Aidan glanced to the northwest, back toward Longleaf, wondering what would happen to the plume hunters when they got there. That’s when he noticed darkening clouds in the west. Lightning split the sky, followed by rumbling thunder. He pointed at the approaching storm. “That might be the help we need!”
The rain started before they got to Bullbat Bay. It was a frog-strangler, with big, heavy drops driving down, whipped into the men’s faces by an angry wind. It was the kind of rain that could raise the level of the river a few inches if it could keep it up long enough, or if it rained enough along the creeks that fed the river upstream from the raft. And all they needed were a few extra inches of water.
By the time they got back to the sandbar, the river had risen enough that the Headstrong, though not yet clear of the sand, was starting to sway a little in the water. The raft’s crew stood on the sandbar, exposed to the lashing wind and rain, cringing at the earth-shaking thunder and rejoicing in the power of a creation that could lift a hundred-ton raft of logs and place it back on its path. When the rising Tam freed the Headstrong, Massey, Floyd, and Aidan were on it, eager to continue their voyage to Last Camp.
By the time the rain stopped, Aidan was having second thoughts about sending five armed and dangerous plume hunters to his father’s house. He pulled a sheet of palmetto paper out of his pack and cut a narrow strip. He wrote a brief message to his father. Five plume hunters coming your way. Armed. Be ready. Aidan.
He wrapped the message around the leg of Jasper’s homing pigeon with a piece of twine and let the bird go.
Watching the pigeon dart upriver toward Longleaf, Aidan felt good about the old warrior’s chances against the five unsuspecting plume hunters. Errol had no shortage of strong men to call on for such occasions. More to the point, as official magistrate of Hustingshire and the Eastern Wilderness, Errol had the authority to deal with criminals in those regions. Aidan felt sure it would revive his father’s spirits to administer a bit of frontier justice on the very people who represented the demise of the wild Corenwald he knew so well. Aidan turned his face back toward Last Camp and smiled.
Chapter Ten
Last Camp
The whole population of Last Camp-six hunters, a camp cook, and fourteen very eager hunting dogs-was waiting at the landing when the Headstrong nosed into the bank. It was nearly dark, three days since the raft had left Longleaf and more than two weeks since the men at Last Camp had seen Floyd and Massey. Amid much hooting, back slapping, and coonskin cap tossing, the three raftsmen stepped ashore with the swaggering confidence of real rafthands.
“Here’s your stockade, boys,” announced Floyd. And because he could never resist tweaking Cooky, he added, “Now, where’s my supper?”
“I thought you was drownded,” grumbled the crusty old cook, his wiry gray beard wagging. “It’s bad enough you two coming back alive right before supper,” he waved his ladle toward Aidan, “without you bringing an extry mouth for me to feed.”
Aidan couldn’t help but smile at Cooky’s exaggerated gruffness as the old man stumped back to his cooking fire. “I won’t eat much,” he called after him. “And I won’t stay long.”
Floyd presented Aidan to the group. “Boys,” he said, “this is Aidan Errolson from Longleaf. Aidan, this here’s Burl, Chaney, Big Haze, Little Haze, Isom, and Hugh. You already met Cooky.”
Aidan shook hands with each of the men, repeating each name to be sure he had it right. He liked these men already. They were weather-toughened and strong of limb, and in their broad, open faces he saw a confidence that allowed them to be genuinely welcoming of the stranger in their midst.
“I know you,” said Big Haze. “You’re the boy killed that giant.”
“Well,” answered Aidan, “he wasn’t actually a giant.”
“If he weren’t a giant, he was something mighty like a giant,” interrupted Massey. “Anyway, Haze, you got it right. This is the same Aidan Errolson. I seen him handle five plume hunters too.”
“With at least four crossbows between them,” added Floyd. “And he ain’t a half-bad raft pilot neither.”
“Hey, Cooky,” called Burl, “I hope your supper’s better’n usual tonight. We got a sure-enough hero amongst us.”
Cooky scowled over his stew pot. “Any hero don’t like my cooking can fix his own supper. That goes for flea-bit deer hunters too.”
There were no permanent buildings at Last Camp. The stockade, when built from the logs they brought, would be the first. There were four or five wagons, including Cooky’s covered mess wagon, and several deerskin tents encircled the fire. But there were more empty tent sites than there were tents. Last Camp usually bustled with at least twenty hunters-more in the autumn-but the place was nearly deserted now.
“Where is everybody?” asked Floyd. But he suspected he knew the answer.
“Culler and Minty are hunting deer over at Longpond,” said Burl. “They’re camping up there tonight. But everybody else has quit us.”
“Hadley and Munce said they wanted to try farming,” offered Hugh, “and Redden went back up north to the mines.”
“Folks just sort of drifted off,” Little Haze added. “Wiley went to work with his uncle, who’s a butcher in Tambluff. He figured that was better work than getting shot at every night.”
“It’s got worse since you left,” explained Burl. “Most nights now we’re getting attacked. Nobody’s got hurt or killed yet. Whoever’s shooting up the camp just wants to scare us.”
“They doing a thorough job of that,” said Isom. “All that hollering in the trees scares me as bad as the arrows and spears.” He gave a little shudder. “Makes my blood cold.”
“I want to start on that stockade at first light tomorrow,” said Chaney. “It won’t be long before some of them arrows or spears hurts somebody, whether they’re trying to or not.”
By that time, Cooky was ladling up supper, a stew made of rabbit and possum. Aidan ate his hungrily, and his genuine enjoyment of the meal softened Cooky toward him. The campfire conversation was lively. Massey and Floyd gave a full account of their river adventure-from their near destruction of the Hustingreen waterfront to their run-in with the plume hunters.
But Aidan, of course, was the main attraction. Except for Little Haze, who hadn’t been fighting age at the time of the last Pyrthen invasion, all of the hunters had been at the Battle of Bonifay, attached to the same infantry company. Even Cooky was there, serving as their mess sergeant. So they had all witnessed Aidan’s combat with Greidawl. They eagerly relived the day of Corenwald’s greatest victory-the reawakening of a valor that had nearly dwindled away, the terror of the Pyrthen thunder-tubes, the exhilaration of the last charge across the plain that drove the invaders from the island. They insisted on hearing the details of Aidan’s trek through the caverns under the battlefield and the climactic explosion of the Pyrthen flame powder that set the rout in motion.
Talk turned inevitably to the strange happenings in the Eechihoolee Forest. “The best part of the whole thing,” said Burl eagerly, “was after we run the Pyrthens into the swamp, and they come running back to surrender.” He chuckled at the thought of the Pyrthens’ panic-stricken faces as they tripped over one another to be the first to hand themselves over to the enemy.
“After a quarter hour in the Eechihoolee, those old boys weren’t looking so proud and shiny,” added Floyd. “Their faces was as ashy as a possum’s. And their eyes was like this.” He held two disks of sweet potatoes to his eyes to imitate the Pyrthens’ bulging eyes. He ran around the circle of the fire, still holding the sweet potatoes to his eyes. “Help me!” he shouted in an exaggerated Pyrthen accent. “Save me from the lizard people! Save me from the tree alligators!” But the sweet potatoes obstructed his view, and he tripped over a chunk of firewood, much to the amusement of the others.
“What chapped my hide,” said Burl, “was the way our own officers tried to explain everything away. Said it was just crazy talk, said the Pyrthens was seeing th
ings that wasn’t there.”
“Ain’t that just like town folks and hill-scratchers?” Massey interjected. “Anybody who’s spent any time out east here knows different. I’ve seen a lizard man my own self.”
“I’ve seen one too,” offered Chaney.
“We’ve all seen ’em,” Isom added.
“Sometimes you look across the river there,” said Burl. He pointed to the south bank of the Tam. “And them trees is just alive, just crawling.”
“Crawling with what?” asked Aidan.
“I don’t know exactly,” answered Burl. “But all that hollering and hooting we heard that day in the Eechihoolee right before the Pyrthens come running back out, that wasn’t the only time any of us Last Campers ever heard it.”
“It’s a long way from here to Tambluff,” said Massey. “In Tambluff, you can go for days and never have dirt underneath your boots, only cobblestones. You can tip your high-plumed hat at a lady on the street and neither of you think about how that plume got from a bird’s back to your head. You can watch the alligators lazying in the castle moat and pretend you’ve faced the beast. In Tambluff, you can believe we’ve got the whole creation under our control. Seems strange to me that the folks who make the decisions for this whole kingdom live in such a place as that.”
“But out here,” said Isom, “the nursery tales of feechiefolk and the Wilderking don’t seem all that fantastic-no stranger than the world that buzzes just across the river and in the forests all around us.”
Big Haze looked across the fire at Aidan. “You’re sitting at the edge of the world, Aidan. How does it feel?”
Aidan smiled. “I like it here. It feels more like home than Tambluff Castle.”
The hunters cheered and laughed, flattered by Aidan’s remark. Tambluffers were a rarity at Last Camp, and even rarer were Tambluffers who accepted the hunters on their own terms.
“Well, if you don’t mind my asking,” said Burl, “what brings you to Last Camp?”
Aidan measured his words. “I’m out here to fetch something for King Darrow.”
“You ain’t the tax man, are you?” asked Cooky.
“No,” Aidan assured him and laughed.
“So what have you come to fetch?” pressed Chaney.
“Ain’t no use asking,” Floyd interrupted. “Me and Massey had him surrounded three days on a raft, and we never got it out of him.”
Before anyone had a chance to ask another question, the forest erupted in a series of blood-curdling cries: “Haaa-wwwweeeeee! Haaa-wwwweeeeee! Haaa-wwwweeeeee!” The hunters dove to the ground and tucked themselves into tight balls in order to make smaller targets for the arrows that came whistling into the camp. Half a dozen arrows embedded themselves with a thwack in the logs where the hunters had been sitting. Another arrow glanced off Cooky’s stew pot, ringing it like a bell and careening into the forest on the other side of the camp. A spear stuck in the ground less than two feet from Aidan’s boots.
“Aidan! Get down!” shouted Massey. “It ain’t over yet!”
But Aidan didn’t get down. Among all the people at Last Camp, only he understood exactly what the forest hollers were: feechie battle cries. And he felt he could do something to stop the attack. He grabbed a small log that was half in the fire and brandished it for a torch, trying to catch the gleam of feechie eyes in the forest. Then, even as arrows continued to sail into the camp, he belted out a blood-curdling yell of his own: “Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo… Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo.”
The woods grew still as the echoes of Aidan’s watch-out bark subsided. Aidan thought he heard the slightest rustle in the treetops-a rustle that grew more distant as the attackers receded into the forest. Still bearing the torch, Aidan ventured a few steps beyond the camp into the trees, as if in pursuit of the attackers. But they were gone.
“What just happened?” asked Floyd. He was looking at Aidan with undisguised awe.
“What was that holler you just did?” asked Isom, equally amazed.
“It sounded,” gasped Chaney, “like the bark of the bog owl.”
But Aidan didn’t hear them. He was inspecting one of the short, white-feathered arrows the feechies had shot into the camp. “Who fletches an arrow with egret feathers?” he asked aloud. And the arrowhead was equally perplexing. It was made of burnished steel.
Chapter Eleven
Beyond the Tam
Bedroll, hardtack, water bladder, alligator jerky, tinder box…” Rocking with the flow of the River Tam and the push and pull of Massey’s oar strokes, Aidan took one last inventory of his backpack’s contents. He felt for the hunting knife at his belt and counted the arrows in his quiver.
“I don’t like this one bit, Aidan,” said Massey as he leaned back on the oars, propelling the little skiff across the water. “Not one bit.”
“I know you don’t,” answered Aidan, “but if you don’t row me over, I’ll just swim across.”
“And get et up by gators,” Massey grumbled. “Which, for all I know, ain’t no worse’n what’s going to happen to you once I’ve handed you over to the swamp critters on the south bank.” He nodded back toward Last Camp. “There’s a reason we call it Last Camp. It’s because you can’t go no further. Because when folks go past it, it’s the last time you ever hear from ’em.” He was hurt that Aidan had waited until this morning-the very morning of his departure-to mention he was crossing the river. Three days on the raft together-three days Massey could have had to talk the boy out of this foolishness-but he had waited until this morning to spring it on him. And Aidan still hadn’t revealed the real nature of his mission.
“King Darrow sent me across the river,” said Aidan matter-of-factly. “And I’m going across the river.”
Massey grunted but said no more. Neither of them spoke for the remainder of the crossing. The river was broader here than it was at Longleaf, and deeper, too, swelled by the waters of countless creeks and smaller rivers that joined the Tam along its twisting course.
When the little boat nosed into the high bank on the other side, Massey tied up to a root tangle, clambered to level ground, and reached a hand down to pull up Aidan and his gear. The old alligator hunter looked at the moss-hung trees and shuddered. “I ain’t never been on this side of the river,” he remarked.
“Looks a lot like the other side, don’t you think?” answered Aidan, shrugging into his backpack.
“Aidan,” said Massey suddenly, “Darrow ain’t king of Feechiefen.”
Aidan smiled at Massey. “Darrow may not be king of Feechiefen, but he’s king of Aidan Errolson, whether I’m at his table or out here past the edge of civilization.”
Massey nodded. He wouldn’t try again to talk Aidan out of his foolish mission, whatever it was. “You better get going then,” he said. He embraced Aidan awkwardly, patting his backpack with a hamlike hand. Then, not really knowing what else to say, he added, “We sure showed them plume hunters, didn’t we, Aidan?”
“We sure did, Massey.”
Massey turned and strode quickly toward the river. But before the old alligator hunter disappeared down the steep bank, Aidan thought he saw him swipe at his eyes with a hairy hand. “Thanks, Massey!” he called after him, but Massey made no answer.
Aidan was alone now. Very alone. He stood on the far side of the River Tam, where even the rough customers of Last Camp never dared come. He told himself what he had told Massey: Things looked the same on the south side of the river as they did on the north side. The same birds thirrruped in the same gum trees and sweet bays. The same lizards skittered across the same palmetto fans. The same thick-bodied cottonmouth snakes left the same meandering tracks in the sticky mud beside the wet places.
But every step took him away from the familiarity of the river, from the comforts of the hunters’ comradeship. Every step made it harder to convince himself that things weren’t so very different on this side of the river. Every treetop rustle became ominous, a prelude to another attack like the previous night’s
barrage on Last Camp. Every movement in the bushes made him think of a feechie ambush.
“No,” he said aloud in an effort to calm his own fears. Real feechies wouldn’t make any noise in the treetops, and they surely wouldn’t let themselves be seen if they were setting an ambush. But that realization did little to comfort Aidan, for now he was spooked by trees that didn’t rustle, by bushes that didn’t move. And every step took him closer to Feechiefen Swamp, from which no one had ever returned.
It took Aidan nearly an hour to push through the dense, vine-tangled forest of the bottomlands. But when he reached the edge of the floodplain, a gain of just a few feet in elevation produced a whole new landscape. The density of the swamp scrub gave way to the shaggy openness of a vast pine savanna. The land was as flat as the open plains. And, as on the open plains, the high grasses rippled and shimmered with every shifting breeze. But there was no mistaking this place for open plain. This was a forest, populated by massive, high-canopied pine trees with long, drooping needles that sighed softly when the breeze played through them. These were the longleaf pines for which Errol’s estate was named, and being among them made Aidan feel as if he were home again.
The trees offered a dappled, shifting shade to the traveler while leaving plenty of space in the understory for the breezes not found in the swamp. Though not as dense as the river-bottom forest, these woods were no less alive. Great black-masked fox squirrels, the size of small dogs, dashed along the lower limbs as Aidan made his way through the forest. Enormous red-plumed woodpeckers, as big as crows, sailed high over Aidan’s head to hammer away at dead branches where bugs were most abundant. The claw marks by which bears marked their territory marred the trunks of many trees.
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