The Secret of the Swamp King (14 page)

A plume of thick black smoke billowed up over the southern horizon. “There it is!” whooped Carpo. “There's Bearhouse.”

“What's that fire?” Aidan asked.

“That fire,” said Pickro, “is poor grass.”

“Progress,” Aidan corrected.

Pickro nodded. “You sure got that right!”

They were four days' poling from Scoggin Mound. And though Aidan's stomach churned with dread at the thought of being handed over to Chief Larbo and the pretended Wilderking, he could take some consolation in the fact that at least he wouldn't have to spend another day in the boat with these two yahoos.
I don't
want to see another flatboat as long as I live,
he thought. But he took back his wish when he considered the pos
sibility that he actually might not live to see another flatboat.

Pickro poled faster, like a horse headed back for the stall.
“Hoooo-weee!”
he yodeled. “Ain't Chief Larbo and the Wilderking gonna be proud of us, bringing Pantherbane hisself to Bearhouse!”

“Hey, Pantherbane,” said Carpo. “You reckon you could growl and make ugly faces when we get out the boat? Maybe kick at us and flop around and show your toothies?”

“It might be kinda disappointing to the boys, you know, if you was to come in all polite and peaceful,” Pickro explained. “It'd just look a little better if you was to act more like a dangerous prisoner.”

“And since you gonna get throwed in jail either way, Pantherbane,” said Carpo, “we didn't figure you'd mind putting on a show for the boys.” Aidan rolled his eyes. He would be very, very glad to get out of this boat.

They could hear Bearhouse before they could see it. The hammer and clang of metalwork was jarring to Aidan's ears here in the depths of the Feechiefen. For days, the background noises had been birds, frogs, and bugs with the occasional splash of a fish or alligator, nearly drowned out by the constant, inane chatter of Carpo and Pickro. But Bearhouse sounded like one big blacksmith shop.
Clang! Clank! Screeeeee!
And the steady rhythm of axes.
Chuck! Chuck! Chuck!
And the creak and snap and thunder of falling trees.

When Bearhouse at last came into view, Aidan's heart sank. The north end of the island rose from the black
water like the top of a great bald, scarred head. Most of the trees were gone, and the ground cover too. The sun glared down with a punishing brightness on the feechies who scurried to and fro across the bare sand.

“Where are the trees?” Aidan asked.

“Trees fire the forges,” answered Pickro. “Forges makes the swords and spears and axes.”

“You're feechies,” Aidan said. “Surely you miss the trees, and the animals that lived here.”

Carpo shrugged. “Trees is nice. Critters is nice. But it's like the Wilderking says, once we whup all the other bands in this swamp, we'll have all the trees and critters we want.”

“Is the whole island cleared?” Aidan asked. “Is the whole forest gone?”

“Naw, naw,” said Pickro in a reassuring tone. “We ain't got around to chopping out the south half of the island.” He whistled. “But you talk about natural race horses!”

“Wilderking aims to start a new shiny-works down at Round Pond on the south end,” gushed Pickro. “And we gonna be able to make more cold-shiny than you ever seen!”

“We'll use the pond for the cooling pool, and them big oak trees is perfect for the forge fires,” Carpo added.

“Oak burns hot,” Pickro explained. He waved dismissively at the trees around him. “Not like these cypresses.”

To the right, a larger flatboat was headed west, away from the island. “There goes more plume bales!” shouted Carpo.

Pickro pointed eagerly at another boat coming the opposite way, toward the island. It was an identical boat, but it rode much lower in the water. “Hee-haw!” the sharp-faced feechie cried. “More cold-shiny!” He broke into song:

They were very close now to the landing in the northern corner of the island. No birds flew overhead. No fish disturbed the surface of the water. No frogs peeped from the maiden cane that managed to survive at the water's edge. There weren't even alligators in the water here at Bearhouse. The place was dead, except for the feechies who hurried back and forth.

Pickro poled the boat to the landing, and Carpo pulled Aidan from the boat by his tied hands. Looking very important and self-satisfied, they marched Aidan across the bare sand. The bustling little village stood still as they paraded through. Feechie blacksmiths in gator-hide aprons held their hammers aloft in midblow and turned their soot-blackened faces to follow the civilizer. Forge fires cooled as bellows-tenders stopped their work and gawked.

Aidan's captors prodded him across the settlement to a wooden stockade surrounded by a palisade of upended pine logs sharpened at the top. There was a door in the wall facing the settlement, and beside the door stood two guards.

The guards were civilizers, the first civilizers Aidan had seen since Massey left him at the south bank of the Tam. They were short, broad, and well armed. “This here civilizer is Pantherbane,” Pickro announced to the guards. He gave them a second to be impressed by this information. “We brung him to the Wilderking.”

One of the guards ducked through the door into the fort. Carpo called after him, “Tell him it was Carpo and Pickro what captured him.” He winked broadly at Pickro and rocked up and down on his feet in smug self-regard.

The guard returned shortly. “The Wilderking says to take the prisoner to the holding cage. His Majesty will see the prisoner in his own time.” Carpo and Pickro were dejected. They turned to go, and Pickro called over his shoulder, “Make sure he knows it was Carpo and Pickro what brung him.”

Aidan's guards marched him back to the northern edge of the island and into a cage made of thick bamboo poles. They locked the door with a crude iron padlock. The sun drilled down on Aidan. There was no shade, nothing to sit or lie on besides the bare ground. There was nothing to do but wait and watch. He waited all day, and the Wilderking never came.

Aidan spent the long day observing the scene around him. Behind his cage was the open swamp. In front was the feechie settlement. From where Aidan sat, he could see five different forges burning. Blacksmiths took the bars of iron that arrived on flatboats and pounded the metal into arms and armor. Some of it they pounded into more mundane implements, such as shovels and picks. Feechies scut
tled back and forth with wheelbarrows, carrying finished armaments from the forges to the Wilderking's stockade, carrying unfinished metal from the landing to the forges. Feechie timber crews went back and forth, sometimes with axes over their shoulders, sometimes lugging chunks of firewood to fuel the forges.

Aidan had never seen feechies look so busy. He had never seen feechies look so tired. And another thing occurred to Aidan. He had never before seen feechiefolk look so frightened. Every half hour or so, the door to the stockade swung open, and a pair of civilizer taskmasters came out. When they walked around the settlement, the feechies always started moving faster.

On Aidan's second day in the cage, Pickro and Carpo came back. To Aidan's horror, they had been assigned to be his jailers. It was like being in the flatboat all over again, with their incessant yammering. Aidan wondered if this was a cruel punishment the false Wilderking had devised for him. When they arrived at their posts beside the cage door, they were already deep into a conversation about what they were going to do after the Wilderking established himself as king of Corenwald.

“I ain't raising none of them smelly sheep,” Carpo was saying, “but I might could get used to riding around on a horse. I'll howdy all the pretty civilizer ladies, and they'll howdy me. They'll say, ‘Howdy, Mr. Carpo. How you come on this morning?' and I'll say, ‘Pretty tolerable good, pretty lady, except I got a bad case of the burps.' And the lady'll say, ‘You poor feller. I get the same way sometimes, but I eat a bait of latherleaf, and it mostly goes away.'”

Aidan groaned. “I promise you, that's not what a civilizer lady would say.”

“What do you know about it?” asked Pickro.

“He's just mad 'cause his folks ain't gonna be in charge no more,” said Carpo. Aidan retreated to the back of his cage, away from the two feechies.

“I reckon I know what kind of house I'm gonna get,” Pickro announced. “I seen a great big civilizer house on the river, up on a bluff of honey-color sandstone. Right where the river bends around. Biggest thing I ever seen. It was made of sandstones piled up on each other. And it had a little creek in the front where you can keep your alligators if you get lonesome for the swamp.”

Aidan was trying to ignore the feechies, but he couldn't help himself. “Tambluff Castle?” he blurted. “You want to live in Tambluff Castle?” He threw his hands in the air. “Let's just say this impostor Wilderking does overthrow King Darrow and makes himself king of Corenwald. Do you really think he's going to set you up with big houses and big estates? If he brings you to Tambluff, it will only be to get more work out of you.”

He swept his hand in a broad gesture. “Look at this place. Do you really think this is how the true Wilderking would do things? There's no wilderness here. The trees are gone. The birds are gone. You can hardly breathe for the smoke.” He pointed at a group of feechies shuffling past with shovels over their shoulders. “Look at them! Look at you! You were a free and happy people before this Wilderking came along. He's made you slaves. Not with chains but with empty promises of power and riches
and ease.” He nodded his head toward the nearest forge, where sweating feechies were heaving big chunks of wood onto the fire. “Is this really the way you want to live?”

Aidan shook his head. “Don't you understand? This pretended Wilderking has wiggled into the worst part of your nature, and he's enslaved you. That's not how the real Wilderking is going to do it.”

The feechies stared at Aidan, astonished by his outburst. They seemed to be considering what Aidan had said. But Pickro spoke at last. “Don't listen to him, Carpo. He's just jealous.”

“Just jealous,” repeated Carpo. “It's like the Wilderking says: Civilizers ain't gonna like it when feechiefolks come to get what's ours.”

“That's right,” Pickro added. “Wilderking says you civilizers think us feechiefolks is second-class sun-setters. But we ain't.” Pickro folded his arms in the gesture of a man who has made his point. Aidan squinted at him, trying to make some sense of what the feechie had said.

“I don't think he said ‘second-class sun-setters,'” said Carpo. “I think he said ‘second-class setter-suns.'”

Aidan blinked, still confused. Then a light dawned at last, and he couldn't help laughing. “Second-class citizens,” he said. “The civilizers think you're second-class citizens.”

“See?” said Pickro to his partner. “He don't even deny it.”

* * *

Aidan's second day in the cage went much like his first, except that the ceaseless, idiotic chatter of Pickro and Carpo was layered on top of the monotony and misery of being locked in an unshaded cage in the middle of a swamp. Aidan paced back and forth to keep his blood flowing, and he watched the dull-eyed feechies go about their daily labors. He watched smoke billow and curl in black violation of the Feechiefen sky. He saw plume hunters arrive with their hateful trophies and another plume bale go out toward the world of the civilizers.

But he still didn't see the man who called himself the Wilderking.

The third day was very much like the second. The tedium and the sun's unremitting glare, however, were starting to do their work on Aidan. He didn't feel like pacing that day but instead lay in the back corner of his cage watching the sun make its way across the sky. The conversation of a new pair of guards sounded to Aidan more like the buzzing of wasps than intelligible speech. He left his duckweed cakes untouched and didn't drink much of the water his captors provided.

Aidan didn't even seem to notice that night had fallen or that Pickro and Carpo were back on post. He drifted into a fitful sleep that didn't seem very different from the dull waking of the daytime. His dreams were confused and vivid. Calling out in his sleep, he spoke many more words than he had in the whole previous day.

The feechie settlement was midnight-still when Aidan began to awaken. A first-quarter moon hung high in a clear sky, spilling its silver light across the sandy desola
tion of Bearhouse Island. Aidan was startled out of a dreamy half sleep when he caught a glimpse of a white cloud hovering like a phantom just outside his cage. When his eyes adjusted, he saw that the cloud was a spray of egret plumes. It was a headdress, worn by a man—a civilizer, judging by his size—who crouched a few feet away. Aidan knew at once that, unless he was still dreaming, this had to be the false Wilderking watching him sleep.