Of Beginnings and Endings Page 15

  "So, you see, Arsen Silverhat, there is at least one village of the White-Robed Ones, and probably more. But the one of which my adopted warrior, Deadly Spear, told me lies far and very far from this place here in the lands of the Eastern Shawnee half-men."

  "Now, dammit, Micco," complained Arsen in frustration, "there you go again. You have the very annoying habit of starting a good tale, then just breaking it off at the most exciting part of it and trying to change the subject to something else entirely, so that your listeners have to beg you to tell the rest of it. So, all right, I'm begging. What the hell happened to those damned Spanish butchers after the old man scared the shit out of them?"

  With a jerk of his thin lips that indicated vast amusement, the old Indian nodded slowly. "Deadly Spear, not knowing what else to do in the strange country, trotted after the rest of the marchers, picking up sacks and pieces of equipment and weapons they dropped in their mindless flight until he needs must walk, so burdened down was he become with impediments. It was well after nightfall before he found them, all huddled around a blazing fire they had built, exhausted but wide-awake and so nervous that they came close to shooting him before realizing his identity."

  "Thanks principally to the efforts and level-headedness of the black-skinned slave, with the sunrise of the next day, there was food available for the famished men and pots to cook it in. But when the master of Deadly Spear had spooned down his plateful of meal and dried squashes, he looked suddenly green as grass, then spewed out all of the food he had but just gobbled so avidly. Nor, from that day, could he hold anything of more substance than water within his belly, but though he gradually weakened until he had to be all but carried along by the other one called knight and Deadly Spear, still he insisted that the party march every day from the rising until near the setting of the sun."

  "At last, the camp awoke of a morning to find him burning with a fever and raving in delirium, so they did not march that day. He was given by the other knight water with a little of the last gourd of fermented juice in it, but his body rejected it, though it did hold unmixed water well enough. Deadly Spear sighted a rabbit and brained it with a shrewdly flung stone, skinned and dressed it, butchered it, and made of its flesh a nourishing meat broth, but not so much as a spoonful of it could his fever-racked master retain within himself."

  "Deep in the following night, the sleeping camp was jolted into wakefulness by a succession of terrible screams from Deadly Spear's master, who was seen when once the fire had been stirred up and replenished to be sitting straight up and, still screaming, just pointing wordlessly at something outside the range of the firelight. When the other steel-breast knight and Deadly Spear and the most senior of the soldados, one Federico, armed with dag, spear, and sword, took a torch from out the fire and went to see what was upsetting the wordlessly shrieking chief, they found on the rotted stump of a tree a partially decomposed head, apparently the head of a woman, with long, light-brown hair. It was resting on the jaggedly hewn-off remainder of its neck, its dead and decaying eyes seemingly staring directly into the camp."

  "With a snarl, the one called knight struck the head hard with the flat of his long sword, sending it bouncing and rolling off into the darkness, then furiously wiped his blade with moss to cleanse it of any rotten bits of flesh. By the time he was done and the three turned back toward the camp, the other had ceased to scream. When they drew nigh him, they found out why: He lay dead, a look of unmitigated, bottomless horror upon his wasted, shrunken face."

  "After certain religious rites, they dug a hole and placed the husk of Deadly Spear's first master in it, along with the bit of shiny metal that was his medicine and his sword. Most of his weapons, clothing, and other possessions were given to those living and most in need of them, and the other steel-breast knight claimed Deadly Spear for his own property."

  "They piled the grave with stones from the riverbanks that wolves and bears not dig up the corpse, then they marched on at the first light of the sun. However, that night in the new day's camp, Deadly Spear's new master vomited up his entire meal of fish and beans and meal. He continued to march as had his dead chief, with at last the aid of Deadly Spear and the soldado named Federico that he might stay erect on his weak and wobbling legs and essay to put one foot before the other, breathing like a holed bellows, with great difficulty, and before many days coughing up gouts of thick, jellylike stuff that looked rusty in color. He did not last as long as had his chief. He was found stiff and cold in death one morning, with blood caked all over his lips and beard. Lying beside his own head was a rotten, maggoty, wormy severed head with some long strands of light-brown hair still clinging to the sloughing skin and flesh of the scalp. The others recoiled in horror and would not so much as draw near to the body of their dead leader until the soldado Federico, raging and cursing at them while scathingly questioning their manhood and mental balance, had taken the worm-crawling head by the hair and thrown it as far out into the river as he could."

  "This Federico was something that the steel-breast leaders had called a sargento and also a criollo, though they had seemed to despise him less than the others. With both the steel-breast knights now dead, this man took over as chief of the party. He took all of the most recently dead man's possessions for his own, even his sword, tumbling his naked corpse into a shallow, hastily dug grave before marching on."

  "But within bare days, the same identical fate that had struck down those steel-breasts called knights had afflicted this Federico, and when the others saw that he could not retain food of any sort, then they ceased to waste any more of their now-shrinking supplies on him, nor would even one of them help Deadly Spear to aid him on the march, more than one of them, indeed, suggesting aloud that the slave simply strip the weakened man of anything usable and leave him by the river to fend for himself or die, as God saw fit."

  "But Deadly Spear said that while he himself squatted of a bright morning eating his share of the food, this Federico, burning with fever, crawled somehow to the edge of the river to apparently bathe his suffering body in the cool waters. His screams drew Deadly Spear and many another to where they could see that a huge alligator had clamped its toothy jaws upon the wasted leg of the sargento and was dragging him by it toward the river. No less than two spears merely skittered off the beast's armored back, and the crossbow bolt loosed by the soldado called Hernan missed entirely despite the short range and large target."

  "Then did Deadly Spear snatch away from another of the soldados a pole-axe, run and leap down onto the little narrow beach, and deal the monster so powerful a blow across the head that it let go the thin leg of the sargento, gave vent to a mighty, hissing roar of pain, and backed swiftly into the waters of the river, bleeding. But when Deadly Spear saw the monster sink under the muddy, red-brown water and turned to his most recent master, it was to find him lying dead, not breathing and with no heartbeat."

  "As the sargento had stripped the corpse of the second steel-breast knight, so did the soldados strip his, but they made no moves to bury it and were almost ready to move on when, once again, the old, white-haired and bearded white-skinned man in the white robe appeared before them all, the same sad look upon his face."

  "'I am the last Sign you will see. The debt of life has been now fully paid with life.' He spoke in the same, soft, sad, gentle tone that all remembered. 'You have been heretofore led by, ordered by the most evil among you, but their lives now have been taken to pay your debt of life to Her. Your health and lives now rest entirely at Her Will, but then all creatures always live or die finally at Her Will.'"

  "'Now I am an old, a very exceedingly old man. You would not believe me if I should tell you how many winters and summers I have lived since She breathed life into my present husk. I have learned much in my long, long life, and some of my learning I will now impart to you men.'"

  "'All living creatures in Her keeping possess within themselves elements both good and evil; those we call good are those whose spirits have learned
best to suppress the evil and allow the good to flourish, while those we know as evil are those so spiritually weak or flawed that they have allowed the evil of their natures to drown and kill the good.'"

  "'You must in the parts of your lives still remaining seek to be good in all ways. Relish not the fleeting and unnatural pleasures of your own evil natures and reverence not the deeds of evil done by others, lest like the severed head of a murdered woman, the wraiths of your evil deeds and theirs pursue you to your extinctions.'"

  "'One last time, I bid you go in peace. Fare you as She wills.'"

  The Micco puffed the pipe back into life, filled his lungs, then said, "Deadly Spear and the others—or some few of the others, rather—at last recrossed the Father of Waters, made their way to the appointed place of rendezvous with the other parties of the steel-breast marchers—all of those which arrived there of far fewer numbers than those which had departed and some never returning there at all—then they all slowly retraced a way back to one of the forts of the Spanish steel-breasts at a place where even the largest of the white-winged boats can come close to the shore."

  "Deadly Spear it had been who had been chosen as leader of what remained of his party of marchers, and yet, when the parties rejoined and had won safely back to a fort, the words of the men he had led so well were ignored by the steel-breasts called knights and they sold him to a man whose intention was to put him onto one of the white-winged ships, take him back to Cuba, and sell him to a man who would work him to death. That is why Deadly Spear feigned meek submission for long enough to lull his new owner into freeing him of his chains just long enough to go with the Spaniard to bid farewell to those with whom he had marched for so long and so far."

  "In a dark and deserted place, he strangled his newest owner, then stole weapons and food and fled as deeply into the forest as he could quickly get. That is where a hunter of my tribe found him."

  "Now you have the entirety of the tale, as I recall it after so long, Arsen Silvernat."

  * * * *

  The second night after the day he had heard the tale of Deadly Spear and then had spent most of that day questioning and arguing with the Creek leader about tribal customs and practices, Arsen sat in his own quarters with most of his fellow whites. He looked glum.

  "A'right, here's the way it's stacked. John was right the other day, the fucking Creeks do keep slaves—women, men, kids, too. Not only that, they're not about to let any of them go free or even promise to stop taking more where they can catch them, either. I've argued with the Micco until I'm blue in the fucking face and it all comes back to the same fucking place every fucking time, like a fucking cracked record."

  "See, the way the Micco thinks, the Creeks are the only real, one hundred percent pure people here. All the other Indians are, at the best, about three parts human and one part animal, and so killing them or making slaves out of them doesn't really mean any more than hunting animals does and really is part of the plan of the Great Spirit and all, you know."

  "Bullshit!" snorted Mike Sikeena. "That's the same kinda crap that slimy, lying, greedy old cooze Squash Woman used to lay down, Arsen."

  Arsen just sighed and slowly shook his head. "I know, dammit, I know. It seems like every fucking different tribe of these fucking Indians are of the same damn fucking stupid mind—their own fucking tribe are the real people and every other fucking tribe are just imitation people, see. I talked to Swift Otter, too, after I talked to the Micco, and he swears the same fucking line of shit: The Shawnees are the only real people and the Creeks are all at least half animal and so should by rights be the slaves of the only real people."

  "Well," snapped Greg Sinclair, "if they're the only real people, than what the fuck are we s'pose to be, huh? Some kinda fucking monkey, maybe? Or are we lower than that even? I've hunted and done a whole lot of work with these Injun fuckers, I tell you, and I was thinking the most of them was pretty good joes, 'for I come to hear all this shit today. But I tell ever' one of you right now, any fucking redskin comes to try to make a fucking slave out'n Miz Sinclair's boy, Greg, better've made up his death song and sung it all through, too, 'fore he sets out, 'cause he ain't gonna live long enough when he gets near me to sing airy a note or a single fucking word of it. And buddy, that's fucking gospel and you can bet I mean ever' word of it, too!"

  "Don't worry about that much, Greg," Arsen assured the now-heated man. "All of these Indians seem to be under the impression that we were sent from or by the Great Spirit. Understand, they're not exactly afraid of us, but they deeply respect us."

  "But that's not the thing I tried to get everybody together in here tonight for, see. When I first dived into this thing, this situation, here, and dragged the rest of you into it along with me, I thought we were saving the poor, abused, primitive Indians from a bunch of Spanish and Moors who had the technological edge on them and were taking unfair advantage of it—raiding, killing, slaving and all."

  "But, hell, from what I learned from the Micco and Swift Otter, yesterday and today, these fuckers do the same, identical fucking rotten things to each other and were doing it long before any of them ever seen or even heard of a man with white skin and armor. And even if someway we do manage to beat the whites over here bad enough, often enough, to make them start leaving the Indians alone, then I guarantee you the Indians are going to start going after each other and doing things just as bad or worse to each other, too. And it's going to take a hellacious long time and guys with a lot more fucking patience than I've got to talk them around to trying to even make a stab at leaving each other alone and figuring everybody is really real people and not part animal."

  "So, hell, I figure now maybe the fucking Spanish and all ain't so bad, after all . . . not any worse than the fucking people they're going after would be if somebody turned the tables on them. And that makes me wonder if maybe we—all of us, here—don't really have a place in this thing, if maybe what we really should ought to do is use the carriers and projectors to go back over to England and get Uncle Rupen and Jenny Bostwick—if that's where they still are—and then project everybody back to our own world and time and let these fucking bloodthirsty, slaving savages—both red-skinned and white-skinned—go the fuck to hell any way they're going to."

  "And, if so, what of your servant Simon Delahaye, Captain Arsen?" inquired the Englishman diffidently.

  "Well, hell, man, you've got a family back in England somewhere, don't you?" demanded Arsen. "And property, too, I think you once told me."

  The onetime captain of Monteleone's Horse sighed, then nodded. "Aye, 'tis true enough, Captain Arsen, though 'tis been long years since last I clapped eyes to aught of my kith or kin. Likewise, for aught I ken, my lands have been seized by others, since I bore arms and fought against the reigning king, Arthur III."

  "Even so, Simon," insisted Arsen, "if the rest of us leave here and go back where we came from in the beginning, wouldn't you rather go back to England to things and folks you know, rather than live the rest of your life here, a stranger in a strange land?"

  Delahaye frowned. "I . . . I cannot say of truth, Captain Arsen, I would need time to think . . . and to pray for guidance on't, for I must admit that here have I been happier than for many a long year before. Unbaptized, uncatechized heathen though they assuredly be, my two wives are both most caring and hardworking women, maintaining me in comfort and with solicitude. It would sorely pain my heart to depart from them, never to see them again."

  "You really mean to go back, then, Arsen?" asked Haigh Panoshian, Arsen's cousin. "How the hell we all gonna explain to everybody just where the hell we been all this time and all?"

  Now Arsen looked troubled, very troubled. "Well," he said slowly, as if thinking even as he spoke, "as I was telling Lisa earlier tonight, the best thing—hell, the only thing—I can figure to do is to set us all back the night before we went on that Iranian-doctor gig up north and then just not none of us go on it at all. But since the carrier says that if I do that then no
ne of us will remember anything that happened after we were popped into that damn place in England, then I can't for the life of me figure out how we could remember to not go on that damned gig and wind up back in England in the same place and time again and do the same things over again and just keep going around in a fucking circle like for God knows how long if not forever. Shit!"

  Taking a deep, deep breath, he went on, "So since it's so fucking hard to think through, I thought you all ought to know about it and you make the fucking decision, 'cause, boys and girls, I'm fucking thought out on it. But none of it has to be voted on tonight, mind you—just think it over and we'll meet on it again. I took one of the carriers out in that thick fog, last night, and flew down to the fucking Spanish fort area and bought us some more time, up here, before we'll have to fight anybody."

  9

  When Sir Bass Foster, Duke of Norfolk, Markgraf von Velegrad, Earl of Rutland, Baron of Strathtyne, Lord Commander of the Royal Horse of the Kingdom of England and Wales, and presently under loan with his personal troops and ships to His Royal Highness Brian, Ard-Righ of Ireland, had made his formal and respectful greetings to the Ard-Righ, he waited in silence to learn just why he had been so peremptorily summoned to attend the burly monarch here in his fortified palace at Lagore.

  Brian did not keep the great captain waiting long. With a cool smile, he inquired, "And what did our dear cousin Arthur reply to Your Grace's message dispatched to him just after you last spoke with us? We deeply envy Your Grace the incorruptibility of your retainers, you know; any other, we'd have had a copy of the message before anyone else saw it. At another time and place, sometime in the future, we must sit down and discuss your grace's patent skill in securing and maintaining such a rare degree of loyalty on the parts of his subordinates."