by Nick Cole
All around them, stretching far off into the smoky, dusky forest floor at twilight, were the Park People and the Death Knights and the Psychos and all the other tribes. Their number was beyond his counting except for him to know that this was larger than any gathering of mankind he had ever seen. When he imagined the size of Sergeant Presley’s I Corps, it was never as numerous as on this night.
And in the distance, at the extent of his vision, other tribes were streaming forward, surging into the hot, clamoring mass at the foot of the pine log pile.
The leaders of all these tribes, including the Rock Star, have gone beyond the ramshackle wall of stone and pine, penetrating the maze of timberworks—seemingly haphazard but designed with defense and killing in mind—and disappear into the Lodge.
Hours later, just after nightfall, the leaders returned to the top of the wall. A tall man led them out onto the high wall of the Lodge, above which the waiting tribes could see the steep roof of the castle, which was once a rustic tourist resort.
The man was tall and rangy. He wore blue jeans and a long dark coat.
Clothing from Before.
His sharp jaw and blowing hair gave him a wolf’s appearance. But even from among the milling mass of warriors, it was the blue eyes the Boy noted: clear, sparkling, glinting with thoughts of some plan.
The leaders of all the tribes formed a line, linked hands, and raised them high above their varied heads and hair. And at the center of the line, the tall man, the wolf-like man, the man in the clothing from Before, stood joined to all the other leaders. He raised his sharp jaw skyward and howled up into the trees and the night above.
This is the one you got to watch, Boy. This one’s no joiner, and he ain’t no leader. He’s a taker. A ruin-er, and he’s walked alone more often than not. Be careful, Boy. Real careful.
The tribes below and beyond the wall roared, punctuating their approval with whoops and screams.
The drumbeats began to roll across the forest floor of the valley, echoing off the distant mountains, lost in the crash of the high waterfall over which flaming logs tumbled into plumes of steam.
The Chinese would be defeated.
Night fell and campfires beyond the Boy’s counting sprang up across the valley floor. The chattering of languages, one as seemingly alien as the next, murmured across the distances between the camps.
The Rock Star’s People formed their camp, unsure what to do in her absence.
But then the bloated skin of fermented drink arrived, carried on a pole between two large warriors—black wolf skins and ash-covered faces, machetes made from the guts of old machines in great scabbards at their backs—and the Rock Star’s People found their purpose.
All the tribes were drinking.
Now. Tonight is your night to escape, Boy.
It is good to hear your voice, Sergeant.
The Boy mounted Horse and began to ride the twilight camps. He smiled at those he suspected kept poison on their bows and when they smiled back, the smile was sloppy, happy, lugubrious, as if there was a friendship formed in all those cold miles between the mountain lake and this friendly place.
The Boy checked the great pile of stone and fallen timber that was the Lodge and saw only two torches guttering blackly at the gate. He rode to a nearby fire. Here there were men and women warriors, long spears, and woven hair like muddy ropes. They smiled after their guttural greeting failed to find meaning in the Boy’s ears. They seemed to wish him well, and one woman even cast a hungry eye upon him. When he sensed the bearers of the poison arrows coming from the campfire of the Rock Star’s People, shadowing him in the early dark, he rode back to their fire as if to reassure them.
The noise was getting louder across the valley floor as fires grew in leaps and explosions, sending sparks high into the star-filled night.
Soon, Boy. Real soon.
He got down from Horse and took a drink from the bloated skin.
The hunters cheered at what they perceived to be a long draft by the Boy beneath the un-corked stream of the drinking skin.
They smiled and chattered at him, forgetting he understood very little of what they spoke. He laughed and took a bigger drink and they all roared their approval.
We are all mighty hunters around the campfire.
Yes, that is something Sergeant Presley might have said, though I can never remember having heard him say anything like it. All the same, it seems like something he would have said.
When the night seemed alive with revelry and recklessness, the Boy lay down in the dark, not the least bit taken by drink.
Someone screamed. The pain of a wound was evident.
In the moments after, the mood was much more somber.
The Boy waited.
You are always stiff, my left side, especially when I have been lying on the ground for some time.
Now you must do your part.
The Boy rose and returned to Horse.
He laid his hand atop the long equine nose, looking into those forever uncaring brown eyes. The Boy raised his index finger to his lips as he led Horse away from the sleeping hunters.
They had almost faded into the shadows of tall trees beneath a starry night above, when a voice spoke softly to him.
“Nice night for a ride, Boyo.”
The voice was a whisper.
The voice was the shadow of a grave.
In the dark a man came close, and though the Boy smelled the stranger, he did not hear him break the forest floor as he walked toward the Boy and Horse.
He’s good. This one’s got skills. Watch out, Boy.
“Come with me.”
Beyond a moment’s hesitation, the Boy led Horse after the stranger, following the lanky figure through the shifting shadows of the night forest.
The Boy slipped the fingers of his good hand to his tomahawk, hovering above the haft.
When the shot is clear I’ll take it. I’ll put it right between his shoulder blades.
The stranger moved fast, like some dark liquid seeking the path of least resistance, relentless as he slipped the tall pines back to the bric-a-brac wall that surrounded the Lodge.
They emerged onto the wide dirt porch of the ramshackle castle.
Two men walked from the shadows beyond the gate and the stranger, maintaining his loping, soundless stride, directed them to take charge of Horse.
The stranger turned to face the Boy as the ash-faced guards moved to obey.
By the light of the torches at the gate, the stranger is a drooping mustache and sad eyes that stared coldly back at the Boy.
“There’s something you should see inside.”
When the Boy didn’t move, the stranger said, “C’mon,” and dropped his eyes to the Boy’s grip on the tomahawk. “It’s good from now on. You can trust me.”
The Boy followed the sad-eyed stranger through the break in the wall of rotten pine logs and earthworks surrounding the once grand and unknown building of Before turned collapsing fairy-tale castle now more than anything else.
After a few dogleg turns within the wall, they arrived in a weedy courtyard at the entrance to the Lodge. Smoke-stained stones rose up to a sagging roof as windows gaped like open and jagged wounds.
The Boy spelled a sign above the entrance.
A-w-a-h-n-e-e L-o-d-g-e.
A wagon and a team of horses waited near two once grand doors.
Ash-faced guards worked in teams carrying bodies out from the dilapidated castle to the back of the wagon.
The Boy stood with the sad-faced stranger as the last body was thrown into the waiting transport.
When the last body was thrown with an unimpressive thump onto the other bodies in the back of the wagon, the sad-faced stranger led the Boy to the wagon, and before a tarp was pulled and tied, he showed the Boy the leaders of the tribes.
Underneath rictus grins, foaming mouths, and upward-staring eyes, a head of hoary gray hair rested above that same openmouthed, wide-eyed stare the Boy had seen at the beginning
of this day, as the two of them had sat by the fire before dawn and she’d told him the story of her life as a young girl on the day the bombs fell.
The Boy listened for the voice of Sergeant Presley.
I understand what you meant, Sergeant. I understand “involved,” now.
The stranger let the tarp fall, covering the horrified faces and contorted bodies.
“Now,” said the sad-faced stranger. “MacRaven wants to meet a Bear Killer.”
Chapter 25
“You really kill that bear you’re wearing, boy?” asked MacRaven.
The sad-faced stranger had led the Boy through the rotting pile of wood that was once a tourist lodge to a grand ballroom of warped planks, cobwebs, and guttering candles for an audience with MacRaven.
Everywhere there was dust and broken glass and damage. In the big room, moonlight glared through broken panes of glass set in large windows. By greasy candlelight, a banquet long laid out and thoroughly done to death revealed the carcasses of roasted animals and bones strewn with abandon. The hunger the occupants of the wagon must have possessed during the last moments of their final meal was evident.
At the far end of the room MacRaven sat in a straight-backed chair. Among the shadows his ashen-faced warriors busied themselves in unseen tasks. There was blood on the floor and the sad-faced stranger told the Boy not to slip in it. The tone was friendly.
“I guess you must have killed that bear,” continued the boom of MacRaven’s voice from across the hall. “ ’Cause if you didn’t then you woulda said you did.”
MacRaven, lean and rangy, rose from his chair in the thin light of timid candles.
“So I guess you did.”
The wolfish man walked forward across the rotting boards of the floor.
“There aren’t many that ride the horse these days. That bunch outside would just as soon eat your horse as ride it into battle. All twenty thousand plus of ’em, if Raleigh can count rightly.”
MacRaven stopped before the Boy.
He was younger than Sergeant Presley was. Less than forty.
“I’m trying to build up some cavalry but it’s not on this year’s list of things to get done. Instead I’ve got a few who can ride. Maybe next year. Know what I mean?”
The Boy had no idea what he meant.
“I’ll be direct. You’re not with that bunch you came in with, nor any of those other tribes out there. That’s as plain as day. So I don’t know if you’re a ‘merc’ or just passing through, but the truth of it is, I could use you. If you want work, I can give you that. If you want a way to go, well then I think I have something you might be interested in. An offer you should consider.”
MacRaven walked back to his chair and picked up a hanging gun belt. He buckled it around his waist, one large revolver hanging low against his thigh.
“You don’t want in, fine. Ride on.”
Whatever you say, Boy, don’t say that. He ain’t strappin’ on that gun for nothing. It means something, even if he don’t know what it means, it means something bad. Though I s’pect he knows exactly what he means. Watch yourself, Boy, this one’s a killer.
“So, you in, kid?” asked MacRaven.
The Boy nodded.
“What’s that?”
“I’m in.”
“Just like that. Hell, I didn’t know if you even spoke the English until just now. Don’t matter, I speak most of their languages anyway. That you speak the English recommends you altogether. Fine, you’re in.”
MacRaven swiped a drinking cup from off a table near the chair he’d been sitting in. He raised it to his lips. The tension in the room rose immediately. The Boy could sense the sad-faced man at his side about to burst into action. But then he stopped.
“That’s right. This is poison.” MacRaven chuckled.
He put the cup down.
“That wouldn’t do now, would it, Raleigh?”
Raleigh muttered a tired “No.”
“This Army marches tomorrow,” began MacRaven. “In four days’ time we’ll be at the gates of the Chinese outpost at Auburn. Those bodies in the wagon need to be inside the walls, with the Chinese. Raleigh and the other riders are going on ahead. You’ll join them and make this part of my plan happen. Excellente?”
The Boy nodded.
IN THE NIGHT you ride and are not alone, though you should be, right, Sergeant?
The Boy thought of this atop Horse, riding the old Highway Forty-nine north, in the midst of other riders little more than different shades of darkness on this long night. The mountain road twisted and wound, and at dawn the company stopped for a few hours. Shadows were revealed in the dawn light that followed and the Boy saw the riders for who they were.
They were men. Mere men. And yet, in every one of them was the look of a hard man.
He’s a hard one, Boy. Steer clear.
The Boy remembered Sergeant Presley’s warning from villages and settlements they’d passed through in their seemingly endless—at the time—wanderings, when they’d come upon such a man.
A “hard one” was that mean-faced giant who carried the long board tipped with rusty nails, who’d watched the trade going on at the big river.
He’d had trouble in his eyes.
Trouble in his heart.
But they’d only found that out later, after they’d come upon the corpse of one of the salvagers who’d made a good haul out in the ruins of Little Rock, in the State of Arkansas. Then they knew the mean-faced giant had also had trouble in mind.
Each of these shadowy riders, in their own way, was that man.
Hard men.
Weapons. Spears, axes, metal poles studded with glass and nails. Swords. Machetes worn over the back like MacRaven’s ashen-faced warriors. Whips.
Men who made their daily living dealing in the suffering trade.
In the shifting light of a cool and windy morning near a bridge along the crumbling mountain highway, the hard men seemed tired, and as if the leader of their company led in all things, the droopy-eyed and sad-faced Raleigh yawned as he approached the Boy.
“You take first watch with Dunn. When the sun’s straight overhead, swap out with Vaclav.” He pointed to a thick man with coal-black eyes and a beard to match. Vaclav carried an axe. Uncountable notches ran up the long haft.
The sun rose high over the trees and for a while Dunn took the far end of the bridge while the Boy watched over the sleeping riders.
If I go now, these men will catch me.
That’s a fact, Boy. Now’s no good.
I know too much of what they’re about. They can’t let me go.
But they don’t even know you want to leave, Boy. They’re testing you to see if you’ll become one of them. Mainly ’cause of Horse. No doubt one of them, probably that Raleigh character, is watching everything you do. So whatever you do, Boy, don’t pull out that map.
At times, the voice seemed as if Sergeant Presley was really talking to the Boy. Other times the Boy knew it was his own voice and just something he wanted to hear him say.
It felt good not to think and instead just listen to the noise of the river under the bridge.
He remembered winter and the cave above the rapids.
I should have drawn more.
I never should have left.
Go west, Boy. Get to the Army.
The Boy thought of the marks on the map.
Chinese paratroopers in Reno.
This MacRaven has an army. I Corps will want to know about this and the Chinese in this place called Auburn. Should I try to get away soon, Sergeant?
Now’s not the time, Boy. They’ll be all over you like white on rice.
Sergeant Presley would’ve said that.
In time Dunn crossed the bridge, sauntering lazily with a long piece of green grass sticking out the side of his mouth, back toward where the Boy stood guard.
Dunn was an average man: old canvas pants; dusty, worn boots; a hide jacket. In his sandy blond hair the Boy could see the gray begin
ning to show beneath his ancient Stetson hat.
“Dunn,” said Dunn, extending a thick and calloused hand.
The Boy remained silent and then after a moment took Dunn’s hand.
“Bear Killer, huh?” Dunn chuckled in the quiet morning, the noise of the river distant, almost fading as the heat of the day increased.
After a moment…
“Might as well be, as opposed to anything else, right?” Dunn paused to spit chewed grass off the side of the bridge. “Times are strange anyway. Names might as well be too.”
“I never said my name was Bear Killer. That’s just what the Rock Star’s People called me.”
The Boy saw a flash of anger rise up like an August storm and slip through Dunn’s easygoing cowpoke facade.
Dunn turned and regarded the far end of the bridge, as if counting off moments to himself.
“That’s one explanation. I’ll buy it today for the sake of being friendly.” He turned back to the Boy. The August storm had passed.
“And I’ll give you this one for free,” continued Dunn, his tone easygoing, his manner quiet. “How you want to spend it’s up to you. Okay?”
The Boy nodded.
“Fine then. You ride hard and watch our backs. We’ll watch yours. Don’t question the work. There’s no such thing these days as dishonorable work. Whatever the work is, someone’s paying to have a job done and a job done is the way we do it.”
After a moment the Boy said, “I can live with that.”
Dunn watched the Boy for a long moment.
“There ain’t nothin’ left anymore. So sometimes work is something that’s just got to be, regardless. We could use a kid like you. But you’re gonna find some of the things we do might not sit right with you.”
Dunn paused.
“If you’re gonna ride with us then you might need to let go of some of those sensibilities.”
Dunn nodded to himself, as if checking a list of things that needed to be said and finding all points crossed off.
“That’s for free, kid. Next one’ll cost ya.”
Dunn smiled, then ambled over to another of the Hard Men to wake him for his shift.
