The Ishim Underground

by Carrie Bailey

CHAPTER FOUR

  Eron was startled by the sound of voices when he entered the weaver’s house, which included the intimidating resonance of a deep bass he did not recognize. Although his dinner waited for him on the grill and the savory scent of warm sausages wafted under his nostrils, Eron’s heart thumped aggressively against the wall of his chest when he heard Gil talking to the men. On the off chance that someone might lean over to stoke the fireplace, Eron crept alongside the counters through the kitchen and sought the most advantageous spot to eavesdrop.

  “And if he isn't willing to leave?” rang the strange man in his bass voice.

  “Build him a shoe rack,” said Gil taking a bite of sausage.

  “And how would that help?” said another man Eron didn’t recognize immediately.

  “If we offer to number each peg, he’ll be powerless to resist,” said the weaver already laughing at his own joke.

  Eron fumed. The men were turning themselves toward the fire to warm their backsides while Gil juggled a handful of potatoes to their the rapt amusement. Next to him on the hearth sat a bowl of tan paste. Catching the last potato, the fugitive dropped his hand to the floor in a nose-touching-knee bow of epic proportions. Eron stepped back before their eyes met through the opening.

  “This is only a prototype,” said said the weaver holding up a leaf-patterned golden square from his hoard of half-finished masterpieces. 

  Absently spearing sausages from his clay bowl, Gil nodded his approval.

  “You two can discuss fashion-alizing another time. There’s not much you know about that young guard except that he can read and his mother is a weaver,” said the deep bass voice. “Would anyone take him in if he refuses us?”

  “I don't understand half of the things he talks about," said other stranger Eron now recognized as the owner of a small hardware store. “I doubt anyone else does either. He can’t work. No one could afford to feed him that long.”

  “Micah,” said Gil swallowing another mouthful. “Will take him in.”

  “It’s settled then” said the weaver. “I’ll pack his things before he gets back.”

  “But for two years?” said the man with the bass voice.

  Eron didn’t notice Gil standing beside him with his arms crossed until the fugitive cleared his throat. Gil smiled, reached up and ran his fingers over his shorter guardsman cut.

  “Nice haircut,” said Eron through clenched teeth. He didn’t know what the men had planned for him, but it was sabotage.

  “You noticed!” said Gil taking his arm. “Sausages, solider. Now. Come on.”

  Grease dripped down the hardware store owner’s long white braided beard as Eron was pulled into the main room by the fugitive.

  "I'll cooperate,” said Eron bowing his head in defeat. “I’ll leave Dunedin tonight. Just don’t kill me here.”

  “Kill you?” said Gil grabbing Eron’s cheeks. “I could kiss you,” he said and planted a moist kiss on his nose.

  “How long were you listening?” asked the weaver looking confused.

  “Only a couple minutes. But it’s long enough. That’s a paste made from those urigolds, isn’t it?” said Eron pointing to the bowl on the hearth.

  “I added some red clay, too” said Gil.

  “Gil must be someone important to you,” said Eron calmly sitting down. “To all of you. That’s how he knew where to find me last night. You watched me feeding pigeons for five minutes the day I arrived and then offered me a room, which you didn’t have. And I thought it was because my mother was a weaver. But, we’re the same,” said Eron bitterly putting a finger in the paste. “Except the skin tone and the voice.”

  Eron watched as the architects of his demise silently starring at him.

  Gil quietly handed Eron a sausage.

  “And no, since you’re asking, I don’t want a shoe rack. Room and board with a man named Micah,” Eron was shaking with either fear or anger or probably both. “You’re taking my life away and helping me out the door, down the street, around the corner and into the mouth of a giant cat. You even get the coin back.”

  “You don’t like it here,” said the weaver defensively.

  “It’s my post,” said Eron.

  “They will hunt Gil every day until they find him,” said the man with the bass voice.

  “You’re trying to tell me that if Gil and I switch places they will stop hunting him and look for me instead?” said Eron to the room full of guilty faces. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  The man with the deep voice was wearing a long black tunic that dragged across the dirt floor as he walked over to Eron and put his hand on his shoulder.

  “We could have killed you as soon as Gil arrived. You don’t belong here. The guard doesn’t belong here. Dunedin is our home. You must understand.”

  “Why don’t we send Eron back to Auck City to be with his family?” interrupted the old man from the hardware store.

  “Because,” said Eron pulling away. “I would be a deserter. It would shame my mother, my tutor, the high priestess and everyone I know. They’d ban me from the city for life.“

  “We’ve taken care of that,” said the man with the deep voice. “You can hide at the Well with the monks. They have books. Return in two years to your city. No one will know.”

  Eron tried inconspicuously to wipe a tear from his cheek, but one landed in the ash beside him. The man looked confused.

  “I understand,” Eron said nervously, “That is. I understand that you aren’t going to let me go. You want me to think that you’re sending me away to somewhere I can study and read. You need me to go quietly from Dunedin to somewhere you can dispose of my body.” Eron’s voice broke and he was sobbing into his palms. But, he wasn’t ashamed. He was certain. Death was around the corner lurking in the shadows of his near future like a black market vendor holding stolen goods and a desperate craving for medicinal wine.

  “Nonsense,” said the weaver shifting his weight awkwardly.

  He seemed uncomfortable. Not guilt. But, Eron figured that and wiped his eyes as he mustered the strength enough to face him.

  “One word from me and the guard would have all of your heads on pikes,” Eron said. It wasn’t a threat. He spoke gently. “There are no consequences for me if I do, see? So maybe one or two of you might believe me if I agree to go into hiding. For two years. But,” he looked around. “Not all of you. At least one of you won’t. ”

  The men looked at each other.

  “One of you won’t believe I’d sacrifice my position with the guard for someone I just met.”

  No one made eye contact.

  “Probably, you,” he said to the man with the bass voice.

  It was logical. He had never met Eron. He had the sternest look about him. The kind of man who could sense a threat and act on it in an instant.

  “I want-,” he continued, “Just to say-“

  “That’s enough, Eron,” said the weaver holding out his hand.

  “I admit I thought of that,” said the man with the bass voice strolling around the hearth.

  Eron wasn’t surprised. He had long nomadic braids and too many scars on his face to afford the luxury of being naive.

  “But, the gawds would frown on killing you. So, I planned to threaten to kill your family if you broke your word.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Eron, brightening suddenly.

  The man was right.

  “I agree,” said Gil flippantly flashing his eyes widely. He offered Eron another sausage. “It sounds reasonable.”

  “But, we have to hurry,” said Eron.

  Under most circumstances, threatening family was a source of great distress for most normal people. However, even inside the walls of his city, Eron was not like most people. He was logical enough to recognize that any man whose life was threatened could be expected to kill. He didn’t hold it against the man.

  And there was one truth he knew better than any other. No one trusts a person they ha
ve already betrayed. People expect payback. In his thoughts, the laws of human behavior operated like the laws of nature, the only problem being how little he knew about either.

  The paste they used to darken Gil’s skin was primarily animal fat mixed with the dried urigold petals. The weaver rubbed it on the back of Gil’s hand and compared it to Eron’s skin. He added more ash to dull the tone, a touch of more of the red clay and tried again until he had a fair match.

  In his room, the hardware store owner had already rolled Eron’s belongings into his blanket when Eron came in. He had dumped all of Eron's things in a pile on the ground and taken no care to arrange them.

  “Let me,” Eron pleaded. “That is the wrong order. The lamp has to be wrapped in the shirt so it won’t shatter if it lands on the ground.”

  "It will be all right in the end," said man.

  Eron winced and started to wipe the paste residue from his hand onto the underside of his tunic.

  “His clothes stay here with Gil,” said the nomad coming into the room and unloading a pile of the weaver’s belongings onto floor. “And feed that tunic to the fire,” he said pointing to the one Eron was wearing.

  Eron watched listlessly as the tattered shirt his mother had woven years ago crackled and licks of flame marched about the hearth while the owner of the hardware store set his poorly organized pack beside him.

  “What about his hat?” said the weaver.

  Eron held onto the yellow cap his tutor had given him.

  "It's ugly and only an Auckian would wear it,” said Gil who stood naked, covered in paste, drying his skin by the fire.

  Eron threw the cap at him.

  The weaver came down from the room up the stairs and opened Eron’s pack as Gil put one of Eron’s grey tunics with the green stripe on the arm. He looked just as unconvincing as a Green Guardsman as Eron had always felt. They tossed Gil’s rags on the fire.

  “Not those scrolls,” said Eron taking the leather case from the weaver. “These discourses are contraband,” Eron lied. He put the apocalyptic writings back on the roll and pulled the sanitation files out. “But, Gil can have these. It’s the sanitation plans for the city and all the villages.”

  “You’ve done the moralistic thing,” said the hardware man stopping to study Eron carefully. “I misjudged you before.”

  Eron smiled while the white haired man with age spots on his arm nodded and went into the kitchen.

  “And I underestimated you,” said Eron knowing the man would not hear him.

  When everything had been prepared, they climbed the ladder to the small cozy room on second level, which was darker and smokier, but much warmer than the main floor. The room opened unto the rooftop where the weaver’s laundry flapped in the wind and the scent of tomato plants permeated the cold air. Sparkling fireworks boomed in the village roads below where villagers were tossing effigies onto the ragging bone fires. A soft whistle from the next roof signaled for them to leave and a slender dark woman lowered a plank for them to cross.

  Gil shoved a metal tube on a long cord into Eron’s hand. “This will take you safely to Micah,” he said. “Just don’t block the holes and make sure it gets enough air.”

  “What is it?” asked Eron putting it around his neck beside the pouch that held the coin.

  Gil winked and mouthed something to him he couldn’t understand. Eron felt the smooth exterior of the object, a canister with a hinged lid and a few round dips and impressions on its surface. He thanked Gil who went back inside where the owner of the hardware store was waiting.

  Eron followed the weaver to the next building where they saw the nomad with the bass voice gliding through the crowds below like a log floating down a turbulent stream. Their chaotic flight from the village was better choreographed than Eron expected. Although it seemed all the people celebrating below were oblivious to the two men crossing the rooftops directly overhead, Eron was shocked by the number of villagers organized to help them pass. Through potted gardens and around the smoking chimneys, they climbed cautiously until a massively bearded man with no possibility of ever seeing his feet stopped them. It was the baker.

  The man usually sold stale loaves directly from his shop underfoot, but sometimes, when he could be bothered, he drove a cart of fresh bread to sell in the market.

  "You can pay me next time you're in town,” he said handing Eron a hard loaf of wheat bread.

  As he shook Eron’s hand, the men caught a glimpse of leather armor on the street. The ruddy complexion of the bounty hunter betrayed his intoxicated state, but the nomad had already sent a village girl to distract the man as they shuffled briskly onto the next rooftop, which belonged to the herbalist. From there, Eron could see the pit he had dug for the village latrine. It would have been a squat toilet surrounded by a private stall that was cleaned by pouring a pitcher of water into the basin.

  A man with a light brown beard covering his thin face shuffled toward the weaver with a handful of glass vials.

  “Give them to him,” said the weaver.

  “Thanks,” said Eron putting them in his pockets and smiling weakly, “They don’t have labels, do they?”

  “There is more than one way to read. Three dots for the coffee,” the slender man whispered in Eron’s ear. “The white coffee.”

  With a distant expression, he went back into his house.

  “That man has always been a bit strange,” said the weaver.

  “Is there anyone in the village who doesn’t know we are up here?” asked Eron as the butcher met them on the next roof with a string of sausages.

  A conga line bounced on the street below absorbing new members as it passed. Drums sounded over the slurred speech and laughter of villagers as they danced. The normalcy of the festival radiated with a surrealistic hue. Bounty hunters neglecting their duties. Villagers organized. Vendors giving a guardsman their wares for free. Eron was glad when they reached the outer wall.

  “Amos will take you to spend the night with a shepherd. You can stay there until the morning,” said the weaver who was unusually alert that night having briefly surfaced from the deep melancholy of the true artist.

  Eron nodded.

  The wall surrounding Dunedin stood the same height as the pillared building beside it. Graffiti had built up in layers on the inside of the defensive perimeter and in some places it was so cracked that it gave the impression of an organic growth like a fine coating of mold. The weaver held out his fist. Eron bumped it.

  “Stay on the roads. Don’t eat wild mushroom-izers. Go straight to the monks. And try not to sound so soggy,” he said.

  The top end of a ladder swayed toward the wall from outside. It landed against the edge and bounced a bit before settling. The nomad was waiting for Eron to climb down.

  “How did he get out there already?” Eron whispered at the weaver, but the man had already gone inside.

  Eron tested the dry and splintered edge of the ladder just as he had every plank he crossed. It had to support his weight.

  “You still owe me for dinner,” said Eron under his breath as he lowered himself on downward just as an icy drop of water found its way down the neck of his tunic.

  He pressed his foot onto the hard dry earth where he was confronted by a foreboding sense of emptiness in the gaping darkness outside the village. Amos, the nomad, with the bass voice didn’t move. No silver light flooded the bare terrain that surrounded them. The overcast sky darkened the night, but even so, Eron locked gazes with an iridescent flash of color from the man’s irises. His heart beat faster than the drums behind the wall.

  “I will kill your family if you go to the guard,” said the man. “But, it doesn’t mean that I don’t respect what you have done here tonight.”

  Eron nodded. Then, blasted by the swirling dust, which stung his skin, he closed his eyes and rested his arms on the cloth bundle strapped to his back listening to rippling howl of the loogaroo in the hills.