make another fifty miles on the trail before it becomes too dark to ride and you have to draw camp.  I imagine you are fixed for rations?”

            “Yes,” Jack drawled unhurriedly, “we should be square.”

            “Then I bid you a pleasant journey, and Godspeed!” Mann smiled like a politician.  Rider touched his hat and hauled his stallion around.  Without a word, his men followed suit and they were gone with a rumble of hooves and a rustle of branches.

            There was a meanness in the eyes of Picquon as he glared up at Jared Mann.  But beneath the vinegar in his eyes was a very visible fear from a warrior I would have bet was fearless.  Jared turned grinning to his men.

            “You know what to do.”

The men dismounted, all with the same evil grin smeared across their grimy faces.  I instantly hated every one of them.  My men were rough.  The cussed and drank, they belched and farted and spit.  But they was always nice in front of the ladies, and each one of them had a big heart beneath his hairy chest.  I had chosen them all myself. 

            I had a feeling Captain Mann had chosen all his men himself, too, but he had a very different idea of what made a good soldier.  And as I watched his soldiers shoved the Scraelings to their knees violently, and placed a bullet in each of their heads.  It happened so quickly, I couldn’t react.  I could only stare stupidly as a feeling of total disgust and guilt washed over me.

            Isreen, as I don’t need to tell you, will run fearlessly into battle, welcoming a warrior’s death.  To die with his hands tied, on his knees, and to not see it coming is a cowards death, and worse than damnation in the Red Man’s eyes. 

            I looked up at Captian Mann confused and angry.  “Why?” I asked, and the question came straight from my soul, from right down in my boots.  I can only guess what his answer would have been, because even as the question was leaving my mouth, a rumbling came, and the Gunslingers burst back through the forest edge, springing over the lip of the hill like a herd of antelopes.  They kept riding right through the ranks captained by Jared, and Jack’s arm caught the man in the neck, spinning him from his saddle.  Jared seemed unbelieving that such a thing was possible, but managed to roll as he hit the ground, spinning as he brought his huge, ugly iron revolvers from their holsters.  Jack hit the ground right next to him and put his boot-toe under the Captain’s chin.  As Jared fell backward, Jack kicked on revolver free of his left hand, and stepped down hard on his right.  I glanced over my shoulder to discover that the rest of the Gunslingers had Jared’s men covered with calm, steady steel.

            Jared, for his part, seemed to take this development in stride.  He stared steadily upward toward the tall gunman, the corners of his mouth turned back as if he was swallowing a laugh.  It occurred to me that I had never seen this man without a smile.  I suddenly wished I had.  His smile was upsetting.  I was furious at him, myself, and seeing him taken down by his better was a welcome sight.

            “I take it you have good cause to assault an officer carrying out his orders from the central office?” Jared asked calmly.

            “I ought to kill you where you lay, Officer Mann.  It would be no better a death than you gave those poor Scraelings.”  I could see that Jack was seething beneath his cold face.  Jared turned stern.

            “Let’s not be ruled by our passions, Rider.”

            “If you are suggesting,” Jack replied with a dead voice, “That I take you and your men north, have you court marshaled and hung rather than stringing you all up now, perhaps you are right.”

            “You COULD do that, sir, but I think you would be disappointed.”

Jack narrowed his eyes.  During the entire conversation, his hand had never strayed in holding the pistol dead on Jared. 

            “Don’t play games, Jared.  It’s not in my nature.”

            “Very well, then, Jack, since we are on a first name basis, I won’t.  Would you do me the kindness of extracting the sheaf from my left coat pocket?”

            Jack reached in, wary of a trick, and his men covered him without him having to signal them to.   

            He pulled his hand out with a bundle of official looking papers, and began to scan them hastily.  I had never been properly schooled at reading myself, and it always amazed me to see a man of letters sprint through pages that would take me the better part of an hour to make out. 

            If it was possible for Jack’s gloomy face to darken further, it did.

            “I see,” he said finally, letting the pages fall to the feet of the white-haired Captain.  Jared grinned up at him.

            “Ours is not to question why, and all that,” he said in mock consolation.

            “A conscientious man ALWAYS questions that which strikes his heart as wrong.”

Jared did not respond, but simply picked himself up lithely, and began brushing his trousers.

            “I swear to you,” Jack continued, “That my men and I will drive our way hard to Stella Terra, and I will personally protest these orders.”

            “Do what you feel you must,” Jared responded casually, “But until such a time as they are withdrawn, I am duty-bound.”

            “Next time you see me,” Jack said, “I will be standing in your path.  You’ll back down or you’ll answer to my gun.”

            “Godspeed,” Jared jeered, climbing back into his saddle.  As the Gunslinger’s rode out of sight, he turned to me coldly.  The smile was no longer on his face.  I had gotten my wish.  I didn’t care for it.

            “Mr. Davey, I am pressing you and your men into service for your government.  Until such a time as my orders are carried out, you are members of the fourth national.”

Captain Mann’s gaze was hard to meet, but I had to stand for my men.

            “We will do no such thing!” I replied with as much courage as I could force into my voice.  “We’ve done what we came to do.  My men are going home!”

            “You’re in the army now,” Jared responded, showing his grin again.  “Or the cavalry, at least.  Deserters WILL be shot.”

 

            Over the hills of the green valley, rising into the mountains of Landfall live the hill folk.  These are not the mountains of the western land, the craggy towers of rock that shoot into the sky like continents turned on their sides, ascending ever upward beyond the clouds lost to sight, and shrouded in mystery as they are in clouds.  These are gentle green slopes, bristling with forests.

            Just the same, the hill-folk are not the Mountain Men.  Mountain Men are giants, and hill folk are simple, southern people who have learned to farm on the sides of mountains.

            Beyond their homes lies another valley, and THIS is where the people of the Torakit live.  For generations they have remained peaceful while other Isreen nations have risen up and challenged the white-eyes that have strayed into their lands.  The hill folk have always kept good relations with the Torakit, the Torakit teaching them to farm, and the hill-folk letting their children run with the boys of the Torakit tribes.

            I was born in those hills my own self, had known a number of Torakit, and had found it difficult to believe their rebellion.  I would say they were good folk, knowing they were just folk, just like the hill folk, or any other folk.  Some were good, some were bad.  They fought with each other, and they fought with other people outside their valleys.

            But as we rode over those hills I called home, I saw dozens of plumes of smoke rising off the mountains, gray against the white clouds, and I knew they were burning cabins.  What had caused this?

           

            We arrived in the valley of the Torakit after two days hard ride.  It was already clear at that point that Captain Mann’s men regarded us as little more than slaves.  We weren’t included in the camp arrangements or rationing of the main force, and my men were forced to fend for themselves, pitching whatever camp we had with us, and hunting for our food.  Of course, spending all day riding, we were able to catch a few squirrels and birds, hardly enough to keep body and soul in touch.

            Miserable as it was, I preferred it that way.  It kept my men loyal to each other and me, and united in their dislike of Mann and his soldiers.  I knew I had their support if and when I decided to stand up against Jared.

            But, I tell you the truth, Jared Mann scared me.  I am not a man easily frightened.  I’ve stared down bears, wolves, angry Isreen Braves, and not a few gun-barrels, but Jared Mann placed an unholy chill in my bones that I couldn’t shake, and I found myself miserably going along with him just to keep him from spending too much time noticing me.  My men were in a similar stupor, desperately casting glances to me for hope of some strength.  I hated myself for failing them.

 

            Isreen tribes and nations have a history of skirting around the Wheel like Bison, going where the grass is green and the game is plenty, and moving on when things no longer cotton to their tastes.  I’ve heard your own father tell me that the Isreen believe that the Wheel is like the seasons: moving in and endless circle, and that the Isreen must follow its spokes.  I’ve sometimes wondered if this Wheel is rolling to some destination.

            The Torakit tribe is a touch less mobile than most tribes.  Being farmers, they have their own philosophy about the seasons, staying in their Hoga and tending the earth, reaping its fruits, and then storing them for the winter seasons.  Some even say that their valley is directly across Poi Drodidi from the valley of the Lilliquoi, and so they mirror them.  Whatever the case, the Torakit did not build their houses out of bark and fur like many tribes, but rather out of earth.

            As we rode into their valley of clay houses, casting sun off them like dirty gold, I immediately felt in my gut that something was wrong.  At first I thought we were riding into Prosper Township, that sinister ghost town, as dead as the whole place was. 

            We descended the bowl of the valley where the stilted platforms were built to suspend the dead above the earth, thrusting them up toward heaven, and before us a great wave of vultures stirred and took to their wings, wheeling upward into the cloudheads billowing up westward.  Past these were rows upon rows of clay-brick houses, built one on top of the other as if an earthquake had pushed up the earth in uneven cubes.  These moved with a black mist that seemed to solidify and then break into pieces, roving its way across the huts.  These, I realized, were clouds of flies. 

            As the huts cluttered down the hillside to the valley floor, they became less substantial, first showing the wooden framework protruding from the adobe, then, with less and less adobe, until the valley floor became nothing but wooden frames.  These seemed to hold all manner of drying vegetation, tobacco leaves, roots, and vines.  The floor of the valley itself, was field after field of maize, wheat, and other crops I did not immediately recognize.

            Hints of movement seemed to keep swimming up from the corner of my vision and evaporating whenever I looked that way.  I had a distinct sense of unease, of dread, greater than the usual unease that seemed to have roosted in my breast ever since Jared Mann had seen fit to take my men from underneath me.

           

            When we reached the valley floor, Jared turned to the unit and called out, “Okay, men, spread out and bring every man, woman, and child here.  If they don’t cooperate, bind them.  If they resist, kill them.  And if they won’t come out, burn them out.  I want this done before sundown, so if the light goes, we set the crops on fire for light.”

A cry went up from Jared’s men, and they bolted into the village, zealous to carry out their orders.  My men sat staring in disbelief at what we had been asked to do.  Jared turned toward us.

            “Well?”

            “Sir,” Telly addressed Jared with a look of resolution almost comically smeared across his face, “I didn’t hire into this to fight women and children, I don’t care if they ARE Scraelings.”

Without a word, Jared pulled his gun and shot Telly through the heart.  I wish I could say that I did something, but I didn’t.  I couldn’t.  It didn’t seem real that this had happened.  Without knowing how, I was suddenly standing, staring into the face of Jared Mann. 

            “Well, Trailblazer,” he leered at me, “It seems we have a discipline problem.  Control your men or I will have them lined up against the wall of the nearest dirt hut and shot as traitors.”

            More than ever, I realized at this point that we were all prisoners as much as the Torakit that were, even now, being thrown into the dirt at the valley floor.

 

            The Isreen were gathered up and pushed together like cattle.  Some had managed to take personal possessions, and these were not discouraged by the soldiers.  We were instructed to raid the town for any food or supplies we could easily carry.  Most of the soldiers went for the tobacco, but I instructed my men to grab all the corn meal they could find and wrap it in blankets.  I wanted to make sure that there would be no starving wherever we took them.

            I noticed as we returned from scavenging that the Scraeling women and children were as stone-faced as the men we had captured before.  Even the infants did not cry as they stood there with hollow eyes starring into nothingness as if they could see the day of their death.

 

            A camp was ordered in the center of the valley that night, but none of the Scraelings were allowed to go back to their houses.  They were all tied up and forgotten.  I ordered my fellows to keep a close eye on these prisoners and make sure they had water if they needed it.  I could tell Captain Mann noticed my act of generosity, but he made no attempt to stop it.  For my part, I was beginning to wonder why he needed me and my men there at all.  Pressing us into service simply meant more trail rations to supply to an army whose orders, it seems, were to relocate an entire people.

           

            There was a morning tattoo which I had heard of but never actually witnessed.  I was a trailblazer who found himself leading a group of backwoods Missimee boys.  We didn’t hold with military formalities.

            We broke camp at speed, hardly having time to scrounge together a bit of fried bread, much less feed our captives.  The order came to march west, and we marched, holding a pace that would make a mustang drop with exhaustion. 

            I will say this for the women and children of the Torakit.  They held up well the first day.  And the next.  By the third day, though, we had our first child drop dead.  Three days into the journey, the mothers had long since stopped carrying their children, too dead from exhaustion their own selves to do much but trod mindlessly westward.  When the girl dropped to the ground, her mother barely glanced down.  Keeping her eyes closed she simply let the girl lay and kept walking.  I ran to the child to check on her, but it didn’t take much for me to see that there was no saving this young’n. 

            My men were still under orders to provide food and water to the Scraelings, but we were too exhausted ourselves, and rations were already threatening to run low.

           

            That first Torakit girl to fall seemed to uncork death itself, and soon after we were leaving a steady trial of bodies.  When the fifth Scraeling had fallen and was left to lay, I pushed a soldier from his horse.  He was too surprised to put up much fight, and moments later, I was riding toward the front of the line.

            “Captian Mann,” I croaked, my throat dry from trail dust.

            “Mr. Davey,” he acknowledged me without turning in his saddle.

            “There are Torakit dying back there, which I suppose brings no sadness to YOUR heart, if you have one.  I won’t ask what I know you won’t give and slow the pace.  I suspect you want all these creatures to fall dead anyway.  However, couldn’t we at least do them the kindness of burying their dead?”

            “Why Mr. Davey,” Mann turned now, smiling, “Burying these Scraelings would be an abomination to them, weren’t you aware?  Scraelings elevate their dead on platforms to be received into the branches of the Hunting Grounds.  And honestly, Bo, we haven’t the time nor the resources to stop and build a platform every time a Scraeling drops, now do we?”

I glowered at the man.

            “Now be so kind,” he continued, “as to return my man’s horse to him.  And tell him to report to the front of the line.  A soldier under my command should know better than to let himself be shoved from his mount.”

            I did as I was told.  The soldier I had dismounted looked angry as I trotted in his direction, however when I gave him the news that the Captain wanted to see him, he turned pale and looked at the horse as if it was a rattler.

            He climbed quickly into the saddle, as if haste might lessen his discipline, and rode frontward.  Moments later the rolling echo of a pistol shot sounded across the plane, and Jared Mann came riding back from the front.

            “My man said you could have his mount after all.  He won’t be needing it.  Oh, and tell these things they can halt their march,” he flicked his head in the direction of the Torakit tribe trailing behind us.  Then he grinned, “I need them to dig a grave.”

 

            A week turned into months, and the force march that we were made to endure began to lag as even Jared’s men began to lag.  We were trying to support over a thousand people on stored trailed rations, and the supply ran dry alarmingly fast.     

            Within two weeks, Jared had me and my men beating the bushes for game of any type that could support the men.  We were spending whole days encamped while supplies were re-stocked, and even on the days we marched, we only got in four or five hours before we had to camp again.  The Scraelings were actually eating better than many of the whites.  They were always chewing on roots, berries, leaves and bark.  They seemed to be able to pull food from the very earth. 

            Despite all this, they were not doing well.  The very life seemed to die from under their skin and from behind their eyes when we left their valley home.  The further we marched, the further they seemed to fade.

 

            The wood was turning.  Brown with orange and yellow being chucked out and red trickling like the whole place was bleeding.  This was my mood, anyways.  I usually had a hard time feeling badly this time of year.  The game was good, and the air was fresh.  But this year, the whole forest seemed to be rotting, coming apart at the seams.  This was bad medicine.  I’d been stalking this deer that seemed to disappear whenever he got it in his mind to do so, and would re-appear just when I was getting frustrated just so as to irritate me.

            Something brushed my shoulder.  I turned and something shoved me to the ground.  I stared up into the face of Telly silhouetted against a patch of red.

            “Why don’t we fight the bastard??” Telly’s voice added a hiss to the fire in his eyes.  “I always heard you was a brave man, wrestling across the frontier.  That’s why me and the boys followed you in the first place.  Then this Jared cuss appears and you roll over and do whatever he wants.” 

            I looked at Telly saying the words my own mind screamed at me almost nightly, and sighed.  I knew I was going to have to say this sooner or later.

            “Telly.  I love you boys like brothers.  Every one of you.  If I lead you against Jared and his men, we will lose.  We will all be shot dead, and then the Torakit will be marched until they die, or simply shot if they are too burdensome.”

            Telly heaved with emotion, his anger turning into anguish, “But Bo, none of this makes any sense.  Why were the Torakit attacking us, and why is this Jared man guy taking so much time to march these poor Scraelings to death when he could have just killed them outright?”  He covered his face and sobbed.  “I don’t even know what I am doing here.”

            I rose and put my hand on Telly’s shoulder.  “I don’t understand everything myself, Telly.  But I know one thing.  If we fight, we will lose.  We need to stay alive so we can take care of the Scraelings.  If we don’t, no one will.”

            Telly sobbed once more and then nodded, wiping his face across one sleeve and then the other.

            “Okay,” he whispered, “I’ll do that for you, Bo.”

I patted his shoulder again.  “Good man, Tully.  Good man.”

 

            Her name was Koppajegro, Sad Bird.  She was old, and her body had twisted back around on itself until she was one stiff, gnarled piece of flesh and bone.  She counted herself as Two-hundred seventy-six seasons.  I knew that Scraelings measured time differently than did we, and that they can be long-lived, but that seemed a little beyond belief.  She spoke our tongue better than any of the other Torakit, and she was possibly the wisest person I ever met.  As the months wore on, our friendship deepened.  She showed me how to find roots and herbs within the earth. 

            “Most things down in the roots,” she said with punctuated, labored speech, “Are known by the tree.  You find the two-branch,” (she held up two fingers in a V), “and think what you want.  If it is near, the two-branch will bow down to tell you.”

            I had, of course, heard of divining rods.  I thought that the Men of the Mountain used them to dig wells.  But Sad Bird told me that all Medicine came from The Tree.  The Tree, she said would always know of nearby water, but it knew of other things beneath the earth as well.

            “But,” she warned with a gnarled finger, “The deep places are bad medicine.  They will try to swallow anyone looking for good medicine.”

 

            I didn’t understand most of what she said about Medicine, but I did learn a lot I didn’t know about plants, animals, and the earth.

            I once asked her what kept her going on this march.  She answered sadly that she would very much like to die, however, she had not yet learned how, and that she was old now, so that learning came more slowly than it did in youth.

            “Look,” she gestured at the body of a young boy lying unmoving on the ground.  She could not quite look directly at it.  “This one learned quickly how to die.  He had a  great teacher.”  She then looked into my face.  “You are not a great teacher of death.  If you were, maybe you could have stopped this.  But I think I like you better this way.”

 

            I really have no idea how much time had passed when that day came.  We had walked all the way across Landfall, up across the mountains leading to into the Badlands that were to be the Torakit’s new home.  This day we awoke to hoof beats, and without fanfare, we saw that Jack Rider had appeared in our path along with his men.

            I pulled myself from my bedroll made of elk furs, and trudged stiffly in the direction where Rider and his men waited, dark as the sky before the dawn.  Jared Mann already stood at the front, looking with a sort of eager satisfaction at them.  He and I walked out together stopping a few yards in front of the horses.  I remember still how the horses stood restlessly, breathing out puffs of smoke with each breath.

            “I have been to Stella Terra for these last four months, arguing the case against your mandate,” he said.  “It took too much time, and too many words, but I have here a counter-order.” He threw a leather sheaf down at Mann’s feet.  “The remaining Torakit have permission to return to their valley.  They are sanctioned under Wheel Law.”

Mann nodded.  “You have your prize, Rider.  You’ve fought hard, and you are welcome to it.”

            And without another word, Mann signaled his men, already mounted, and they did an about turn and rode away into the Badlands.  As they departed, their horses cleared the Torakit tribe, and Rider saw what the rest of us already knew.  Maybe a few Dozen Torakit still stood, emaciated, frail, and near death.