Of Myths and Monsters Read online

  So solemn, formal, and ritualistic was the greeting and welcome in the camp that Arsen kept wishing he had a program and was now very glad that he had thought to bring along Simon Delahaye, for though the silver helmet allowed him to speak into the minds of all of the Indians and, in return, understand what they said to him, it gave him no insight into the customs and rules of behavior that caused them to do and say what they did and said. Simon understood not only the language of his Creek braves but had, through actually living in their first longhouse with them, eating with them, hunting with them, and leading them into combat after having trained all of them in his period's military usages and the proper use and care of the flintlock rifles, learned their minds, their thought processes, many of their customs, and much of their very intricate social structure.

  Though clearly shrunken and stooped with age, the Micco proved to be a man about of Arsen's height—which meant, thought Arsen, that he must have been close to giant-size among the Indians and the Spanish, in his prime—but he was no shuffling near-cripple like Squash Woman. Vitality exuded from him, tangibly; his voice was deep and rich, the vision of his black eyes was unclouded, and he gave Arsen the impression of being smart as a whip.

  When the Micco's council had been introduced and Simon was engaged in presenting a rifle to each of them, in the formal, Creek way, Arsen and Mike proffered their own gifts to the Micco, Snake-burnt-at-both-ends.

  After they had shown the old Indian how to open the canteen, how to remove it and the cup from out the cover, he asked, "Did the steel-breasts make this, too Arsen-silver-hat?"

  "No, the Spanish didn't make this, Micco, it came from my own folks," replied Arsen. "Just like the rifles and your pistol."

  The aged Indian nodded and said, "But I know that the steel knife, here, with the bright-flashing case, is of the steel-breasts. How did it come to your hands? By trade?"

  "No, Micco," answered Arsen, "I took it off the dead body of a Spaniard. I was told he had been a knight."

  The old man's lips twitched in what Arsen and the rest would soon come to recognize for a smile of approval, and he said in a serious tone, "Good. Very good, Arsen-silver-hat. It never is wise to trade with the steel-breasts, hear you the words of age, of one who has learned bitter lessons and knows whereof he speaks."

  "Although I heard long, long ago that there were good men with white skins in the north, men like you who do not go about hung all over with steel, you are the first I ever have met, and so I cannot speak with knowledge of them. But the steel-breasts—and I have met four different tribes of them, in my life—are evil, very cruel, and so deceitful that he who trusts them is a fool."

  "The people called Guale, they trusted these steel-breasts, and where are they, today? Once they were strong and numerous, now the few as are left live as almost slaves upon the lands that once were theirs. As the steel-breasts had killed off or driven off all the game from those lands, the pitiful things who were once called Guale must subsist on the refuse of the steel-breasts or beg from them, for they no longer own the courage to steal."

  "The people related to my people, those called Appalachee, will one day be like to the Guale of today, I feel. And for long I have feared that, when I go, my own people would be like the Appalachee within the lifetime of a man. But when the young men who had gone away to fight for the steel-breasts came back with news of you and your people and told of how you had given them guns—a something which the steel-breasts never would do—and killed many steel-breasts with their help and freed the people enslaved by the steel-breasts, I knew that you were a man I must meet and know before I go to join my ancestors. Now, I would hear your words, Arsen-silver-hat."

  "Micco," said Arsen, slowly, "there are not many steel-breasts of any tribe here, there never have been as many of them as there are of you Creeks and Shawnees and other tribes, not if you all went after them together, there aren't. But you don't, you never have joined together to kill them all or drive them out of your lands. That's what I'm trying to do, Micco, see enough tribes of your kind join together to make it so fucking hot here for the Spanish that they'll head for easier pickings somewhere else, see."

  "Armed with flintlock rifles and a few cannon, plus your usual weapons, and trained right, as few as five hundred of your braves could sweep the Spanish clear back to the sea, probably so badly terrify the fuckers that they'd crowd back onto their fucking ships and haul ass back to Cuba or wherever they came up here from to start out."

  "Micco, at the start of all of this, I wasn't thinking any more ahead than just taking care of Squash Woman's little clan of the Shawnee and protecting them from the Spanish slavers. But since I've had time to think about it, I've realized that such a small-scale operation would never work for long. What is needed is not just one tribe or two, but five or six in a confederation devoted to fighting together against all the steel-breasts, see, not just the Spanish. Now, you know the Indians a whole lot better than I do. Which of the nearby tribes do you think would work together best for this confederation, Micco?"

  The aged man sat for a long time, his eyes slitted, then he reopened them and began to speak, saying, "Arsen-silver-hat, if what you have seen in your dreams would work, it would be a great and brave accomplishment. But so very much stands against it that you must forget it, I fear."

  "Why, Micco?" demanded Arsen. "Why won't it work?"

  "For one thing," was the aged Indian's reply, "the thing that has crippled us in the south since the first coming of the steel-breasts. Most tribes would rather fight other tribes than join with them to fight steel-breasts."

  "Another thing is that tribes and clans will not come to you just to hear your words, brave though those words are; you must fight the steel-breasts and win more than once, then see that the words and proofs of these victories are spread far and wide among the tribes and clans by traders or runners. Only then will men sit in council among the peoples and decide that their warriors should journey to join with you and your warriors, to share with you and them the fruits of victories over the steel-breasts—women, slaves, loot, scalps, ears—and the honor."

  Arsen shook his head. "Micco, I'm not thinking of just warriors coming here or wherever long enough to fight and then dispersing, going home, and giving the Spanish a chance to gather reinforcements, establish another beachhead, and go at it all over again. No, I'm in mind of a place where all of the people of the confederation—warriors, women, children, old people—all can live fairly close together in peace and safety, so that the warriors can always be mustered quickly to go wherever they're needed to turn back the foe."

  Snake-burnt-at-both-ends breathed a long sigh. "To see your fine dream in flesh, then, Arsen-silver-hat, you must find a place wherein so many of the people can find food, raise it and hunt it, and that place is not these foothills, hereabouts. The soil here is shallow and poor, the game small and chary, mostly."

  Arsen nodded and said, "Micco, I have found just such a place as you say I need. If you and three of your council will ride with me and the other silver hat on our boats that fly, we will show you this land and the riches it contains."

  When they first rose above the tops of the tallest trees, the shaman, who sat cross-legged behind the Micco, gasped once, then put himself under strict control. But the Micco himself merely sat relaxed, and his only comment was, "Remarkable."

  Arsen led the way in his carrier, Mike following, as they flew swiftly north and west. They crossed the eastern foothills, then one range of mountains, flew high over the long, narrow, green-carpeted valley that divided the ranges, then over the second and wider range. The same protective field that would shield the carriers from any projectile—up to and including iron cannon balls, in Arsen's experience—also insulated the passengers from the wind of their swift passage and, to some degree, from the cold of the higher altitudes.

  After one brief glimpse of the treetops so far below, the old shaman sat rigid, his eyes tightly shut. But the fearless Micco leaned his bod
y forwards and to the side, grasping the edge of the carrier lid to steady him, and avidly drinking in every one of these strange, new sights. Arsen chuckled to himself, thinking, "That wrinkled old fucker's got guts a fucking mile wide and ten miles long, by God. That slimy old cooze Squash Woman won't stand a half of a fucking chance against him."

  As they reached the beginning of the western foothills and began to gradually descend, they passed a very startled red-shin hawk, which screamed at them before diving fast and far and out of their sight among the trees below. At the noise, the shaman opened up his eyes, moaned very softly, then closed them again.

  But the Micco bent far over the edge and shouted at the disappearing raptor, "Fear not, Hawk-brother, I do not want your dry, stringy carcass in my stewpot," then sat back up, chuckling.

  Arsen set down first in the long-overgrown fields just west and north of the stone ruins clustered among the hills. "Much food was grown here for many years in times long past, Micco," he said, "by those who lived in habitations built upon those stone foundations you can see back there. If the land supported folks once, I can't see any reason why it wouldn't do it again."

  "Now, get back on the carrier and I'll show you the game. You said all the game back there on the east side of the mountains was small? Well, just wait until you see the sizes of the game here."

  They sailed silently over a herd of long-horned bison that straggled for what Arsen computed to be over four statute miles, with bands of the small, big-headed, shaggy horses grazing among the huge, dark-colored bovines. At one point, well out from the edge of the herd, five of the monstrous, spotted, lion-like cats sat or sprawled in the high, weedy grasses, being seemingly ignored by the bison and the horses alike. Farther on, past the fringes of the bison-horse herd, on the side of one of the low hills that lay between the plain and the river, they saw three of the oversized, wolf-like canines tearing apart the still-twitching carcass of an elk cow, while in the valley just below a black bear of good but not really remarkable size gorged himself in a dense tangle of berry bushes.

  As he had expected, Arsen found mammoths at the river. There were some ten or twelve of them that day. Two of them were clearly calves and the others were of assorted sizes. All of the Indians seemed thoroughly impressed at the sight of so much ambulatory meat. Following the river upstream, to the east-northeast for some two miles, they found two of the gigantic, scimitar-toothed cats making a meal of the bloody body of a sloth at least ten feet long, while constantly having to fend off the incursions of a horde of canines about the size and shape of coyotes.

  Buzzards lazily circled over this scene as they had over the feast of the super-wolves back on the hillside, but here there was also, much higher up, a very much larger bird gliding on wings that looked to Arsen to be ten or twelve or more feet in spread. He rose straight upward to see it at closer range.

  "Thunderbird!" both the Micco and the shaman breathed together, reverently. Then the shaman began to chant something.

  Arsen knew that the humongous bird was the same kind that both Greek John and Bedros-the-Prick had called a condor, but to him it still looked like nothing so much as a vastly overgrown turkey buzzard. He descended and continued the tour until they had almost reached the foothills again, then he headed back for the ruins.

  When they all were sitting or squatting among the foundation stones on that same hilltop where he and Greek John had once sat, Arsen asked, "Well, Micco, do you think this land has the soil and the game to support enough people to give my confederation up to five hundred warriors at a time?"

  "Yes, Arsen-silver-hat," replied the old man. "But this is a very sacred land, the Land of the Thunderbird. I had heard of it many times over the course of my long, long lifetime, but I didn't know if such tales had even a kernel-grain of truth, for no one at all seemed to know even in what direction it lay and no man living could say that he had ever actually trod its earth. I would not bring my people to live in this land—it would be a sacrilege, a great sacrilege that would not end well for any of us. Thunderbird would see us, know that we trespassed, and send monsters to kill us, eat of our flesh. The tales tell of this very thing happening in the long ago, when foolish people disregarded the warnings of the Guardian, Thunderbird, came, dwelt, planted, hunted, and waxed fat for a while, but then were either killed and eaten or fled from here back to the parts of the land that are not sacred."

  Apparently sensing Arsen's keen disappointment at his lack of support, the aged Indian added, "However, Arsen-silver-hat, on our way to this holy place, east of the biggest mountains, we passed over a long, narrow valley. I saw deer there, and it looked to be rich land within it. If it is as long as it looked to be and as rich as what I saw for all of its length, then many, many of the people could live there, hunt and forage in the mountains on either side and plant maize and squashes and pumpkins and gourds and beans and tubers of all sorts and live well in all seasons of the year. Why do we not fly back now and see just how long and how rich this valley is, Arsen-silver-hat?"

  "Yes, I knew that it was the sacred land, the Land of the Guardian, Thunderbird," said Squash Woman sullenly, speaking to Arsen, Lisa, Mike, John, and the Micco.

  "Then why the hell didn't you tell me?" snapped Arsen. "Why didn't you tell us all, early on, not just keep us farting around here and waiting on you and those other frauds like you've done, you old bitch, you?"

  "Because," she mumbled, "I knew that if you knew the whole truth, we never would go to that land to live, you would stop bringing the people food and all your other trifling presents. You would all leave and the young warriors would all leave, then we would have to start hunting and foraging and making our backs sore tending gardens again, and we would have to break up into small bands along the river and again live in fear of the slavers without you and the young warriors to protect us. Now that you do know the whole truth, you are all going to leave this place. I know, I can feel it in my bones," she added, nodding sadly, tears glittering in her eyes.

  "Shit!" snorted John. "All you feel in your bones is arthritis and, probably, gout, the way you've been overstuffing your face on all that Arsen could bring you for months, now."

  "She's guessed right, though," Arsen informed them. "We are moving."

  Squash Woman climbed out of her pit of anguish and woe, reviving instantly, to pronounce, "The people do not go anywhere unless the council of elders says so, the council will not say so unless, I, the eldest of the elders say so, and I will not say so . . . ever, for to try to dwell in the Land of the Thunderbird is to die horribly there."

  "No, no one is moving there, Squash Woman," agreed Arsen. "But the Micco, here, and I have found another land, a long, rich valley between ranges of the western mountains, north and west of this place in which we now live. It is well watered, game abounds, and the Micco says that no one except wandering hunters has lived there for a very long time, if ever."

  "No!" She shook her head, stubbornly. "I told you, Arsen-silver-hat, I will not let the council agree to move an inch from this place unless you give me a silver boat and a silver hat and certain other things. I am the eldest. The Eldest has spoken!"

  Mike Sikeena growled, low in his throat, and fixed a baleful stare, from eyes as black as her own, on Squash Woman, where she squatted. "Eldest asshole," he said, softly and feelingly, "you are a colossal pain in the neck. I'd be careful if I was you, woman, old folks are real easy to kill . . . if a man knows how, and I do. And ain't too many questions ever asked when a old woman just drops down dead, not if it's no marks on the body."

  "Eldest One," said the Micco with polite formality, able to speak directly to her despite the language differences due to his wearing of one of the silver helmets. Arsen had given him Bedros Yacubian's, telling the academic that he really didn't need it since he spoke to no Indians if he could help it, and then only to insult or patronize them.

  "Eldest One, when were you born? Do you know, exactly?"

  "Of course I do!" snapped Squash Wo
man with far less courtesy, showing the aged Micco precious little respect. "The True Human Beings, my people, remember things well and accurately, always, unlike you poor half-humans who live in other places. I was born on the night before the great, black monster tried to gobble up the sun at midsummer. That was ninety-two winters ago."

  Micco shook his head and said just as courteously as before, "No, old woman, that was not ninety-two winters ago, that was only eighty-three winters ago; I recall it well, for I was a boy in my eleventh summer then. I was out hunting squirrels and checking my rabbit snares and I became much terrified in that short darkness."

  "No, venerable though you assuredly are, woman, you are not at all the eldest here—you are at most eighty-three, while I number this one my ninety-fourth summer of life. I am eldest. The Eldest has now truly spoken!"

  Squash Woman's black eyes blazed out rage and defiance. "You cannot, can never be Eldest here, old half-man, for you are not of the real people, you are only a half-bestial Creek. If you try to even sit on my council, you will be driven out like the dog you are. My braves will arise on my command and slay or enslave all your clan."

  Greek John laughed aloud. "With what braves will you do these things, pray tell, you old scuzz-bucket? Among all the little bunches of Shawnees that have straggled in here, I doubt there are thirty braves, and a lot of them are near middle-aged. The Micco, here, has got over a hundred and fifty warriors, all in their prime."

  "Ah, but we . . . our braves all have thundersticks, now, John-silver-hat," she crowed. "Both the long ones and the short ones, like mine." She patted the flintlock pistol thrust under her sash.

  Arsen dashed her hopes with gleeful relish. "So what, Squash Woman? The Micco's Creek warriors all have flintlocks now, too; and don't make the mistake of thinking that the young Creek braves who have been living here among your people will fight for you. No, they're Creeks, first and foremost, and they'll fight for their Micco."