Four Bearhouse feechies patrolling nearby heard the commotion. They saw their comrades lying motionless on the ground and a strange feechie trying to open the civilizer’s cage. They started running for Dobro.
“Oooik!” their leader barked. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s locked!” Aidan shouted at Dobro. “It won’t open. Run away!”
But Dobro didn’t run away. He kept rattling the lock, pushing and pulling against the door that wouldn’t budge.
“I shouldn’ta left you at Scoggin Mound,” he kept repeating. “I shouldn’ta left you!”
“It doesn’t matter, Dobro. Run!”
The feechie patrol had Dobro surrounded, but Dobro paid no mind. He worried the lock and rattled the door, as single-minded as a raccoon. Cold-shiny spearpoints gleamed all around him, but he paid no mind.
The lead feechie gave the signal, and all four patrollers attacked. Preferring to capture him alive, they flipped their spears around and struck Dobro with the handles rather than the spearpoints. Dobro soon lay battered on the ground, unable or unwilling to rise.
The lead feechie was about to ask Aidan a question when the still, black water behind the cage erupted in a frothing tumult. A hundred feechies from the North Swamp had been lying beneath the surface since before daylight, breathing through reeds, and now they lurched up as one and charged, dripping clubs in hand, on the unsuspecting Bearhouse feechies.
They overwhelmed Dobro’s four attackers in short order, but the alarm went out across the island, and two hundred Bearhouse feechies answered the call. They came with swords, spears, and axes, all of shining steel. Their bowmen notched steel-tipped arrows to their bowstrings and pulled them tight. They laughed cruelly at the stocks and clubs of the North Swamp feechies; old-fashioned weapons had no place in the new world ushered in by their Wilderking.
But the North Swamp feechies were undaunted. They formed a line and faced their adversaries without flinching. The air crackled with tension as the two ferocious armies glared at each other across the clearing.
Behind the line of Bearhouse feechies, the door to the stockade swung on its hinges, and Aidan got his second look at the man who claimed to be the Wilderking. Stepping into the morning sunlight, he was a dazzling sight. A long robe of fuzzy white egret plumes trailed behind him, and around his head, egret plumes shot out in all directions like the rays of a fuzzy sun in the headdress he had worn the night before. Even in the daylight, the false Wilderking’s face was more or less obscured by the plumage. Beside him stood an old feechie in a wolf-hide cape—Chief Larbo, Aidan figured. Six thick-bodied civilizers, his bodyguard, formed a protective semicircle.
With a clear voice the false Wilderking addressed the Bearhouse feechies: “For this I have trained you, my hearties. You are strong of arm and strong of heart. Your steel is strong too.” He raised a plumed spear above his head. “For Bearhouse! For Larbo! For the Wilderking!”
The North Swamp feechies braced for the onslaught. But before it came, a wild cry echoed across the clearing:
Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo… Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo.
All eyes turned to the bamboo cage from which the watch-out bark had come. Aidan stood with his face pressed between the poles of his cage. Chief Larbo’s voice was the first to break the silence. “A watch-out bark!” he called across the battleground. He glanced at the spearheads and arrowpoints glinting all around. “If you don’t mind my saying, young civilizer, it looks to me like you the one ought to watch out.” The Bearhouse feechies snickered.
“That may be,” answered Aidan. “But you’d better watch out too. All of you.” The authority in Aidan’s voice captivated the attention of every feechie within earshot. “Things will never be the same if you turn those cold-shiny weapons on other feechies.”
“That’s what I know!” shouted one of the Bearhouse feechies. “Larbo’s boys gonna rise again!” A rumble of agreement rose among the Bearhouse feechies, punctuated by two or three enthusiastic whoops.
But Aidan’s voice silenced the crowd with a single word: “No!”
All eyes were once again on the civilizer’s cage. “If you win this battle for this pretended Wilderking, no feechie will ever rule in this swamp again.”
The false Wilderking’s plumage shook with rage, and he began to speak: “This fool has—” But a glance from Chief Larbo silenced him, and Aidan went on.
“If you turn a cold-shiny weapon on another feechie, you won’t be just killing a feechie. You’ll be killing all feechiedom.”
The Bearhouse feechies had been foolish, but they weren’t altogether stupid. They were listening to Aidan now.
“Today you have a choice to make.” Aidan waved his hand in a sweeping gesture to indicate all of Bearhouse Island—the forges, the desolate landscape, the Wilderking’s stockade. “Choose this, and you can never go back to the life you lived in your home band. You can’t have both.”
Aidan noticed that the forest of spears across the battleground were held a little lower. He pressed his advantage. “And you’re not just choosing for yourself. You’re choosing for the mamas and sweethearts you left behind. You’re choosing for your daddies and your granddaddies, for the wee-feechies who can’t choose for themselves.”
Aidan looked into the silent faces of the Bearhouse feechies. “That’s all I have to say.”
In their training, the Bearhouse feechies had used their swords and spears to do all sorts of horrible things to fake enemies stuffed with graybeard moss. But now that real enemies were in front of them, they looked more like cousins and former bandmates than enemies. It’s not that they minded attacking the invaders. North Swamp boys had no business, after all, on Bearhouse Island. But how much fun could it be to cut them up with cold-shiny weapons?
The Bearhouse feechies threw down their swords, spears, and bows. The North Swamp feechies threw down their clubs. And the two lines rushed headlong toward one another with flying fists, flying feet, and flying leaps. The Battle of Bearhouse was on, and it was ferocious. Aidan had witnessed a few feechie fights. There was nothing in the civilizer world to compare to a feechie fight for sheer brutishness. Fighting bears would be more civil. The Battle of Bearhouse was a hundred such fights, raging in every direction.
Aidan hung from his cage poles, whipped into a frenzy by the fracas around him. On one hand, he longed to get at the impostor who had tricked and enslaved the Bearhouse feechies. On the other hand, he was thankful for the protection afforded by his bamboo cage. He did his best to cheer the North Swamp boys, but it was hard to tell who was who.
Across the way, Aidan could see the false Wilderking dancing with rage. “You fools!” he screamed over the din of the battle. “Strike! Kill!” Every jerk of his head, every twist of his body was so magnified by his elaborate costume that the figure he cut was more comic than commanding. Larbo, seeing that the battle was being fought the old feechie way, couldn’t resist and left the Wilderking’s side to join the fun. The bodyguards, on the other hand, stood as if their feet were glued to the sand. They were confused and terrified by the feechies’ primal ferocity. The civilizers had weapons, and they didn’t mind using them, but they had underestimated what feechies could do in a free fight.
The battle raged. Feechies flew through the air, some leaping to the attack, others being thrown and flipped by their adversaries. In several cases, Aidan noticed that both of the combatants in a hand-to-hand fight were Bearhouse feechies. Because they outnumbered the North Swamp boys, there weren’t enough opponents to go around. Some of the Bearhouse feechies had to fight one another—the way girls at a ball sometimes danced with one another when there weren’t enough boys. As the battle swirled around him, Aidan noticed a new light in the Bearhouse feechies’ eyes. The old, fiery feechie spirit had chased away the dullness born of overwork and a love of cold-shiny. Their swampy exuberance made them more formidable enemies than their flashing weapons ever could.
Dobro Turtlebane, recove
red from his earlier setback, now tangled with an unusually large feechie wearing an alligator-claw necklace. And things weren’t going well for Dobro. The Bearhouse feechie lifted Dobro over his head and hurled him against Aidan’s cage with such force that the whole structure collapsed in a heap. Aidan went to the ground, covering his head against the falling poles, and Dobro landed beside him with a thud and a clatter. He rolled over and moaned. “See, Aidan?” he groaned, holding his ribs. “I told you I’d get you out of this cage.”
Aidan spied the false Wilderking across the way. He was still stomping, raging, and waving his arms. Aidan rose to his feet and started walking a straight line toward him. Fists and feet and feechies flew all around him, but on he walked, driven by a single purpose. He stared unblinking at the gyrating, gesticulating fraud, stalking closer, closer, yet the Wilderking was too self-absorbed to notice. Some of the feechies noticed, however, when Aidan stooped to pick up a discarded club. Hyko left off his combat and fell in step behind Aidan, and so did Pobo, Orlo, Tombro, and Odo Watersnake from Chief Gergo’s band. Even Dobro joined in as best he could, limping and holding his ribs.
Aidan was thirty strides away when the Wilderking’s bodyguards hustled him inside the stockade. They drew their swords and waited for Aidan and his following. But Aidan kept coming, undeterred, and his following grew. The guards were well armed. But they could count, and it was obvious that they couldn’t hold back what was quickly growing into a feechie mob. They, too, retired to the safety of the stockade.
Still Aidan kept coming. His step was quicker now. When he arrived at the stockade door, he raised his club high and brought it down on the doorframe with all his might. Thwack!
“I am Aidan Errolson of Longleaf Manor.”
Thwack!
“I have come for the impostor who calls himself the Wilderking!”
Thwack!
“I am Pantherbane!”
Thwack!
“You have enslaved a free and happy people!”
Thwack!
“You have defaced this swamp, God’s creation!”
Thwack!
“You are a liar!”
Thwack!
“You are a fraud!”
Thwack!
“You are a coward!”
Thwack!
The feechie battle had stopped altogether by the final time Aidan struck his club. All eyes were on Pantherbane at the door of the stockade.
The long silence was broken at last by the voice of the Wilderking, not quite as clear as before, from inside the wooden walls. “Take care you do not talk yourself to death, Pantherbane. You meddler. You ignoramus.”
This was what everyone was waiting for. “Rudeswap!” called Chief Larbo. “The Wilderking finished the rudeswap!”
“Hee-haw!” called a feechie voice. “We gonna see a civilizer fight!”
The feechies—North Swamp and Bearhouse alike—stampeded toward the stockade.
“Do you hear that, Wilderking?” shouted Aidan over the confusion. “Your subjects await you.” The feechies surrounded the stockade, bruised and bloodied from battle. But there was no response from inside. Dobro, who stood at Aidan’s right hand, rapped his knuckles on his helmet, one fist, then the other in a steady rhythm: Tock … Tock … Tock … Tock…
The feechies around him joined in. Tock … Tock … Tock… Tock … The tempo was like a great clock ticking out the seconds toward a showdown between Pantherbane and the man who called himself the Wilderking. Fighting out a rudeswap was the most basic point of honor in the Feechie Code. Every second the king remained in the stockade, every second he refused to fight out his rudeswap, his power over the Bearhouse feechies dissolved a little more. Now all of the feechies were pounding their helmets with a deafening urgency: Tock … Tock … Tock … Tock…
At last the stockade door cracked open. The helmet banging stopped, and the feechies waited eagerly, expectantly for the Wilderking to appear and do his duty. But the man who stepped out of the door wasn’t the Wilderking. He was Lawmer, the Wilderking’s big, thick-necked lieutenant. He read from a piece of paper:
To tussle with a common ruffian is beneath the dignity of your king.
There was a general grumble among the feechies, but Lawmer continued.
The Wilderking desires you, his subjects, to continue with the battle and drive the invaders off the island. He will address you when your task is complete.
Chief Larbo was livid. He hopped in a circle around Lawmer, who did his best to maintain a dignified indifference. “Beneath his dignity?” the old feechie barked. “I tell you what’s beneath his dignity: hiding from a free fight like a bunny in a brush pile!” He snorted. “Beneath his dignity! I don’t care who he is. He swaps rude with a man, he better be ready to fight it out!” Larbo darted behind the big civilizer to push through the stockade door. He meant to have it out face to face with the Wilderking. Lawmer, quick as a cat, struck Larbo across the back with the flat of his sword. The feechie chieftan sprawled to the ground.
That was the blow that ended the reign of the false Wilderking on Bearhouse Island. The sight of a civilizer striking down a feechie was like a shot of cold water in the faces of the Bearhouse feechies. It jolted them out of their shiny-hungry daze and demolished the last remnants of the false Wilderking’s hold over their conscience. The atmosphere was thick with their anger, like the air before a summer storm. Lawmer felt it down his whole spine. He ducked through the door and barricaded it behind him.
The feechie storm broke with terrifying suddenness. Feechies closed on the stockade and climbed the palisades elbow to elbow, one right behind the other. Pobo Sands and Orlo Sands led the way, one on either side of the stockade. Feechies swarmed over the palisades like ants on an anthill. Before the first climbers reached the sharpened tops of the poles, the whole structure began to sway beneath their weight. The stockade had been built by feechie hands, and being the first wooden structure they had ever built, it wasn’t very sturdy.
The stockade collapsed on itself in a jumble of falling poles and tumbling feechies. The civilizers were as exposed as soft, pink crawfish that had shed their shells. They flailed about them with their gleaming weapons, and several feechies fell. But it was only a matter of seconds before they were swarmed under by the very people they had lorded over for two long years.
But the Wilderking somehow slipped away from the melee. A flash of white at the edge of the clearing caught Aidan’s eye. He saw the robe of egret plumes drop to the ground, and a tall civilizer in boots and tunic, now unencumbered by the trappings of the Wilderking, disappeared into the woods.
Chapter Twenty-one
Revelation
The false Wilderking ran south, toward the end of the island he and Larbo’s band had not yet ravaged. Aidan picked up a bodyguard’s sword and plunged into the forest after him. The ground on Bearhouse Island gave rise to a riot of vines and entangling brambles. Aidan tried to hack his way through with the sword, but there was little use.
The Wilderking had obviously taken a hidden trail. Aidan couldn’t find a path. So he tucked the sword in his belt and climbed a nearby tree. Through the treetops he swung and soared, watching the forest floor for any sign of movement. He was within sight of the island’s edge when he saw a rustling in the bushes below. Then, above a stand of sparkleberry bushes, a clump of brown, curly hair appeared.
Swift and light as a bobcat, Aidan tree-walked toward his prey. The Wilderking had made it to the shoreline. A flatboat was waiting for him at the water’s edge. That’s when Aidan crashed down on him from the treetops. The impostor fell hard onto his face. Aidan scrambled to his feet and stood over his prostrate enemy, sword raised and ready to strike if need be. But the Wilderking made no sudden moves. He hardly moved at all.
“Turn around!” Aidan ordered. “Look at my face.”
The man who called himself the Wilderking turned his head slowly to the side, then lifted one shoulder to face his conqueror.
Aidan peere
d into the narrowed eyes of his enemy, and his face turned white. He had known those eyes since the day he was born. Those eyes had watched Aidan grow up. Aidan had seen those eyes sparkle with laughter many years before. He felt his head grow light. “Maynard,” he whispered.
The impostor twisted his mouth into a sneering smile. “Hello, little brother.”
Aidan staggered back a step. The sword hung by his side, loose in his grip. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t understand,” Maynard snarled. “How could you understand a man going out and getting what nobody meant to give him? You’ve never had to work for anything. You’ve been given everything you’ve ever had. How could you understand?”
Aidan stood blinking. He couldn’t begin to make sense of what was happening.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be a second son,” Maynard continued. It seemed he had practiced this speech many times to himself. “To come so close to being the heir to Longleaf Manor, but instead to spend a lifetime knowing that Brennus is going to get it, that self-satisfied moron, because he was born fifteen months before you were.
“That’s bad enough. But then a lunatic shows up pretending to be a prophet and convinces everybody that your baby brother is the Wilderking.” He waved a hand dismissively at Aidan. “You! The Wilderking!” He barked one short syllable of a laugh. “The fifth son! That was the last act.” Maynard pushed up from his elbow and rose to his feet, looking Aidan in the face. “I wish you’d explain one thing to me: How do you deserve to be the Wilderking more than I do? That’s one thing I don’t understand.”
Aidan didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. Maynard’s diatribe went on. “Then I saw what the feechiefolk did to the Pyrthens in the Eechihoolee Forest. I realized that if I could train them, arm them, I wouldn’t have to depend on any half-wit prophet to make me the Wilderking.” He shook his head slowly, condescendingly at Aidan. “Where did you think I’d been these two years?”
The Secret of the Swamp King Page 15
