The Bark of the Bog Owl (8 page)

The great hall was as silent as a tomb. King Darrow’s face was blank, the pale gray of cold ashes. He slumped in his chair. He had been so focused on making friends with the Pyrthens that he had neglected the possibility that he might yet have to make war against them. Every eye in the room went from Darrow to the Pyrthen orator, then back to Darrow, looking for some sign of what to do, what to think. But the king sat motionless.

After several long seconds, the silence was broken by the crash of a heavy fist hammered once on the table at the far end of the room.

“Never!” The voice of Errol echoed around the sandstone walls. “Never! Never! Never! Never!”

Errol rose from his bench and stalked slowly toward the head table, his finger pointed at the Pyrthen diplomat who still stood there. Errol’s face was scarlet, almost purple with rage. A throbbing blue vein had appeared on his forehead.

“Bring your warriors, Pyrth! Bring them by the shipload! We will leave them scattered on the battle plain, food for crows and buzzards!” The Pyrthen’s confident smile melted under the heat of Errol’s warlike glare. He
took a step back as the tough old Corenwalder continued his slow approach.

“You are young yet, Pyrthen—too young to have sailed with the last invading army that dared set foot on Corenwald. But ask your countrymen there.” Errol pointed at two Pyrthen delegates who were closer to his own age. “I daresay they remember how Corenwalders welcome invaders.”

The vein in Errol’s forehead was still pounding out the drumbeat of war. He continued toward the head table with slow steps. The Pyrthen, though he was already separated from Errol by the heavy walnut table, got behind his chair, in case the old man vaulted the table.

When Errol was only a few steps from the dais, Lord Radnor leaped up from his seat at the head table and put himself between Errol and the young Pyrthen. “Lord Errol,” he began. His nervous grin looked more like a grimace of pain than a smile. “Let’s not be hasty. No one said anything about an invasion.”

“This boy just said the Pyrthens are setting up an army encampment on Corenwalder soil.”

“Yes, for our protection,” answered Lord Radnor with a nervous little laugh. “The treaty does state that our armies will cooperate to defend our mutual interests.”

“Radnor,” answered Errol with a grim chuckle, “you are not a naïve little boy! You are a nobleman of Corenwald and one of the craftiest. This is an invasion, whatever the Pyrthens say about ‘protecting’ us. From whom do we need to be protected if not this clutch of rattlesnakes?”

At this point, the senior member of the Pyrthen dele
gation stood up and supported his junior delegate by the elbow, as if he were in danger of falling over. “I think we’re finished here,” he announced. He turned to King Darrow. “I thank you for your hospitality.”

Then he gestured toward Errol as he addressed the assembly of Corenwalders. “I hope you do not let this lunatic draw you into his madness. We have come here in friendship. Our warships come here in friendship.” He hesitated, obviously aware of how ridiculous this statement sounded. “Do not court destruction at the hands of those who would be your friends.”

He motioned toward the rest of the Pyrthens, and they stood to leave. Leaving through the door he entered, he called back over his shoulder, “If you need us, you can find us on the Bonifay Plain.”

When the Pyrthens were gone, Errol turned and spoke to his countrymen. “From the time our ancestors first came to this island, the Pyrthens have sought to crush the dream that is Corenwald.”

Radnor interrupted, “But Errol, you forget: Corenwald is not a dream. Corenwald is a kingdom. And kingdoms survive and prosper by making friends with the neighbors they cannot conquer.”

Errol turned back toward Radnor. “Yes, Radnor, Corenwald is a kingdom. But first it was a dream. And the kingdom cannot stand without the dream. Our fathers dreamed of a land apart from the world Pyrth controlled. A land where power and privilege were used to serve the greater good, not to lord it over the weak. A land where even the poorest citizen could expect justice and dignity.”

Radnor clasped his hands in front of him, in a gesture of earnestness. “It was a fine dream, Errol. It still is. But it doesn’t change the plain fact that the Pyrthens can crush us. We all admire your courage, Errol, but we must be reasonable. The Pyrthens are hardened veterans, with the riches of a vast empire behind them; we don’t even have a standing army, only untrained farmers and shopkeepers who don’t know the difference between a halberd and a hauberk.”

Radnor turned toward the rest of the assembly now, appealing to his fellow nobles’ good sense. “The Pyrthens have made us a generous offer. We can join the greatest empire the world has ever seen and never shed a drop of Corenwalder blood. Or we can march out to a war we cannot win and put our homes and families in the path of devastation. There are worse things than being citizens of a great empire.”

Errol’s face grew red again, and the vein in his forehead was again visible. “You astonish me,” he spluttered. “For thirty-three years—in four different invasions—the Pyrthens brought the weight of a mighty empire to bear on this little kingdom. But the men and women of Corenwald proved themselves stronger even than the Pyrthens. We fought for something higher than mere conquest or the exercise of power. More to the point, something higher fought for
us.
”

Errol pushed the right sleeve of his robe up to the elbow and pointed at a long dent of a scar along the back of his forearm, a gash made by a Pyrthen battle-ax. “Many such wounds I got and gave so that Corenwald would never play the lapdog to Pyrth. Many such
wounds I got and gave so we could live in a kingdom unlike other kingdoms.”

He stretched his hands out toward his countrymen. “And so did each of you, the Four and Twenty of Corenwald. There’s not a single coward among you.” He looked into the eyes of Radnor. “Radnor, I owe my life to your acts of bravery on the fields of Berrien.”

He walked toward the middle of the great hall. “Those may have been different times, but those weren’t different people. That was us. You, Cleland. You, Clovis. You, Grady.

“And yet it wasn’t really us. We overcame because the One God fought on our behalf—the God who asks only that we act justly, love mercy, walk humbly.” He gazed out at the ridiculously ornate robes of his countrymen.

“Radnor is right; our chances of defeating the great empire are impossibly slim. But no slimmer than at any other time the Pyrthens landed on our shores.

“It has been nearly ten years since the fourth western invasion. Ten years of peace and leisure. In our comfort, we have forgotten that virtue is hard. In our wealth, we have forgotten that freedom is expensive. We have come to love what the Pyrthens love.

“So now the Pyrthens are on our shores, intent on swallowing up the nation our fathers built out of pure wilderness. And we have lost the will to drive them out. Why? Because they have offered to let the Four and Twenty keep their estates. Because we can keep living our easy lives if we cooperate with our invaders.”

He pointed out the bank of windows on the south wall. “But how do you suppose Southporter, over at the
south gatehouse, will feel about that arrangement? He has no great estate. All he has is Corenwald. And, by the way, he fought as hard for that dream as anyone in this room did.”

He put his hand on the shoulder of one of Lord Bratumel’s sons. “Or what about our sons? The next time Pyrth decides to invade some little kingdom—some little kingdom that once looked to Corenwald as a beacon of hope and freedom—they will call on our sons to do the fighting. And our great estates will seem mighty lonesome when they’re gone.

“You say there are worse fates than being citizens of a great empire. But what could be worse than surrendering a dream to an enemy who was never able to take it by force?”

Errol was shaking now. His speech was finished. He seemed fifteen years older than he had looked that morning. He walked unsteadily back to his bench.

King Darrow rose to his feet. It was the first time he had moved since the young Pyrthen’s speech. It seemed ages since he had last spoken, when he presented Samson to the Pyrthens. He was obviously moved by Errol’s speech. He saw the futility of appeasing the Pyrthens any further. Yet the Darrow who stood on the dais wasn’t the decisive leader who led the mighty men of Corenwald in four campaigns against the invading Pyrthens.

“We will meet the Pyrthen army on the Bonifay Plain.” He spoke slowly. There was more resignation in Darrow’s voice than resolve. The Corenwalders looked nervously at one another. “Summon the cavalry. Begin the shire-musters.”

As the king spoke, the tension visibly left Errol’s body. His shoulders relaxed, and his head tilted forward. At first Aidan took this change in his father’s posture to be a sign of relief, even pleasure at the persuasive effect of his own speech. Aidan, too, was relieved and pleased. But his pleasure turned to horror as he watched his father slump forward onto the table, unmoving and unconscious.

Shepherd, nursemaid …” Aidan mumbled to himself as he carried Father’s breakfast tray. “How do I always get stuck with these jobs?” He put on a cheerful face, however, as he entered Father’s bedroom with a breakfast of fruit and boiled grain.

“Good morning, Father,” he said, putting the tray down on a table beside his chair. “You’re up already. You look stronger every day.”

“I feel stronger,” Father answered. “I think I’m ready to fight some Pyrthens today. Bring me my armor.”

Aidan’s eyes were wide with alarm “Father! You just took your first steps yesterday. You can’t—” but he saw a sly grin forming on Errol’s face and realized his father was teasing. He quickly changed directions. “What I mean is, you should wait another day or two before you go to the battlefield. That way, you won’t even need armor.”

“Or sword and shield either,” added Father. “I’ll just gobble up Pyrthens, two or three at a gulp.”

Father and son both laughed to think of Errol of Longleaf devouring his enemies like a dragon. But Errol’s laughter broke off, and he stared out the western window. Half to himself, Errol quietly spoke: “I do hate to be laid up while the armies of Corenwald are in the field.”

“Surely they can manage without you this once,” offered Aidan. “Besides, you sent four warriors to the fight.”

“Why have we heard no news of the battle?” Errol asked, still staring out the window. “Two weeks, and no news yet.”

Aidan looked out the window, too, envisioning the Bonifay Plain beyond the western horizon. “I found Percy’s favorite lantern yesterday,” he said.

Errol came out of his trance and smiled at his son. For a week now, Aidan had been conjuring up excuses to visit his brothers at the battle camp. “Hmmm … Percy’s lantern?”

“Yes. It gets dark on the plains, you know.”

“Oh, indeed,” answered Errol, pretending to be serious. “After the sun goes down, it gets as dark as night.”

“I was just thinking, maybe I could take it to him. It’s no trouble, really.”

Father was laughing now. “What a generous brother! And if you’re making the trip anyway, perhaps you could carry Jasper’s notebook that you found the day before yesterday and Maynard’s hat that you found the day before that and Brennus’s pouch that you found the day before that.”

Aidan frowned. “You’re making fun of me. But it’s hard to stay here when all my brothers are gone.”

“I know it is. But there is a reason you are here and not on the Bonifay Plain: You are only twelve years old.”

He tousled Aidan’s hair. “You will fight one day for Corenwald—and sooner than you think. You will fight because you love Corenwald, because you love the freedom to live and worship as you see fit, because you love your family and your fellow soldiers. But you must never fight because you love the battle. You must never love the battle.”

“Yes, Father,” answered Aidan, a little embarrassed that he had been so eager.

An awkward silence prevailed as Errol turned his face back toward the western window. “But now I am going to surprise you,” he said. He faced his son again. “Go find an empty flour sack. Fill it up with some of Ebbe’s new cheeses and loaves of Moira’s fresh-baked bread. Then I want you to carry that sack to the Bonifay Plain. Your brothers will be glad to get some food from home, and I will be just as glad to get any news you can bring me from the front.”

Aidan’s mouth dropped open with joy and astonishment. He kissed his father on both cheeks, then ran from the room to gather up his things for the trip. He was eager to get on the road before Father could change his mind.

Soon, Aidan had left Longleaf Manor and was walking north on the River Road. The sun had hardly been up two hours. On foot, it was a two-day trip from Longleaf to the Bonifay Plain—up the River Road to Tambluff, then along the Western Road from Tambluff to the plain. He couldn’t ride to Bonifay. Except for a few plow mules, every horse, mule, and pony on Longleaf Manor was already there, on loan to the Corenwalder army.

He had packed light. Besides the bread and cheese for his brothers, he stuffed a clean tunic and two days’ rations in the flour sack.

Aidan squinted against the glare of the summer sun reflecting off the white sand of the River Road. To his right the River Tam flowed in its black coolness. To his left, beyond the floodplain, the ancient longleaf pines towered like the pillars of God’s own house, straight and smooth for eighty feet or more above the palmetto and tufting wiregrass, then opening into a deep green canopy of pine needles like green, graceful fingers. An occasional breeze brought the slightest relief from the sun’s heat, as well as a piney whiff of the turpentine that oozed from the longleafs.

Just below the village of Hustingreen, Aidan rested on the white bank of Bayberry Creek where it flowed into the Tam. Leaning against the swelling buttress of a black gum tree, he remembered something Father had shown him once on the Western Road. Just east of the Bonifay
Plain was a little pond—a limestone sinkhole, actually— about thirty strides off the road. According to Father, that pond formed the headwaters of Bayberry Creek, which followed a southeasterly path to the very spot where Aidan now stood.

Aidan faced the northwest, sighting upstream along the Bayberry. If he could follow the creek to its source, he would come out on the Western Road, only a league or two from his destination. It wouldn’t be easy going, for there was no road that way, but surely the shortcut would save him at least four or five leagues. And besides, in the shady creek bottom he could avoid the direct sun of the open road.

He decided to try it. He left the River Road and made for the tanglewood. The bottomland forest quickly enveloped Aidan in its twisting branches and trailing vines. The trails he followed were not made by people, but by deer and bear and wild boar. In places there weren’t even animal trails, and Aidan had to make his own.

The sun filtering through the dense treetops cast a greenish light on Aidan’s surroundings. The shade of the big gum trees and water oaks took the edge off the heat, but still Aidan’s tunic was soaked through with sweat, for the air was heavy and damp in the creek bottom.

Insects were the one thing Aidan had failed to consider when he quit the road and took to the deer paths. In the swampy bottoms, the bugs multiplied like a plague of Pharaoh. Aidan trudged along in a humming cloud of mosquitoes, slapping, swatting, and waving his arms to fend off their attacks. The gray sweat bees, though much less numerous than the mosquitoes, tormented him. Their big sting was out of proportion to their tiny size.

But no sound in the forest was more immediately terrifying than the whining buzz of the yellow flies. They came in hard and fast, flying an erratic spiral that made them impossible to swat. They were so fierce and persistent that they didn’t even need bare skin to sting. They thought nothing of landing on Aidan’s thick hair and boring straight through to his scalp. A couple even pierced through Aidan’s tunic, raising angry red welts on his shoulder. These were the sort of bugs that one seldom met on the big road. They were known only to the adventurous soul who left the well-worn path to explore the swamps and river bottoms.

But Aidan’s shortcut also revealed to him many wondrous things that he could have never seen on the road. Every bend in the creek brought some new delight: a pair of otters cavorting in the water, a parade of wild hogs snortling and rattling through the saw palms, a regiment of turtles lined up side by side along a fallen log. The woods were dense and tangled, but Aidan was in little danger of losing his way. He had only to keep near the creek and continue upstream, and he would eventually reach the lime sink at the head of the creek.

After two hours’ hike upstream, however, things got more complicated. The creek spilled into a broad swamp. Only now did it occur to Aidan why there was no road through this part of the country. The sandy track that he had been following deposited him on a smelly mud flat, and he sank to his ankles in hot mud. He strained to free his feet, and the muck made a loud sucking sound, then a pop as each foot came loose. Watching his footprints slowly fill with oily, putrid
water, Aidan mulled over his dilemma. He no longer had the convenient option of trekking up the creek bank, for there was no more creek bank, only a sunken morass of deep, sticky mud punctuated by a maze of rivulets and a few stunted cypress trees. Unless he wanted to swim up the creek, his only choice was to turn north and circle around the swamp along the sand hills and meet back up with Bayberry Creek wherever he could. Not knowing how big the swamp was, he didn’t know how much time he would lose on this detour. But he had little choice.

Coming out of the creek bottom, Aidan found easier traveling among the sparse pines of the sand hills. But it was past midday, and the sun glaring on the sand was a stark contrast to the shady green of the creekside. Aidan sought shade in a stand of big magnolia trees.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the smooth, gray bark of a big magnolia. Just as he began to doze, he heard a rattle in the stiff, waxy leaves overhead. And yet there had been no breeze to rustle in the treetop. He stood and craned his neck to peer into the branches above. He sniffed the air. Was that pungent, fishy smell wafting up from the swamp or down from the tree? He circled around the tree, ducking beneath its low limbs. The deep green leaves were thick, but he could see movement of some sort in the highest branches. Something up there—or someone—was circling the trunk opposite him, keeping itself hidden.

Then Aidan heard a sound he had been waiting all summer to hear:
Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo …
Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo.

The bark of the bog owl! It thrilled Aidan just as it did the last time he heard it in the bottom pasture. He threw back his head and answered as best he could:
“Ha-ha-ha-
hrawffff-wooooooooo.”
Then he belted out the battle cry that Dobro had sung when he took off after the panther:
“Haaaawwweeeeee!”

Aidan mounted a low limb of the magnolia and started scrambling up, overjoyed to find the friend he had been seeking all summer long. “Dobro!” he shouted. “Dobro! Dobro! You stinking mudfish! I’ve been looking all over for you!”

He was halfway up the tree when another call echoed from a few feet away in another magnolia:
Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo … Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo.
He turned toward the second call, then he heard a swift rustle coming down the trunk of his tree. He jerked back around, just in time to glimpse the soles of two flat, gray, hairy feet flying toward him. Aidan’s chest caught the full force of the blow, which propelled him out of the tree. When his head hit the sandy ground below, Aidan’s world went black.