The Bark of the Bog Owl (11 page)

The feasters marveled at Aidan’s catfish, and they all congratulated him for his skill and bravery. The cooks, who were beginning to doubt they would have enough fish for a proper feast, were especially grateful to have such a large quantity added to their store.

Unlike the treaty feast at Tambluff Castle, there was very little pomp and ceremony at the feechie feast. The feechies wore the same clothes they had worn earlier in the day. They sat where they pleased, or stood, if that’s what pleased them, for there were no tables anyway. There was no trumpeting or standing up or sitting down when Chief Gergo showed up. And whereas only the great nobles of Corenwald had been invited to Darrow’s treaty feast, the feechie feast was for the whole band, right down to the littlest wee-feechies.

There were no entertainers at the banquet. The feechies entertained themselves with games and frolics of various sorts—tree-climbing contests, fire-jumping contests, a spitting contest (which Mrs. Turtlebane won), vine-swinging exhibitions, and the most ferocious wrestling matches Aidan had ever seen. Also, a few good-natured fistfights broke out, which was the custom at all feechie celebrations.

Just as the games and contests seemed to be winding down, Aidan heard whooping and yodeling out in the swamp. Then the feechie feasters began a rhythmic chant:

The feechies had whipped themselves into a frenzy with their chanting when an eleven-foot alligator charged into the crowd, pursued by five or six feechie boys waving pine-knot torches. The alligator feared nothing besides fire, and now that he had the campfire in front of him and the torch fires behind him, he had nowhere left to run. He hissed and growled, lunged and snapped at the feechies who encircled him.

The “gator grabble” was the highlight of the evening’s entertainment. It was a simple enough game. Odo Watersnake had made a “grabbling vine”—a loop woven from forest vines. Using a branch that was long enough to keep him out of the alligator’s reach, Odo looped the grabbling vine over the alligator’s head so that he wore it like a necklace. The object of the game was simply to
remove the grabbling vine from the alligator’s head, using one’s bare hands.

Everyone seemed to have his or her own technique for getting at the grabbling vine. Most involved sneaking up behind the alligator. But an alligator’s bulging eyes see behind as well as they see in front, and every time someone came at him from behind, the alligator whipped around and sent the contestant scrambling long before he got close enough to snatch the vine. Some contestants worked in pairs, one distracting the alligator, the other reaching in for the grabbling vine. But even in that case, the alligator had little trouble putting both feechies to flight. Benno Frogger, always something of a show-off, had a technique that involved coming at the alligator from the side in a diving somersault. But this method was more glamorous than effective; he was no more successful than the rest.

Most of the feechiefolk had taken a turn—all the hefeechies, most of the she-feechies, and even a few weefeechies. It appeared that the alligator might go back into the swamp still wearing the grabbling vine. But then it was Aidan’s turn.

Aidan leaped onto the alligator’s back, just as he had leaped onto Samson’s back, in that safe place right behind the alligator’s head, where neither snapping jaws nor thrashing tail could reach him. From that perch, he took his time untying the vine from around the alligator’s neck, in spite of the alligator’s thrashing gyrations. When Aidan handed the grabbling vine to Chief Gergo, the crowd whooped and cheered. More than once he heard himself described in the most glowing terms the feechies knew: “That young civilizer’s got what it takes!”

By this time, the food was ready. The fare was not as sumptuous as the food served at Darrow’s treaty feast, but Aidan was famished after such a day as this, and he ate heartily and gratefully. Rather than plates, the feechies used mats of tightly woven palmetto fronds. The meal began with a salad of wild purple lettuces and leaves from the sweet bay tree. There were plums and mayhaws and citron melons. The catfish caught by the fishing parties had been cooked in the fire and brought out on bamboo sticks. The highlight of the meal—for the feechies, at least—was the serving of the lizard eggs. They had been buried for six months and dug up for the occasion, now that they were good and rotten. The feechies considered this a delicacy. Aidan considered the rotten eggs disgusting.

As the feasters were finishing their dessert of roasted acorns, Gergo rose to his feet. “Friends,” he began, “we’re here to jubilate a new friend.”

All eyes turned to Aidan. Gergo continued his speech. “Aidan of the Tam been doing things today that we didn’t think a civilizer could do. He heard the feechie watch-out bark and didn’t run off. He caught the biggest catfish ever cooked and ate at a feechie feast—and not the civilizer way either, all finicky with a pole and hook, but with his bare hands. He won the gator grabble. There ain’t no question: This civilizer has got what it takes.” The crowd cheered and hollered and stomped on the soft ground of the Meeting Hummock. When the feechies settled down again, Gergo continued.

“But Aidan of the Tam is our guest tonight because he did something else we never thought we’d see a civilizer do: He saved a feechie’s life. He wasn’t paying no attention
to his own safety when he rescued our Dobro Turtlebane from a panther.” More cheering erupted all around the Meeting Hummock.

“And that’s why I declare that Aidan of the Tam is a feechiefriend, with all the rights and privileges that are due to a feechiefriend—that is to say, his fights is our fights, and our fights is his’n.” The crowd cheered again. “Hooray for the civilizer,” and “Three cheers for Aidan of the Tam!”

“A feechiefriend has to have a feechie name,” continued the old chief. “Aidan killed a panther. His feechie name will be Pantherbane—Aidan Pantherbane.”

Gergo motioned for Dobro to come to the forefront. He removed the panther cape from Dobro’s shoulders and, placing it on Aidan’s shoulders, he said, “It’s time we gave this panther cape to the person it belongs to.”

The chieftain then nodded to Rabbo and Jonko, who brought stone pots containing a soupy mixture of gray swamp mud. They slathered the mud all over Aidan. It gave him the exact complexion of the feechiefolk. “This keeps the bugs off,” explained Gergo. Aidan wished he had had it earlier in the day, when the yellow flies were attacking. “It gives you a better color too,” Gergo added.

“And now,” said Chief Gergo, “there’s one last thing.” He motioned Aidan over to a stump that had been covered with a mat of palmetto fronds like a tablecloth. “Kneel down here and place your arm across this stump, with your palm facing up. Relax as much as you can. This is going to burn a little bit.”

Gergo nodded at Odo Watersnake, who was standing beside the fire. Odo reached a pair of bone tongs into a
pile of orange coals at the fire’s edge. He pulled out a smoking chunk of carved limestone. Aidan watched nervously as Odo approached him, and he had to muster willpower he didn’t even know he had to keep from pulling his arm away as Odo pressed the burning stone against the underside of his forearm. Aidan bit his lip to keep from screaming as it seared his skin. He couldn’t keep the tears from streaming down his face.

When Odo pulled the stone away, Gergo quickly poured a slimy substance over Aidan’s forearm and massaged it into the burn. To Aidan’s astonishment, the pain in his arm melted away. He inspected his forearm. Though he couldn’t feel the burn anymore, it had left a mark: an angry red scar, about as long as Aidan’s finger, in the precise shape of an alligator with open jaws and a curling tail.

“Now you bear the feechiemark,” announced Gergo. “You’ll bear it all your life. Any feechie who sees this mark will know that you are a feechiefriend, and they’ll be a friend to you.”

Gergo extended a hand to Aidan and helped him to his feet. He straightened the panther cape on Aidan’s shoulders, turned him to face the feechiefolk, and raised Aidan’s arm to show the feechiemark on his forearm. “Aidan Pantherbane,” he shouted. “Feechiefriend.”

The feechiefolk answered with one voice: “Aidan Pantherbane, feechiefriend. His fights is our fights, and our fights is his’n!”

The feechie feast continued well into the night, though the guest of honor missed much of it. Exhausted from his travels and the day’s trials, Aidan excused himself from
the revels soon after the feechiefriend ceremony. Benno Frogger showed him to a vine hammock high in the crown of a live oak. There Aidan slept, just as soundly as if he were home in his own bed, blissfully unaware of the raucous whooping, arguing, singing, laughing, caterwauling, and general merrymaking below.

The next morning, Aidan was up with the sun, anxious to continue his journey upstream to the lime sink and on to the Bonifay Plain. Very few of the feechies were awake to see him off, and those few were awake only because they hadn’t yet gone to bed.

Dobro had dozed his way through the night, leaning against the base of the oak tree where Aidan slept. He insisted on guiding Aidan on his journey as far as the Western Road. Aidan was only too glad to let him, both because he would enjoy the company and because he couldn’t possibly find his way otherwise.

For most of the trip, they traveled the feechie way— swinging vine to vine, leaping branch to branch through the treetops. With his mud-gray skin and flying panther cape, Aidan looked like a native feechie. Aidan performed treetop acrobatics he would have never attempted alone. But he watched Dobro intently, putting his hands precisely where Dobro put his hands, leaping to the precise spots where Dobro leaped, and they progressed through the forest at a clip that Aidan wouldn’t have believed possible. There was still an hour left before noon when the boys stopped to rest in a tree overhanging the limestone sink that gave rise to Bayberry Creek.

The Western Road was in sight. Here on the verge of the civilizers’ world the two friends would have to go their separate ways.

Dobro stared absently at the green water fifteen feet below. He spoke for the first time since they had left the Meeting Hummock. “I don’t see why you couldn’t stay with us a little bit longer. We was having a good time, wasn’t we?”

“Sure we were,” Aidan answered. “I had the time of my life. But the battle for Corenwald is on. I can’t be off frolicking in the swamp with the feechiefolk while my brothers are fighting—maybe even dying—on the battlefield.”

“Then how ’bout I go with you?” said Dobro excitedly. “Your fights is my fights now.”

“Not this fight. This is between the Corenwalders and the Pyrthens.”

Dobro looked hurt. “You don’t think I’m a Corenwalder? You don’t think them was Corenwalders you spent yesterday evening with?”

Aidan paused to think. “No, Dobro, I don’t suppose I ever thought of the feechiefolk as Corenwalders.”

“The feechiefolk was Corenwalders many long years before you civilizers come to this island.” Dobro lifted his head and looked westward toward the battle plain. “You might be right. This battle you’re headed to might be none of my business. It might just be one bunch of civilizers fighting another bunch of civilizers to decide who gets to pretend this island belongs to them. That’s a fight you can keep for your own.”

Dobro turned and looked Aidan in the eye. “But if
your fight is a fight for Corenwald, that’s a whole other thing. You love Corenwald. I know you do. But you don’t love it no more than we do.”

A short silence prevailed between the boys. Dobro had given Aidan a whole new way of looking at things. “There’s an old prophecy in the feechie lore,” Dobro continued. “It tells about a civilizer king who’s going to make one nation out of Corenwald. There won’t be no civilizer Corenwald or no feechie Corenwald … just Corenwald.

“Most of the feechiefolk don’t pay no mind to that old story. They think it’s make-believe—just something to tell the wee-feechies. Most of the feechiefolks wouldn’t even want to join up with the civilizers. But I been keeping an eye out for that civilizer king. When he shows up, I’m going to be the first feechie to join up with him.”

Dobro gave Aidan a sidelong glance, as if he weren’t saying everything he was thinking. “But it’s probably time you got going,” he said, and he shoved Aidan off the tree limb and into the water below. When Aidan came up for air, he heard Dobro deep in the forest:
Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo … Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo.

Aidan’s coating of mud was dissolving into a gray cloud in the green water of the limestone sink. He rubbed away the last of the mud on his face and arms as he swam lazily to the edge of the sink. Climbing onto the grass, he found his flour sack, safe and dry. Dobro, nimble as a pickpocket, had snatched the sack away from Aidan as he fell and dropped it on the grassy bank. Aidan took off his panther cape, shook it dry as best he could, then folded it
and placed it in the flour sack. Now that he was out of the creek bottom forest, it was time to become a civilizer again. He shouldered the flour sack and headed down the Western Road, energized by the thought of seeing his brothers among the mighty men of Corenwald.

* * *

Aidan had never seen a real battle camp before. But in daydreams during those long afternoons in the sheep pastures, he had fought many battles and spent many nights encamped with the armies of Corenwald. His head was filled with clashing arms, with battles and sieges and cavalry charges. Though he was a shepherd boy, Aidan’s heart was the heart of a warrior. So when he crested a gentle rise and caught his first glimpse of the Corenwalders’ battle camp a league westward on the Bonifay Plain, a thrill surged through his every bone and sinew. At the same time, though, he felt an odd familiarity, as if he were back home after a long time away.

Even from this distance, Aidan could see that the encampment looked just the way he had thought it would. Blue-and-gold battle flags rippled lazily in the slight breeze. A thousand field tents pitched in long ranks, the distant whinny of a warhorse, even the smoke drifting up from the remains of the noonday cooking fires— all of these things he had imagined and longed for. The early afternoon sun glinted off the helmets and spear points of a dozen pairs of sentries standing guard around the camp’s perimeter. They looked so strong and splendid
that it made Aidan’s heart hurt with pride to think that he was their countryman.

A small valley ran along the camp’s western edge—the opposite edge from where Aidan stood. A bank of chalky clay led down ten or fifteen feet to a grassy flat where a river had run many years before. On the other side of the valley stood the Pyrthen camp, its black-and-red battle flags raised high. Beyond it, as far as the bottomland forest along the Eechihoolee River, stretched the plain, treeless except for the occasional cedar planted by farmers who had farmed here decades earlier.

It was hard to tell from such a distance, but the Pyrthen camp seemed to be much larger than the Corenwalder camp. If the Corenwalders had a thousand tents, the Pyrthens, it appeared, had two thousand, perhaps even three thousand. Not good odds.
Well, then,
thought Aidan,
all the more glorious shall the
Corenwalder victory be!
He tossed the bag over his shoulder and broke into a quick trot for the last league of his journey.

* * *

At the edge of the Corenwalder camp, two sentries stood on either side of the path. They were dressed in the plate mail and blue tunics of Corenwalder foot soldiers. One of the sentries was tall and thin, with a wispy mustache and a bashful little chin that didn’t protrude quite as far as the Adam’s apple just below it. The other was a round little fellow who barely came up to the top of his partner’s breastplate. The Corenwalder army hadn’t
made any uniforms for men his size and shape—or, in any case, he didn’t get one. Aidan had to admit that these soldiers looked much more impressive from a league away than they did up close.

The sentries were leaning on their spears and appeared to be deep in conversation. They hadn’t noticed that Aidan had walked up on them. He cleared his throat loudly to get their attention. They stood up straight and pointed their spears in his direction.

In unison they spoke. “Halt! Who goes there?”

Aidan smiled at the sentries and spoke in a confident, soldierly tone, as to his equals. “I am Aidan Errolson of Longleaf Manor, loyal subject to King Darrow and brother to four warriors of Corenwald.”

The sentries turned their heads toward each other, then burst into laughter. The tall one spoke first. “Warriors of Corenwald? Well, they ain’t been doing no warrioring around here, I can tell you that!”

Aidan was perplexed. He looked about him. “Isn’t this the battle camp of the Corenwalders? Aren’t those Corenwald’s battle flags flying overhead?”

The short sentry looked skyward, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun. “Hey, Terence, young Aidan Errolson has a point. Those
are
battle flags.”

“Well, I’ll be,” answered Terence. “I thought King Darrow was drying his laundry.” He snorted with laughter, almost before he had finished the joke. His short, round partner laughed a wheezing laugh and slapped his knee.

Aidan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. These soldiers were mocking the very king they were sworn to serve—the king who had provided them with arms and
armor. He thought it best to go on his way and leave them to their hilarity. “May I pass?”

“Not so fast.” It was Terence, the tall jokester again. “Lester, this being a battle camp and all, don’t you think we should interrogate the subject?”

“Right, right,” said Lester. He assumed an official-looking posture. “State your name.”

“It’s Aidan Errolson. I already told you.”

“Yes. Of course. Aidan Errolson of the Fighting Errolsons. Brother to four warriors.” Terence stifled a giggle.

Lester resumed the interrogation. “State your business.”

“I’m here to see my brothers—to deliver this sack of provisions from home and to get news of their well-being to bring home to our father.”

Terence snorted at this. “News of their well-being! You can tell Daddy that unless one of the Fighting Errolsons burned himself at his cooking fire or broke a fingernail while polishing up his armor, he’s as safe in this battle camp as a babe in arms.”

Lester broke in. “And as for that sack of provisions, we’d be glad to deliver it to your brothers, so you just hand it over and run along home.” He reached for the sack. But by this time, Aidan had had enough of these soldiers and their jokes. He drew back the hand that was holding the sack and glared at the sentries. Though the soldiers were bigger, older, and certainly better armed, they could see that the young shepherd boy meant business. They decided not to press the issue.

“
Ahem.
Well, I reckon we could let you deliver the sack—this time—but you better let us have a look inside.”

“Yeah, we can’t be allowing parcels to enter the encampment without performing a visual inspection.” Terence had learned this official-sounding language during his brief training.

This seemed a reasonable request. Aidan untied the drawstring at the mouth of the sack and folded back the coarse cloth so the sentries could see inside. “It’s loaves of bread and new cheeses from our goats.”

“Look, Terence—cheese! Young Aidan of the Fighting Errolsons is bringing cheese to his warrior brothers!”

“You know what they say,” answered Terence. “Nothing fortifies a man’s warrior spirit like a nice fresh goat cheese.” This was just too much for Terence. He doubled over laughing at his own joke. Lester, too, was nearly incapacitated with laughter. They leaned on each other, whinnying and guffawing.

Aidan was puzzled by the men’s behavior. Their hilarity was all out of proportion to the joke, which just wasn’t that funny. He had seen people laugh extra hard at little jokes during times of particular jollity—at the solstice festival, for instance, or at the harvest feast, when a summer’s long, hot labor was finally at an end. But Aidan could see that these men were not laughing from an excess of joy. Theirs was a forced laughter, with too much breath and not enough belly. They laughed the way a person laughs when he has slipped and fallen in front of strangers and wants to show he’s not embarrassed, even though he is.

Aidan cinched up his sack, slung it back over his shoulder, and continued into the camp. If the sentries
wished to stop him, they were free to do so. But he had no intention of waiting for them to regain their composure, and they had no intention of stopping him.

As he entered the encampment, Aidan realized the sentries had been right about one thing at least: Though there were uniformed soldiers milling about and battle flags flapping overhead, this did not feel like a battle camp. There was no buzz of excitement as he had expected. He did not hear the hum and clank of last-minute battle preparations—no blacksmiths pounding at swords and spears, no mighty men strapping on their armor, no pageboys gearing up the warhorses. There were no soldiers nursing wounds from battles already fought. He saw no units drilling in the common areas. And in the faces of the soldiers he saw neither grim determination nor the swelling pride of conquest, nor even the fear of death. Instead, he saw heavy-lidded indifference. They looked more like men about to go to sleep than men about to go to war.

Aidan saw a few signs of life and vigor among the Corenwalders, but they weren’t very encouraging. A particularly animated supply officer beat a pack mule that had stopped in the passage. The next tent row over, an officer and a foot soldier yelled and swore at each other. Behind one of the tents, a knot of soldiers huddled together, talking excitedly and pointing intently at a spot on the ground between them. Aidan thought they must have a map, going over a battle scheme or planning a raid on the enemy camp. But as he drew near, he realized they were throwing dice, gambling away their soldiers’ wages.

Aidan wandered down one tent row, then another, searching for his brothers but without success. Few of the men he passed acknowledged his presence at all. No one noticed that he was lost and confused, nor did anyone help him find his way.

Aidan was feeling very discouraged when he heard a voice beside him.

“You look lost.”

Aidan turned to see a boy about his age wearing the hat and side pouch of a messenger. The messenger boy had fallen into step with Aidan and was holding out his hand to shake. “I’m Herschel,” he said, showing Aidan the first genuine smile he had seen since arriving at the camp.

Aidan shook Herschel’s hand. “I’m Aidan.”

“What are you looking for?” asked the messenger boy.

“My brothers. The Errolsons.”

“Everything around here is arranged by shires,” said Herschel. “What shire are you from?”