The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (8 page)

Demane blazed up like a dry thatched roof. “Didn’t I say DON’T BE CALLING ME THAT.” Biggest anyway, he shot to his feet in the seated gathering. He meant just to kick the jar from Barkeem’s hands; the cheap crockery exploded.

Barkeem curled up on his side, a fetus, or exposed bug. “Please,” he said, and, “I’m sorry!” asking, “What I do? What I do?” One hand he stretched out to soak up the force of any falling blow; the other arm he curled round his head, for a helmet against kicks. Just a year had passed since Barkeem had fled his father’s house, and the sudden furies racking it; sixteen long years he’d lived in that hell. That Demon soaked his robes.

“Get outta here, all y’all,” Demane said to those come from the Fighthouse. “I don’t wanna
hear
no more!” Barkeem wasn’t wrong: there’d be fists and stomps for any slow to take their heels. But, as no one there had ever seen the Sorcerer enraged, they all sat gaping. “GO!” Demane lunged and five brothers scrambled up and away. One not fast enough: White Boy caught a foot to the backside. That kick, with a yelp and three huge staggering steps, sent the brother veering off into some dancer’s embrace, who at once shoved him away. He fell sprawling.

At one time or another, from sickness, or wound, or other misery, Demane had succored them all. And so those five brothers—astounded by this abuse without precedent—wheeled around in confusion, right nearby: doublechecking that Demane and this mad stranger were truly one and the same. He snarled and balled his fists. “
Get
y’all dusty tails away from here.”

They slunk off.

“Dang, Sorcerer,” said Kazza. “You scared them bad.” Scared himself, it was clear, by the wary awe with which he watched for the big man’s next act.

Fuck them niggas
. “They be all right,” Demane said. And his body all charged with righteous violence, but the villain nowhere in sight, he swung his heavy arms out and jerked them back in, banging his own chest once with each fist. Captain had destroyed
seven men
, one of them
dead
. And what shape would the monster be in himself; all bloody and bruised now, torn and staggering?

“Somebody here”—Demane squinted around painfully, the greatorch at center-piazza dazzling his nightvision—“point me to the Fighthouse.” It was one of those cubic hulks looming on the piazza’s northwest peripheries, wasn’t it? Or a block or two farther north?

“Nah.” Faedou shook his head. “You don’t need to go over there.” He patted the ground. “How about you set right back down, instead.”

“Captain . . .”

“ . . . ain’t studn you, Sorcerer. He don’t need, damn sure don’t
want,
none of your do-gooding, witchcrafting help. What Captain would appreciate round about now is some peace and quiet, to be sick and in pain all by hisself. That’s how he was the last six times we come through Mother of Waters. I figure he that same way tonight. Would probably knock your head off, you come near him right now. So might as well just set right back on down where it was you got up from.”

Demane looked around him in befuddlement, and the brothers stared back. The sweep of his gaze came to rest on a brother in particular: “
You
knew he was going to the Fighthouse tonight.” Cumalo’s mouth dropped open, but he got no sound out, only sat gobbling. “
Why didn’t you tell me?
”

“Hey there,” called Faedou. “Hey now. Before you go shouting whatever you shouting at your homeboy Cumalo, you
might
wanna hear the reason why the captain done it.”

“Why he done it?” Demane shouted. “Ain’t no reason why, old man! Captain took a mean cold look around him, and figured the world could use five or six more cripples, and a couple dead dudes on top. So he says, hows about I get myself down to the
Fighthouse
, see what I can
do
about this. Earn me some full-boys, too.”

“No, son. And it really gotta be said—I ain’t never
seenchu
so out your right mind and good sense. You just as wrong as you wanna be.” Faedou lifted his jar between both hands prayerfully, fortified himself deeply, and then sighed. “
Sure
you don’t wanna hear why he done it? I hold the man in some esteem and admiration, myself.”

Pricked already by intimations of his own foolishness, Demane doubled down, and puffed out his chest. “Well, why then?”

“Set.”

Demane didn’t sit. And then slowly, very stiffly, he did.

“Your first time crossing down to Olorum, ain’t it?”

They all knew it was. Why ask?

“Cause I’ma give you something to think about,” said Faedou. Here at Mother of Waters, the caravan had just reached the halfway point, with already six brothers bandit-killed out of twenty-five starting out. They still had the Wildeeps to go, and the endless prairies; and past those, eight or nine days in the monkey forests just north of the Kingdom, and there, under the trees, the desperados just about
ruled
, ever since the death of the great prince, called the Lion of Olorum; ever since the old King had slipped into his final senility. Other caravanmasters paid their guardsmen five silver full-weights,
seven
if you were lucky. With a little scuffle and thrift, a man could keep a wife and baby fed, under a roof, and in clothes for two or three years on a half dozen full-weights. But a lot of brothers were carrying
much
more family than that. So this here caravan wasn’t some sightseeing jaunt across the continent for them. The whole fortunes of families, from greatgrands to great-grandchildren, hung in the balance.

“You ain’t heard what I said, so let me say it again? For all that distance, all that danger, most brothers just get peanuts: six silver full-boys.”

Now did you ever stop and wonder why
this
caravan, out of all of them, paid so much? Master Suresh was going to open up a sack
loaded down
with silver and let each brother take a good grab out. A small hand could pull out ten or twelve full-boys
easy
. Big-ass ones like Demane’s? Might get up to
twenty
. So why in the Hell was Master Suresh paying that much? Where all that damn money coming from? Who—care to guess
who
, Mister Sorcerer—had put up his own life in the Fighthouse of Mother of Waters, just so those greasy fat-cat money-bags could make them a killing, and some the sweet juice of that haul could trickle down to the brothers? “So then. Tell me
now
what you gotta say for yourself, all big and bad?”

Nothing; for a long moment Demane sat contemplating the juncture of his crossed legs, his empty hands resting there, feeling the heart chewed up and spat back into his chest, and then looked up.

“Let me get a sip of that, what you drinking.”

“Aw, son.” Faedou shook his head. “That Demon don’t fix nothing. You too good for this shit.”

“No, I ain’t.” Demane reached out a hand. “Let me try some.”

“Son, I’m
telling
you.”

“Pass me that jar, old man.”

In prurient anticipation of disaster, ten brothers leaned as one to watch when Faedou handed over the jar. Demane lifted it and sniffed. Elsewhere in the world, one cur of a famished pack was sniffing at strychnined meat, and suffering the very same qualms as Demane.
Poison
, said these fumes; but look at all the others partaking. Was it not primitive and backcountry, then, always to be trusting one’s own senses? Thus, even forewarned, dog ate, man drank. Bad water in a ditch where geese, crossing the continent, alit to crap, bears stopped to piss, and up through which foul gas, clots of oil, were burbling from the green sludge of the bottom; and this whole foul brew—thanks to a storm last night, some lightning strike—set
on
fire
. . . That Demon was so much worse than this. Demane gagged. He wheezed breath in. He hacked it back out.

Brothers fell out laughing.

Faedou retrieved his jar. Cumalo beat upon his brother’s back. “Told you not to be messing with it.” Hangdog and gasping, Demane could only cough upon his knees and shake his sorry head. Which he lifted up, as some fresh stir moved through the gathered brotherhood.

“By the Holy Recital of Life and Days, looky here,” said old Faedou, eyes on the piazza’s crowd. “Bet your ass, this is some trouble coming.” Brothers with backs to the view turned around, Demane among them. “Here come the king and prince of chuckleheads, bringing us some news. Ain’t no good news, though!
Watch
.”

It was Xho Xho and Walead, at a dead run. “Yo! Yo! Sorcerer!” The boys were beside themselves. “So this man. This bad man? This man we had ran into, right? He sold Messed Up some
qaïf
.” So wicked and busy a fellow is This Man We Had Ran Into! Has anyone else ever stirred up such trouble across all worlds, from the deepest past to the very days we are living in? “So then, Messed Up was
smoking
with dude, right?” But not, one could hardly fail to note, smoking alone. For a mighty funk of burnt herb had come wafting in with Xho Xho and Walead, and their eyes were droopy, awfully bloodshot. “It was that good shit, Sorcerer. Everything,
chill.
So then why did dude have to just
up and
say
something to Messed Up like that? You
know
Messed Up don’t be tryna hear it! Now that nigga STRAIGHT BUGGING. Yo, Sorcerer, you gotta come
quick
—fore Captain or the fo-so get him!”

Having just set the house on fire, two boys would raise the alarm with this same whine and dance. Demane let himself be pulled up and dragged (a skinny brother at each hand) through the riotous boogie and bounce on the piazza. Coming and going in the heatless glare of the greatorch, his sight was a sometime thing. Every other brother, of course, pushed along through the revels too, all save their eldest, lame and dying.

Conjoined in violence to the familiar gargantua, a little stranger fought to free himself. Messed Up righthandedly flung about and shook his most unwilling detainee, while lefthandedly trying to inflict fatal damage on another—any other—from the usual heckling monkeyhouse of fightwatchers.

The wrappings of Messed Up’s loincloth showed, his robe was so far ripped down. Teeth had worried his right forearm to gruesome effect. Nose freshly pulped, the face of This Man We Had Ran Into was a monster mask of blackslimed teeth. Messed Up screamed pure madness.

“Ahm bout to WHOOP somebody ass! Who else want some? You?
You
, then? How come y’all running—
stop running
! Ain’t NOBODY here wont they ass whoop? Awls ah see is a buncha scaredycat jumpback turntail COWARD RABBITS.”

Demane, sick and tired of the bullshit, nevertheless waded in.

Making twelve, he added four limbs to the brawl’s previous eight. Though a man speaks only wisdom—even shouts it—does the mudslide, avalanche, cyclone choose to heed? Next Demane tried to pry the stranger loose. Clinging like a fanatic to his relic, Messed Up committed both hands to retaining the prize.

“You motherfuckers must think Messed Up
care
.” He clarified his position: “Messed Up DON’T care! Messed Up don’t
give
a shit!”

Even the world’s strongest man has a hard limit. This he cannot do: overcome another very strong man supercharged with hysteria, unless he
cuts loose
. In case of which, be ready to accept punctured lungs, a spine stove in, spleen ruptured, or neck snapped. Said otherwise, Demane’s choice was to talk Messed Up down, or else kill him. No third option.

He’d never cut loose in his life, and was hardly going to do so tonight, against a brother. For a ridiculous eternity, then—while strangers jeered and the brothers put their loudest faith in Demane—the three men waddled side to side, back and forth: one bawling swears, one sense, one silently biting. Then a boy or woman screamed—it was Walead, in fact—splitting the crowd’s hoarse noise with a treble axe.

The captain was come.

The heel of a bloody hand blew past Demane’s shoulder, staunching the flow of Messed Up’s raving upon impact. That clobbering strike knocked the colossus of the riot slack in Demane’s arms, and loose from the stranger—who absconded. Quick as that first blow, another came just behind. Demane pivoted, taking the captain’s fist on the hard meat of his shoulder, lest Messed Up’s lolling head receive a lethal excess.
That
hurt. Both big men sagged toward the ground. With all the gentleness he could, Demane laid out Messed Up’s deadweight. The brotherly part of the crowd surged inward.

“Damn it, Captain, he
down
!”

“Why you
hitting
him again? Dag!”

“Cain’t you see the man out
cold
?”

Captain spun on them, his seeing eye wild.
Got whoop-ass to go around! Who else wants some?

Not a brother did, and they swept—tidelike—out again. Demane got Messed Up turned on one side, the red flux of his nose wetting the cobbles, no longer drowning him.

“It’s all right now, Isa.” Demane caught the hem of Captain’s robe above a sandaled foot. “I got him. Won’t be no more trouble out of him or nobody. I mean it.” He let go, and patted the instep.

At that touch strange sound and overheated odor bloomed into the night from the captain, recollections of some long-ago event. Demane caught his breath at the intensity. He smelled seabrine, waterlogged wood; he heard combers foaming, surf breaking. Trade winds blew in from the austral continent, full of spice and pollens unknown to him. And what
stench
was that . . . the bloody ordure of a market butcheryard? The site of some big-game slaughter, buffalo or elephant? No; already attuned to the scent of Captain’s blood, and Messed Up’s, Demane recognized this vast spilled quantity as
human
blood . . . several dozen men, gutted, all of whom had died within moments of one another. The corpses overcrowded some tightly enclosed space near the ocean . . . rocking atop it: a ship. The captain stood tottering over him, and shed these remembered sensations so potently, Demane could have pointed to where each phantom body lay, eviscerated in the suffocating swelter. There was a scent-memory of the captain as well among those massed corpses, his unearthly blood leaking, the signature tattoo of his strong heart feeble and stuttering . . . Then it broke, whether rapport or fugue, whatever that nightmare had been. Demane was again at the Station of Mother of Waters, fifteen hundred miles from any ocean. At the edge of the desert this warm night was cool—sweet indeed—beside that memory out of Hell.