by Jeff Posey
“Not to my knowledge.” Pók’s nerves crawled. Tókotsi seemed to be after something. Did he want to catch Pók in a lie? Or did he want to build a web to catch someone else—the fortuneteller? Even, perhaps, The Builder?
“And I suppose you know where this flute player comes from, too.”
“He was a worker on the palace named Peelay and fell from the top stories. His injuries, I am told, twisted his back in a hideous way. But a woman who used to make flutes nursed him back to health. Now he cavorts like a mountain goat in the side canyons.”
“Why do your mighty warriors believe flute music casts spells on them?”
Ah. Perhaps Pók saw what Tókotsi was doing. He wanted to tie together the magic of the flute player and the magic of the children. “Two summers ago, the fortuneteller spoke a prophecy of the witchery of flutes, which convinced The Builder, but not me. Unfortunately, the captain of a patrol chasing the flute player fell from a cliff while flute music played, and ever since my guard and regulars believe flute music will kill them.”
“But your new recruits don’t believe that?”
“No. They fear nothing except me.” And even that is tenuous sometimes, he thought.
“Does the flute player ever cavort, as you say, with children?”
“Yes, in fact, I have had reports of a pack of children who call themselves the Wild Boys hiding in the side canyons where flute music is often heard.” That’s it, Pók thought. The connection.
“Has the red-hat trader ever been seen with these Wild Boys?”
“The last time the red-hat man was at Center Place was the month of the Day Star. The Wild Boys didn’t come to my attention until after that.”
“But the red-hat man could have known some of the Wild Boys? Maybe even this Peelay too?”
Pók nodded. “It’s possible, yes.”
“So why is the red-hat man returning now? What does he want?” Tókotsi murmured as if thinking aloud rather than asking the question of Pók. His eyes wandered unseeing around the room. “You say the red-hat man traveled far to the south where he collected his shirt of many bells. Some of your warriors and most of your new recruits also come from the far south, as do my ancestors and those of the Builder. Maybe he has come, surrounded by children to confuse us, to take command of our Southern warriors and overthrow us, take the riches of Center Place Canyon for himself. We have many ancient enemies there who would gladly help him. Who would kill those of us who were born here, or make us slaves for his false Másaw armies.” Tókotsi looked at Pók. “The red-hat man is the key. The children and the flute player are only his tools.” Tókotsi glanced at his grandson, who had gone to sleep. “Ráana here is worthless to me, even if half his head weren’t bashed in. Can you and your guard find the red-hat man? And can you send lookouts along the south road to watch for enemy warriors?”
Pók felt surprise at the change in tone of Tókotsi. Rather than issuing an order as a superior, he made a request as an equal. “Yes,” he said, standing as tall as he could, honored. “My guard is loyal beyond doubt.”
“Good. Go capture the red-hat man. Capture, not kill. We must interrogate him. Do you understand?”
Now it began to feel more like an order, and Pók relaxed from standing so tall. “I understand. But what about the escort for the muster of the Summer Council?”
“We need no escort. They’re a council of old fools, most of them. It’s far more important that we have the red-hat man. Alive. So we can find out what he knows. And to watch for reinforcements who follow him. Take anything you need from our stores. And when you have the red-hat man, bring him to me. There’s no need to let The Builder and his fortuneteller know any of this. Not yet. Any questions?”
“What about the children, the Wild Boys? And the flute player? Should I continue to pursue them?”
“Doesn’t matter. In fact, it would provide good cover for your true mission of capturing the red-hat man, so you may as well continue. Anything else?”
Pók nodded. Tókotsi was right. He’s not as foolish an old man as Pók had thought. So he decided to throw him a bone. “Ráana saw the red-hat man just north of Black Stone Town. Should I start there?” Pók hated being so subservient, but he wanted Tókotsi to share in the risk of searching for the red-hat man.
“I will not do your job for you. You’re the top warrior. You figure it out. Just find the red-hat man. And protect us from attack from the south. Now go.”
Pók nodded and left Tókotsi’s chamber. He went out into the dark stillness of early morning, the chill air bracing his face, a three-quarters moon about to set behind a low mesa to the west. In an outdoor kitchen he saw the old cooks butchering and cooking the children he had brought in. He smiled. Even horrified old women wouldn’t waste good meat. The smell made him hungry.
He ordered two fast men to run cross-country south of Black Stone and watch for approaching organized warriors, and then strolled among his encamped guard, nodding to the night sentries, and wondering how he would find the red-hat man. Then it occurred to him who to ask. The Fat Man. The Fat Man knew everything that went on in the underworld of the canyon. He would know where the Wild Boys hid out, even the flute player, and they might somehow lead him to the red-hat man. Pók nodded to himself. Then he began daydreaming about what he would really do with the red-hat man when he managed to catch him.
Thumbless
Pók pulled the girl’s hair until she screamed for real and tightened her sex parts around him. As long as she cried out, whether in pain or in pleasure, he didn’t care. It felt so good to him for a few moments he forgot everything else in the world. He let go of her hair and hugged her to him, rubbing his cheek over her smooth brow.
Someone called for him at the door.
“Go away,” he grunted.
“There is something you must know,” said a voice he recognized as his captain of the guard.
He pulled out of the girl and slapped her aside. She cowered into a corner and covered herself with a blanket.
“Come in if you must,” Pók said, standing naked, his man part glistening with juice from the woman. A single lamp burned in a holder on the wall.
The captain entered, glanced at Pók, and then stared hard at nothing. “A warrior just arrived. A new regular captain overseeing two-dozen recruits working the Canyon of Last Trees. He claims all the recruits were killed by a dozen children with bows and arrows. He also saw a man wearing a red hat and a bent-over flute player.”
“All the recruits?”
“He is the only survivor.”
“Astounding.” More like unbelievable. The physical brutality of raw recruits made them difficult opponents, even for trained warriors. “When did this happen?” Pók barked.
“Two hands before last sun yesterday,” said the captain.
Half a day, Pók thought. It was not yet first light. If the red-hat man camped there, Pók and his men had a chance to catch him if they moved quickly. “Captain, prepare the full guard to move out at once, every man at top speed. To the Canyon of Last Trees. We’re going to capture the red-hat man and that flute player and kill those children.”
“Leave before first light?”
“Yes!” Pók yelled, angered by his captain’s question. “Now! We leave now!”
The captain left and Pók dressed quickly. He hadn’t slept a wink since they had made the double-speed trot from Center Place yesterday. He was exhausted. But the thought of catching those meddlesome children and that red-hat man warmed him more than the naked dancer had. He rushed outside into the cold, still morning. Half the guard had roused quickly and stood, the other half still slumbered or sat unsteadily as if they’d taken a blow to their heads. He smelled breakfast stew from the outdoor kitchen and regretted not having time to enjoy it.
“Get up!” Pók shouted, waving his arms. “We leave now! The last two stragglers will be our evening meal tonight!”
He found his captain. “Rouse everyone and mark the last two to leave he
re. Then run ahead to me before we get to the Canyon of Last Trees.”
The captain looked doubtful, but said he would.
“If you do not,” said Pók, “you will take the place of one of the stragglers.”
Pók filled his marching pouch with parched corn from a large ceramic jar near the kitchen, then called, “I leave now! Follow or die!” At the last moment, he asked a cook for a piece of meat on a bone he could carry and eat, and an old woman handed him a forearm with a child’s right hand attached. He grinned and tore off a bite while he looked into her old eyes. She didn’t flinch, but he could read the contempt she had for him. He laughed, then set off at a lope. He tossed away the hand and arm bone after he had gnawed it clean, then picked up his pace.
He ran down the way he had trotted up this same night. A third of the guard joined him and stayed close, not bothering to fill their pouches or roll their blankets. Pók ran them hard and long. After first light, he paused and looked back from a rise. Running guardsmen strung out as far as he could see. He counted six men who had kept up with him, and another dozen not far behind.
“It may be just us who make the first assault,” said Pók, breathing hard. “If we see them—the red-hat man and his children archers, and even that flute player—we will attack immediately. We will not wait for the others. So be ready the moment we reach the canyon. Surprise is worth more than rest.”
A few of the guardsmen, breathing hard with their hands on their knees, nodded, and with that, Pók took off again at the hardest run he felt he could sustain. At this pace, he estimated, they would arrive at the mouth of the Canyon of Last Trees by the time the sun stood one hand above the horizon. If the red-hat man and his orphans lingered at all, they would be his for the taking. That made him run faster.
As he ran, he tried to think. Tókotsi wanted the red-hat man. The Builder wanted the flute player. Pók wanted to kill the children who had been murdering his warriors. And Pók wanted to expose the imposter fortuneteller. Hauling Ráana before The Builder would help do that.
But maybe Pók set his sights too low. He looked at the brightening canyon floor around him, the grass that had been green only a half-moon before now bent with a golden parched color. He imagined himself a running giant, the stalks of grass were people cowering before him, looking up to him, and he thought about who he should stomp with his great feet.
The fortuneteller was nothing compared to Tókotsi and The Builder. Could he stamp them out? Should he? He had always been a master at finding ways to tear down those above him so that he could climb up. He used his gift of anger to make things happen.
He eased into running and considered what he knew. Tókotsi hadn’t known of the red-hat man until Ráana told him. The Builder and his fortuneteller did not know of him at all. What did the red-hat man want? On the surface, he came to trade his shirt of many bells for finely worked bluestone. Bluestone is highly valuable. If Pók controlled all the bluestone, the Southern Alliance and the sun priests and the Owl Men, all would be beholden to him. What if he rescued the red-hat trader and put him in charge of amassing wealth and controlling the exchange of bluestone?
That was a completely new idea for Pók. He had never really thought in terms of trade. He tried to imagine what it meant. What would people outside the realm of Center Place exchange for bluestone? Because he managed the patrols that guarded the caravans of burden-bearers, he already knew that Center Place received all of the broken blue rocks from mountains far to the east. They said they carried blue morning light from the rising sun. Fifty warriors were permanently stationed at the mines to prevent others from taking the rocks. And women throughout Center Place Canyon spent their days and evenings shaping those rough stones into beads and pendants and all kinds of things that had never really interested Pók. The Builder’s Owl Men traded dried beans and corn for the worked stones. And Pók’s warriors made the farmers give their corn and beans to the palace store rooms. So the food came for free and went for rough bluestone. But the finished bluestone merely accumulated and went nowhere. No, not true. The Builder and Tókotsi sent special runners with gifts of bluestone beads on long strings and pieces shaped and polished to represent spirits of animals and the sky. The bluestone was a currency of political power. Pók and his warriors were the club, and the bluestone was the reward. He’d never realized that clearly before.
If that red-hat man could train orphan children to kill the most experienced warriors, perhaps he shouldn’t be thrown away as a bargaining tool to the likes of Tókotsi and The Builder.
Pók’s running slowed as he became more and more exhausted. He noticed only about a half-dozen guardsmen trailed within view. He could see the mouth of the Canyon of Last Trees, near where they had caught five or six children the afternoon before. He stopped running and began walking when he saw a woman standing beside the road. The same woman who had screamed at him, the mother of the children he had killed. Pók walked to her with the intention of knocking her down with a hard shove. He had no pity for mothers because his mother left when he was too young to remember. He knew no mother. And the only wife he’d taken produced the most worthless excuse for a newborn he’d ever seen. When he prepared to punch her in the chest, she lashed out with a long-handled farmer’s knife. Pók felt it hit his right hand. He ripped the knife from the woman with his left hand. He started to slash her throat, but changed his mind and sliced open her belly. Her intestines gushed out. She sat hard and stared at them, steaming in the morning light.
Pók shifted the handle of the knife to his right hand, but it slipped and fell. He realized blood soaked his hand. Worse, his right thumb was dangling by the skin of the webbing. He lifted it to eye level and stared at it. In all his years as a violent man, this was his first significant injury. He couldn’t believe it had been cut off by a woman. In anger, he grabbed his dangling thumb, ripped it off the skin, and threw it into the bushes. Then he held his wounded hand to his chest.
A guardsman arrived who had a medic pouch with ungwaputi herb to stop the bleeding. The medic made a poultice, then tore strips of cotton cloth and wrapped Pók’s hand. By the time he finished, even the stragglers had arrived, including the captain. They’d lost too much time, but he felt a wave of weakness, his life energy flowing out through his throbbing thumb. No, not his thumb, he realized. He no longer had a thumb on that hand. He glanced at the woman, wishing he could kill her again, but she merely stared into space, and slumped backward as he watched.
Pók struggled to stand and grabbed the captain by his vest with his left hand to pull himself up. “Go to that canyon,” he pointed with his good hand, “and attack and kill anyone who is in it. Except for the red-hat man. Capture him. No matter what. Do it now! Do you understand? Now!”
The captain nodded and said yes. Pók released his grip and the captain quickly organized his men and set off at a run. Pók tried to follow, but felt dizzy and staggered. He stayed on his feet, but couldn’t make his legs go as fast as he wanted. He felt light-headed, a sheen of sweat covered him and the dry breeze chilled him and he shivered. When he arrived at the canyon, he saw the captain and his guard standing at the entrance doing nothing.
“What!” he shouted, pushing himself forward. Then he saw the arrangement of dead raw recruits along the canyon walls, sitting side by side, their heads hanging onto their chests. Pók heard the unmistakable sound of flute music floating from the canyon. He looked at the faces of his captain and guard.
“Charge in there and surprise them,” Pók hissed. “Captain! Attack! Now!”
The captain didn’t move. Pók pulled a knife from his vest with his left hand and raised it to slice it at the captain, who held his club in defense.
“I’ll go in,” said a warrior. He ducked and darted into the canyon. Before he went out of sight, Pók saw him plug his ears with his fingers.
“We should all go,” another warrior said, and went in. Others began to follow. Even the captain pulled away from Pók and went into the openin
g. All plugged their ears.
“You fools!” Pók shouted. He detested their ignorance. “Unplug your ears! Use your weapons!” But then he suddenly calmed. They couldn’t hear him. There was nothing he could do but watch. So he went into the side canyon and found a boulder that gave him a good view and climbed atop it, the effort making him gasp. His hand throbbed, so he held it high. The warriors climbed slowly up a steep canyon wall toward where a man wearing a red hat stood and a misshapen flute player danced. Pók stared at the red-hat man, his first time to see him. “Were I you,” he narrowed his eyes and muttered, “I’d roll rocks onto my foolish guardsmen.”
A few moments later, Pók saw young archers, children, pop up among the rocks above his oblivious guardsmen. They began firing, and guardsmen began falling. The crooked flute player danced wildly and Pók listened to his music. Falling guardsmen knocked down other guardsmen below them. Just like all the stories he had been hearing, children were killing his warriors. And that red-hat man calmly watched from above, as if he directed everything without saying a word. If his eyes weren’t seeing it this instant, Pók would have refused to believe this could happen.
A rock crashed and pieces skittered near him. He looked where he thought it had come from, but saw nothing. A moment later, another rock landed close enough to him to make him jump to his feet and stand unsteadily on the boulder. This time he saw the source. An older boy, a young man really, stood on a high overlook and stared down at Pók. The boy had an intensity in his gaze, almost a serenity. It felt familiar to Pók. Did he know this boy? He shook his head. Surely not. The boy hurled another rock that Pók had to dodge. He jumped from the boulder and landed hard, banging his injured hand on a rock. The pain shot through him like lightning. He lost his balance and fell, clenching his teeth in pain. Another stone landed close to him, then another even closer. He clawed with his good hand and crawled under an overhang.
Pók fumed. Who did these children think they were? No one had ever attacked his warriors in this way. No one had ever so much as dared send even a hard glance in Pók’s direction, much less try to crash a rock onto his head.
