“Stupid, my Comanche brother, is one thing they most certainly are not. Nor with one exception, slovenly.” He indicated Oln Woeck, trading sharp words in the eastern tongue with Fireclaw—it seemed mostly a one-sided exchange, favoring the warrior. For a time they watched Mochamet al Rotshild and his companion dabbing at their weapons. “I confess,” he sighed at last, “I know not what else they may be.”
He lifted a short-fingered hand toward one of the Saracens.
“Tell me, Knife Thrower, what is this little girl, this Princess Ayesha they coddle so, like a baby? Among my people, the daughter of a chief is distinguished, if in anything, by the fact that she works somewhat harder than the other women.”
Knife Thrower shook his head.
“Gift-bride-to-be or not, to this rumored ‘Sun King’ of the western gods, she is a dream-seer.”
Observing the Ute’s surprised expression—an alteration of his customary facial repose which few Europeans or Helvetians would even have noticed—he nodded, adding, “No one had told me this before I guessed it, but I have been well educated to recognize the look.”
The Ute grunted understanding. It was, indeed, the wise in which shamans were chosen, the duty of war chiefs being to do the choosing. In turn, successors to Knife Thrower and Traveling Short Bear would be chosen by the next shamans of their tribes. Although they knew it not, each wondered to himself what sort of leader Oln Woeck had chosen over Sedrich Fireclaw.
“Trance-roots and other herbs are all well enough,” the Comanche went on, “but they are wasted upon the untalented.”
“Meaning the sane?” the Ute chuckled.
Knife Thrower laughed but did not answer. That his own tribe lacked a spirit guide at present owed to the fact no one among them had the haunted aspect this Saracen girl carried in her eyes.
“I confronted Fireclaw with my surmise, which he confirmed, saying that, the night before we left his place, the girl dreamed of voyagers like us, who, having started late, and trapped upon a mountain pass in winter, were reduced to eating one another before spring came. The odd thing is that she did not dream of the happening itself, but of being told as a traveler-for-pleasure, generations afterward, by guardians of a shrine where this had transpired. Nonetheless, her awakening screams aroused the ranch and all else for a mile round.”
“Of what use is such a dream?” Traveling Short Bear frowned. “It does not foretell the future, neither does it reveal the past—except, perhaps, a past which never happened.”
Knife Thrower shook his head.
“Let me tell you, then, of what she dreamed last night—according to my marriage-brother, who had it from Mochamet al Rotshild.
“A great spirit wagon filled her dream, possessing neither wheels nor sails, like the monster-headed Saracen land-ship I have spoken of, and fashioned all of metal, dashing up the side of a mountain with its tail afire. From her words, I knew this mountain—although she could not—it is visible from the prairie, a great peak, for a mounted warrior a full day’s travel south of here. At the peak, this spirit wagon left the mountain and soared into the sky, headed, she said she somehow knew, for a village upon the moon!”
Traveling Short Bear shivered, making a sign to ward off evil.
“Perhaps the gods are calling her to come be one of them, and your party will fare well enough through the forbidden lands. But will the rest of you be permitted to return?”
Both men shrugged.
“Well, friend Knife Thrower, I have my own education. Some of these foreign strangers are beyond me, but beware. I know the look of Marya, the female attendant of this girl-shaman.”
“Yes,” Knife Thrower answered, “her leg will bear some watching after, if she is not to slow us upon our journey.”
Traveling Short Bear snorted.
“The gods take her leg! I tell you, friend Knife Thrower, that she is an hysteric, liable to do anything at any time to anyone in any situation, as long as it is unpredictable and destructive. This is something you and your strangeling brother Fireclaw can but little afford, do you continue trespassing, not only against your neighbors, but against the gods themselves.”
The Ute allowed himself to slide down the rock until he was seated upon the ground, closer to Knife Thrower. From his beaded pouch he took a handful of jerked antelope meat, tore it in half to share with the Comanche. Chewing his own portion, he rested his fat arms upon his fatter knees and lowered his voice.
“We of the tribes owe a responsibility to the gods and have reason to remember the consequences of not fulfilling it.”
Knife Thrower nodded.
“Consumed by the Breath of God, an old shaman told me once, like the Dog-Eaters.”
“Yes, the Dog-Eaters—and others—obliterated by powerful and angry beings dissatisfied with their devotion and obedience. This lens-eyed David Shulieman is another matter. ‘Rabbi,’ your Saracens call him, whatever that is. Some sort of holy man, I gather, but not of the dream-seeing kind. Is it this one who has arranged the dispensation by which you have not yet been obliterated?”
Knife Thrower grunted.
“When pressed to it, he can acquit himself with some skill in a fight.”
He began tearing little strips from the jerky to nibble upon.
“He is the teacher of the girl, and nothing more, her amanuensis. Women fashioning weapons! Men attending them as servants! What in the name of the gods is the world coming to?”
Traveling Short Bear stopped chewing, assumed a puzzled expression which Knife Thrower offered nothing to dispel.
Instead, the Comanche changed the subject.
“In the Commodore Mochamet al Rotshild, a diplomat much like yourself, friend Ute—and, my brother says, a brigand—I recognize the spirit of a fellow warrior. He is the real leader of this expedition, for all that, as long as we trudge through unknown wilderness, they take their orders from Fireclaw.”
He accepted another bit of meat from his companion.
“The young ear-bangled woman Lishabha is a female ‘companion’ to Mochamet, whose name—if not her fighting temperament—I have just this morning discovered.”
Looking past the food in his hands, Traveling Short Bear nodded in sudden understanding.
“Another unconventional soul to turn the safe, familiar world upside down? Unlike their Sergeant Kabeer, a stolid, unimaginative dog-soldier, no threat to the gods, a fellow who would be quite at home upon any side in any fight.”
“Yes,” Knife Thrower answered. Having finished with his portion of the snack, he drew a small knife from his waistband, selected a pine twig from the ground. With one angled cut, he sliced the twig to a sharp point. “And he seems to be recovering more rapidly, from a far worse wound, than the woman Marya.”
They were quiet for a time. Knife Thrower used the twig to pick his teeth.
“Ali, their loutish retainer”—Knife Thrower shook his head—”I do not much care for, never having clearly understood which of the outlanders he serves.”
“But certain,” Traveling Short Bear finished for the Comanche, “that he serves that person with hidden reservations. This, too, is a look I know, my Comanche friend. Were he one of my own tribe, I would send him many times into the forefront of the bloodiest battle, to purge himself of future treachery, or to perish.”
Both men took a small handful of the dry, sandy soil, rubbed their hands clean of the oil of the meat. Later, they would wash at the stream. Another brief silence followed, broken, this time, by the Ute.
“A strange party, indeed, you travel with, Knife Thrower. And, if he should be numbered among it, tell me of the talking bird of Mochamet al Rotshild. I heard the old man this morning teaching it Comanche words!”
Knife Thrower dug into his own pouch, extracted a small container and another object.
He shook his head.
“I know nothing, except he is called ‘Po,’ which, in the Saracen tongue, Fireclaw tells me, means ‘mouth.’”
“A fitting
name.” Traveling Short Bear watched the hands of the war chief. “And ‘Sagheer’?”
“The humbly fleshed spirit of some ancestor, my own people speculate, who serves out a penitence perched upon the shoulder of the Princess, whispering sagacities in her ear.”
From the container he took shreds of vegetable matter, stuffed them into the crooked ceramic tube—of Fireclaw’s fashioning, a gift—he also held. From another he tapped a few grains of the fire-powder which his brother manufactured, struck flint to steel.
The powder flared. The smoke-weed caught. Knife Thrower inhaled through the pipe before passing it to the Ute.
Traveling Short Bear inhaled.
“Yes, my Comanche friend, I suppose they might well be counted. One can never tell whom the gods will favor or why. Of your own group, I certainly would count Ursi, the great bear-dog of your brother Fireclaw.”
Knife Thrower accepted the pipe back again. It was a strange weed these Saracens had brought with them, different from kinikinik. It made one dizzy, at first, sick to the stomach—although the visitors reported the same symptoms from Comanche weed. Fireclaw’s powder did the flavor little good.
He puffed blue, aromatic smoke into the mountain air.
Voyaging with them also, of course, was this old, seasoned war chief of the Utes, Traveling Short Bear. While the Helvetian had been supervising preparations for the journey, Knife Thrower had been arranging for its safe passage through neighboring lands, at last deciding to escort the travelers himself.
Those arrangements had required they meet, at the ill-defined verge of Comanche territory, with Traveling Short Bear, not merely a chieftain but the ultimate link in a long line of individuals and tribes who passed along the bounty of the gods—items such as kinikinik, or the trade-brass his sister Dove Blossom had made use of—to the prairie tribes who guarded their ancient borders.
Such a diplomatic meeting, by long custom, had to be an “accident,” and thus was delicate to contrive. Traveling Short Bear, “wandering for pleasure” upon his own tribal lands, had met the Saracen-Comanche party by “chance” this very morning. Now the group would make a polite show of accompanying him homeward. A matter of tricky protocol, this unprecedented passing through the dwelling grounds of those who had been, upon occasion, the part-time enemies of the Comanche. Such intertribal wars had become fewer within Knife Thrower’s memory, peace easier to maintain. Still, it called for chiefly authority upon both sides.
Whatever the reason, Fireclaw had, within the hearing of others, declared himself to be well pleased with the presence of Knife Thrower, allowing to the dubious Saracens that he enjoyed the company of his brother-in-law, always valued his counsel. In many respects, however, the expedition was not to the personal preferences of Knife Thrower: too many they were to be inconspicuous, too few—even had all been such warriors as the girl companion of Mochamet—for an effective fighting force. He knew Fireclaw, too, had had to suppress feelings of foreboding.
This, of course, he would not tell Traveling Short Bear.
“Among their own,” the Ute observed, watching the face of Knife Thrower through the smoke they both exhaled, “neither Comanche, nor yet Fireclaw his countryman, willingly number this Oln Woeck.”
Knife Thrower nodded but did not reply. Among other irritations, the old tattooed Helvetian shaman had grown more openly, more vocally, disgusted at the marriage of Fireclaw to the sister of Knife Thrower with each passing day of preparation. The rasping, sneering, whining of his dotard’s voice had become one with the soughing of the pines, the prairie birds, the crickets, almost a natural feature of the air—albeit in its irritation-value it was more like unto hailstones bouncing off the resined hides of one’s lodgehome. By the time Fireclaw had given his final instructions to Dove Blossom upon maintaining their freehold, spoken his goodbyes with misgivings he expressed to no one but his brother, it was her placid, cautious temperament—and that alone—which kept Fireclaw from throttling the filthy ancient where he stood, or splitting him like a game hen with that great sword of his.
Thus had begun their march, afoot, through roadless hills toward a pass negotiable in high summer.
“Too many shamans.” Passing the pipe back, Traveling Short Bear persisted. “Nor do the Saracens who brought the oldster here with them seem much anxious to claim him, any more than they lay close claim to the spear-throwing youngster and his squat, combative companion who you say accompanied them to the ranch of Fireclaw.”
“You are a fine peace-speaker, Traveling Short Bear,” Knife Thrower answered with a frown which was half jesting. He took a deep draft from the pipe, found the embers bitter, knocked them out upon the ground, where he stirred them into the sand with his fingers. “But an unsubtle spy. Mochamet al Rotshild told Fireclaw the moustached strangers are sailors, rescued last year from a wreck off a place called ‘Island Continent.’” This last he rendered in memorized Arabic. “They had, hopping from one chance vessel to another, worked their way back as far as the east coast of this, our New World, where the Commodore hired them—”
“Upon the suspicion,” the Ute interrupted, “denied by them, that they are from somewhere within—or at least near neighbors to—the hidden region which this Saracen party now intends to penetrate.”
Traveling Short Bear laughed.
“I am perhaps indeed unsubtle, Knife Thrower, but, since you have answered my questions, not yet ineffective. If the surmise of the Saracens be true, these men are kinsmen to the gods, for all that they resemble starveling castaways.”
Knife Thrower found a yellow strand of well-dried grass, forced it into the mouthpiece of the pipe to clean it.
He shook his head.
“I have never seen their like before. They somewhat resemble normal people. See, their red-brown faces are flattish, like our own—unlike those of white-faced Fireclaw or of the Saracens. But with noses like the beaks of birds.”
“Birds of prey.” Traveling Short Bear peered over at the strangers they discussed. The pair sat, resting in the sun, sharing some morsel of food. “Their eyes are shaped like our own, lacking the lid-folds Fireclaw possesses.”
Knife Thrower put his pipe away.
“They groom their hair grotesquely!”
Traveling Short Bear looked at his companion.
“Perhaps they think we do.”
Commanding but little Arabic, the sailors spoke between themselves a tongue unknown to the well-traveled Saracen captain, to Fireclaw, or to Knife Thrower, who was familiar with the dialects of several dozen tribes, although from time to time he imagined he recognized a word.
“The youngster they call ‘Hraytis,’” offered Knife Thrower, “meaning a small, many-legged creature somewhat like the gray-green crawfish our village children sometimes tease out of stream-bottoms to roast or eat raw.” Well could he remember doing this himself before he had been gifted with his first longbow.
Traveling Short Bear smiled at a similar memory.
“This name perhaps he has earned by being fished from the sea.”
“Perhaps. In any case, the Saracens also call his companion ‘Hapurya,’ which Fireclaw reports is a similar creature, unknown to those of us dwelling inland, but which he himself calls by the name ‘crab.’”
Traveling Short Bear folded his arms across his chest.
“Whatever their names, they carry fascinating weapons. The young one has a pair of knives the like of which I have never seen before. Their handles are set across the axis of the blade. With shank protruding between his second and third fingers, he knife-fights with exactly the same motions he would use to fight with empty hands. Fascinating.”
The Comanche nodded.
“Yes, I watched him sharpening them just now. He fights also with his feet. I have seen him practice as we travel, kicking overhanging tree-limbs higher than his head, while the Saracens sweated and panted to place one foot before another.”
He paused a moment.
“I watched him eating ye
sterday with one of those knives. A clumsy meat-cutter, with that spadelike handle, but both edges are supplied with teeth, like those of a saw, making quick work of whatever task they are put to. I would not care to be considered such a task!”
Traveling Short Bear laughed agreement.
Knife Thrower did not share the humorous outlook of the Ute. At the same time he cursed Fireclaw for the curiosity which now infected him, he burned to know more about these sailors, kinsmen of the gods or not.
He glanced westward.
High above the mountains, faint up-blown fringes of a cloud-line had appeared to darken his spirit, if not the remainder of the day.
XXVII: Smoke Upon the Wind
“We have been sent unto a people of sinners, excepting the folk of Lot; them we shall deliver all together, excepting his wife...she shall surely be of those that tarry.”—The Koran, Sura XV
Fireclaw’s dread—and Knife Thrower’s—was soon mirrored by real events.
The storm-clouds, poking up just above the serried western horizon, covered but little of the sky as yet; still, they grew blacker by the hour, and more menacing.
He’d long since chastened Oln Woeck. When called to account for his words and manner, the old man had subsided uncharacteristically but had not, Fireclaw thought, judging from the veins standing out upon his blue-marked temples, taken it in good grace, being informed in front of the others—and in Arabic rehearsed for the occasion—that he was never again to shout after Fireclaw nor think to order him about. The younger man had turned upon his heel and walked away without waiting for reply.
Oln Woeck still sulked at the base of a tree as gnarled and ugly as he was.
Fireclaw had gone to inspect the blisters upon Saracen feet, the bruises upon pack-carrying shoulders. Afterwards, he saw to the rearrangement of the packs themselves, the contents of which had to be redistributed occasionally as supplies were used. From where he worked, he watched Knife Thrower and Traveling Short Bear arise, perhaps grown weary of just sitting while there was light enough to travel by.
They ambled toward the pair of alien sailors Mochamet al Rotshild had hired. The Saracen guardsman Kabeer was already speaking with them, as was Ali. Fireclaw had meant to keep an eye upon this group, who’d taken, in the past few days, to gambling together before sleep. He’d heard the money clinking, palm to palm, listened for the rattle of the throwing-cubes, heard what he assumed to be their heated exclamations over wins and losses. An innocent enough diversion, he thought, provided it remained innocent. Still, he wondered where Oln Woeck was, with his moralizing, upon the one occasion when it was, perhaps, called for.