Of Beginnings and Endings Read online

  In the wake of that meeting, Arsen Ademian went looking for the leader of the Creeks, the Micco. He finally found the aged leader of the Indians squatting in a shaded area, interestedly observing two of the braves—Soaring Eagle and Lizard-Upside-down—melting pigs of lead Arsen had lifted from the Spanish fort in a large iron ladle from the same source in order to fill a gang-mold and produce cylindrical bullets for the .50-caliber rifles with which almost all the Indians now were armed. Nearby, in another spot of shade, a brace of other braves squatted, industriously knapping gunflints from a core of the rock, smoothing and perfecting their creations by use of antler picks and small, heavy mallets.

  The old Indian's thin, wrinkled lips twitched slightly—the closest anyone had ever seen him come to a smile—when he spied Arsen bound in his direction, and, belying the expected infirmities of his more than ninety years of hard life under primitive conditions, he arose from his deep squat onto his feet in one smooth, easy-looking movement.

  Arsen had often reflected that his own father's father, Grandpapa Vasil Ademian, would probably have gotten on fabulously with the old Micco, for like the aged Indian, the old man had been both smart as a whip and tough as rusty nails until the very day he had died after helping to reshoe a fractious horse; Arsen's memories of his grandfather were not of some doddering near-invalid, but of a powerful, still-vital, and very masculine man who even in his last years of life smoked like a chimneypot, ate and drank anything he damned well wished, worked like a man a quarter his age, engaged in strenuous Armenian and Greek folk-dancing for hours at a time, and still had more than simply an eye for attractive females. Although of an entirely different time, culture, and world, even, the Micco of the Creeks was, Arsen thought, from out the same, identical mold as old Grandpapa Vasil Ademian. Needless to say, he deeply respected the Micco as he had respected his grandfather and still respected his father and his uncle, Rupen Ademian.

  "Micco," he said, "we two need to talk over some things. Let's us do it inside, huh? It's cooler in there."

  Inside the big council room of the fort, where the comparative coolness began to dry the sweat bathing his hirsute body, Arsen was relieved to remove his silver helmet—there was no need for more than one of them to be wearing one in order to communicate, and the Micco seemed to wear his constantly. That done, he got up while the Micco went about the preparation of a pipe of the incredibly strong, sharp, biting Indian-cure tobacco and set into motion the Rube Goldbergish, clockwork-like arrangement of springs and weights that Greg and Al had recently rigged up in several of the rooms in order to move ceiling-mounted two-by-three-foot screens of woven reeds and thus increase air circulation.

  When he had taken a pull at the fancifully carven pipe trimmed lavishly with bits of fur, colorful feathers, and strings of tiny wampum beads, he asked, "Micco, are there many of these smaller tribes like this Sis-ip-aw-haw Tribe, hereabouts? I'd only heard of the larger ones—Creek, Shawnee, Tuscarora, Cherokee, Catawba, and so on—before today."

  The old Indian nodded. "There are more than two hands' worth of fingers, Arsen Silverhat, though most were larger and more powerful before the Spanish came to hunt them and take much of the land. I remember that the Eastern Creeks used to often war against the Santee, the Pedee, the Wateree, the Congaree, the Cheraw, the Lumbee, the Sugaree, and the Waccamaw, all of which were allies of the mighty Catawba, but not even they were able to stand for long against the steel-breasts and their fire-sticks, fire-logs, and such deadly wonders. The other steel-breasts who came and first built a walled place where these Spanish now are brought with them a great and fearsome sickness which as good as wiped out all of the Pedees and not a few of the Santees, as well. Snake-and-a-half states that his tribe-of-birth, who lived along the other side of the next big river north of this one, died in that same way, of a terrible sickness brought by the Spanish, who have a small fort in what were their lands beside the river. I am told, indeed, that even the gentle White-Robed Ones bear deathly sicknesses with them."

  Distracted from his purpose for the moment, Arsen asked, "Micco, I heard of these White-Robed Ones from Squash Woman soon after we first came here to help the Indians, but she didn't seem to really know all that much about them. Do you? Are they white-skinned? Where did they come from—inland somewhere, or what?"

  The aged man nodded. "Yes, Arsen Silverhat, it happens that I do know much of these, for years ago a small party of them came wandering into the lands we then owned and I talked long and frequently with their tall leader, whose hair and beard were much like the color of that of Lisa Sunbrighthair, though also hued so as to look more like pale fire flames. Yes, his skin was whiter even than yours, though not so white as is that of Lisa Sunbrighthair. His strong body was not so hairy as is yours, though. He called himself Bhan-Damh, which words he said mean White Stag, and he and his were all-powerful in the ways of magic, obviously servers of and much loved by the Great Spirit."

  "White Stag told me that his many times ancestors had come to this land from another land beyond the Bitter Water, long, long ago, and had lived in small groups along the coasts before other white men came, to either slaughter them or drive them inland. He said that many of these small groups had finally joined together and dwelt in the Land of the Thunderbird until their omens had told them to move on to other places."

  Arsen said, "But Micco, I thought you told me that folks weren't allowed to live in the Land of the Thunderbird? Didn't you say that?"

  The wrinkled man nodded again. "Yes, I said that, Arsen Silverhat, and it is true for folk who hunt beasts and eat meat, but the people of White Stag do not, and so Thunderbird allowed them to dwell in peace in His land. No, the White-Robed Ones eat only plants, fish, eggs, and honey. Their robes, even, are woven of some plant they grow for the purpose, and they protect their feet with moccasins made cunningly of wood, bark, cloth, and the firmly compressed hair of certain beasts, but they do not ever kill the beasts in order to obtain the hair, rather persuading them to allow it to be plucked in seasons of shedding hair."

  "Persuade animals? How, Micco?" queried Arsen puzzledly. "By trapping them?"

  "Oh, no, Arsen Silverhat," answered the old man. "These White-Robed Ones, through the mystic arts granted to them by the Great Spirit, can converse with all beasts, as all true men once could do, you see. They are the true friends of all beasts, and the beasts sense this; even the most savage or the hungriest of beasts will not ever do harm to them, and if a maddened beast should charge or threaten any one of them, they have but to stand still before them and sing a lovely, soft song of strange words and the very sound takes the rage or the fear from the hearts of the beasts. I know, Arsen Silverhat—I saw the one called White Stag do just that on a long-ago day, stopping a huge buffalo bull in full charge, so that the shaggy creature stood pawing at the ground and making low whuffling noises such as a little calf might make, then the one called White Stag walked slowly up to the massive bull and spoke with him for a long while, all the time caressing his muzzle and nose, which the beast held low enough for his hands to reach easily."

  Odd as it might have seemed to another, Arsen believed the tale of the Micco, for with the aid of the silver cap and the carrier, he had himself communicated after a fashion with the long-haired, tusked things that he thought of as elephants and that prick Bedros Yacubian insisted were mastodons, over the mountains in the strange Land of the Thunderbird. Once they were finally convinced that the man meant them and their precious calves no harm, they had become rather chummy, actually. He also had established communication of a sort with some of the super-lions, twice so far having been able to guide prides of the massive, lightly spotted felines close enough to pairs of the hairy, predatory, apelike things that the cats had been able to catch, kill, and eat them; ferocious as the pithecoid creatures were, they still were no real match for even a single full-grown super-lion and seemed to do their best to avoid close proximity to the scattered prides and individuals.

  The super-lions wo
uld eat any creature they could get their claws or teeth into, large or small, but seemed to harbor a clear preference for the herd animals—bison, horses, a weird-looking antelopish creature that Yacubian had called a hayoceros, and some towering and longish-necked things the exact nature of which Arsen still had not decided, whether they were almost-humpless camels or slightly humped and oversized llamas. They and all the other predators would avidly consume any carrion they chanced across, no matter how ripe was the carcass or part thereof, but the lions studiously avoided confrontations with either the mastodons or the thick-furred, slow-moving, strictly vegetarian ground sloths.

  These oversize beasts seemed to be preyed upon almost exclusively by the rare predators Arsen had taken to thinking of as bear-cats. These were composed of a strange combination of parts and traits, he had discovered. Viewed from a distance, they seemed to be mostly catlike—a Canadian lynx squared, Greg Sinclair had said the first time he had seen a pair of them—with large ears, thick bodies, short tails, and curved upper fangs that jutted their sharp points well below the lower jaws. John the Greek, an armchair paleontologist rather than a big-game hunter like Greg, had named them some kind of sabertooth tiger, but when at last Arsen had brought the professional into the Land of the Thunderbird, Bedros Yacubian had said that they were actually nothing of the sort but rather some hitherto unknown variety of something he called a homotherium.

  These bear-cats apparently lived and denned and hunted in only mated pairs or small groups consisting of the pair of adults and the most recent litter of cubs. They were most often found near to the haunts of the small herds of mastodons or the thick woods which made up the feeding grounds of the sloth, which two beasts seemed to be their principal prey animals. Arsen's attempts to establish rapport with these particular predators had frustrated him somewhat; the bear-cats seemed to be at least as intelligent as were most of the super-lions, perhaps even more so, but they also seemed to move in perpetual distrust of any creature not of their immediate kith and kin, showed no interest in anything other than their accustomed prey species, and more often than not just ignored attempts at communication by the man.

  Though they were put together oddly, seemingly of spare parts from more than one kind of animal, and when immobile looked close up to be ungainly, Arsen had been witness to the facts that the bear-cats, while perhaps not as fast as the super-lions and far slower than any of the smaller cats, were easily able to provide for themselves and their mates and cubs or to protect themselves if attacked.

  The first noticeable thing about them at close range was that, unlike the lions or any other cat, their backs sloped sharply to the rear like a hyena's, their hind legs seemed oddly misshapen, and they appeared to have no neck. Also completely dissimilar from felines was the thick, broad, very muscular body. Even closer examination—performed, prudently, by Arsen from a good distance with the optics of the carrier—revealed the truth of the matter: The backs did indeed slope, and this was because the forelimbs were much longer than the hind ones. Like those of any good cat, these forelegs were equipped with big, retractable claws, and only the toes normally came in contact with the ground surface, but it was the hind legs that caused Arsen to hang the bear-cat moniker on them. They were not deformed, but the creatures rather walked on the full flat of the foot, and although they could do quite respectable damage to skin and flesh with the bear-like claws of the hind feet, these claws were not retractable like those of the forefeet.

  For all that even the biggest bear-cat Arsen had so far seen was, disregarding tail, shorter in body length than an adult super-lion, Arsen estimated that what with thicker bodies and more robust builds, they weighed just about as much, maybe even more. Their heads were about of a size with the super-lions', but their necks were as thick as the heads and were set to shoulders loaded and rolling with muscles. They varied widely in color, from agouti to an almost-bluish gray, some of them with more or fewer pale spots or streaks or, around the legs and stumpy tails, circlets of darker hues, these markings being fairly prominent on the cubs but fading as they matured; though not really longhaired, their coats were noticeably thicker and denser than those of either the super-lions or the jaguars.

  Therefore, Arsen could believe that it was possible for men—natural telepaths, perhaps?—to "speak" to animals. "Where do these White-Robed Ones live at now, Micco?" he asked.

  The aged Indian shrugged. "Everywhere, Arsen Silverhat, and anywhere and, really, nowhere. One must suppose that they gather somewhere, have villages whereat they can grow their cloth plants, make their garments, beget and birth and rear and train those who will come after them, but the one called White Stag never spoke of such things, only saying that he and those like him journeyed over the lands wherever the Great Spirit bade them, He speaking to them as He always speaks to mankind in dreams. For all his youth, he was strong in his wisdom, and I learned very much from him."

  "Then you've never seen any of them again, Micco?" probed Arsen, intrigued. "Or even heard so much as rumors of them, of where they might be found?"

  "Only in dreams and visions have I seen White Stag since he and his party left my village and lands so many years ago, Arsen Silverhat, but one of those seeings was on the very march up to this place. Of a night when I was troubled, wondering if indeed I had made the best choice for my people by leading them so far from their lands to meet with white strangers, White Stag spoke with me from, I suppose, the Happy Hunting Ground—for he appeared no older than I remembered from so very long ago. He assured me that my way was right, was the best choice for the people, that although white-skinned, you and your tribe were also of the Great Spirit and were none of you evil, as are even the best of the steel-breasts. He went on to say that you would teach us new and better ways to do very many things. He said that you would show us many wonders, forever changing many of our customs and our lives while we lived and fought the steel-breasts with you. He said that in the end, it would be through you that the True People would be delivered to a world wherein there were no steel-breasts."

  "As to where the White-Robed Ones may live, Arsen Silverhat, I cannot say at all. However, twenty-two winters ago, a warrior came to dwell among us for a while. He was one of those with a skin bluish-black in color and hair growing all in tight knots upon his head. Once a slave of the Spanish steel-breasts, he had been taken by his white master on one of the long marches that these and the other sorts of steel-breasts often mount around the lands in every direction for whatever purpose."

  "This particular pointless march had taken them far, far to the north and west, then back across the Father of Waters to the east, then back a little way to the west and south, then again due south, until at last the few who were left of that party fetched up at the coastal place near to what were our lands, that place they name San Mohammed de Zaragosa. His white master having died of hunger on that march, he learned that it was the intention of the steel-breasts to sell him to a place where he would be worked to death quickly digging certain things out of the ground, dirt from which metal is made or something of the sort. He therefore made good his escape from the coastal place and was living alone when Creek hunters found him and brought him to me."

  "In times past, others of that color of escaped steel-breast slaves have lived among the True People and other tribes of the various kinds of half-men, so when I was certain that he spoke words of truth with a straight tongue, I took him first as a guest in my lodge. His name in our tongue meant Deadly Spear, and a well-balanced spear in his hands was nothing less than deadly, we soon discovered. He soon learned our tongue, showed his skill in the hunt, and took over the lodge of a widow, and in the next war against the treacherous half-men who call themselves Choctaws, he became a noted warrior, as well."

  "What became of him, Micco?" asked Arsen. "Is he still among you? I've seen no black warriors."

  The Micco shook his head. "No, Deadly Spear lived among us for nine winters only. He fought with us against Choctaws and other half-men
, but his greatest hatred was for the steel-breasts, and on several occasions he persuaded young warriors to follow him on raids against the smaller steel-breast settlements. On the last of these, his great, long-legged, black body was torn into pieces by a shot from a fire-log."

  "But while still he lived, we two talked often, for he was of a turn of mind to learn all that he might of the True People and our history and customs. I was more than glad to tell him these things, while he told me of the strange lands beyond the Bitter Waters, the stranger peoples there. He told of his capture in war, of his being sold as a slave to the steel-breasts, who packed him and hundreds others into a great winged boat and kept them all chained in hot, stifling darkness, wherein rats scampered over and fed upon them in their weakened helplessness and many went mad or died for want of water and food."

  "And that, Arsen Silverhat, confirmed in my mind much of the stupidity of these steel-breasts, for slaves are valuable. It is nothing less than stupid to so confine and starve and kill them; it is wasteful and, therefore, an affront to the Plan of the Great Spirit. But Deadly Spear, while we talked, also spoke of the great, pointless, and rather silly march of the steel-breasts around the vast lands to the north and west and east of where our village then sat. He said that far up the Father of Waters, that great river to the west, another river almost as mighty flows from farther west to join the Father of Waters. Up that river, two weeks' march along its northern bank, the part of the marchers with which Deadly Spear was proceeding came first to broad fields of plants bearing upon them what looked to be tufts of a fine white fur, all partly enclosed in shells of brownish-green. While the steel-breasts were still studying and discussing amongst themselves the possibilities and significances of this wonder—for it was clear to any who had looked that the even rows of that field were the work of none but mankind—a man robed all in white garments and shod came walking down a path towards the fields and the men of the marchers. He had, said Deadly Spear, long hair that was white as new snow and a long beard no less white; he used a long staff of peeled wood to aid his steps along the way, and when he saw the marchers, he raised it high above his head, smiled, and hurried on."