The White Wolf, page 55
These ideas were far closer to those of my immediate ancestors. Among the rest of what I still considered the Young Kingdoms, there had been developing a tradition which was as mysterious and as attractive to me as my own was familiar and repellent. It was that culture, not my own, I fought to save. It was those people whose fate would be decided by my success or failure in this long dream. I had no love for the millennia-old culture which had borne me. I rejected it more than once in preference to the simpler ways of the human mercenary. There was a certain comfort in taking this path. It demanded little thought from me.
There was some urgency to my situation, of course, as I hung in Jagreen Lern’s rigging waiting to die. But there are no significant correspondences between the passage of time in one realm and another. I had elected, after all, to dream of a thousand years, and now the full thousand must be endured even if my object were achieved sooner. It is why I am able to tell you this story in this way. What I achieved in this dream would reflect through all the other worlds of the multiverse, including my own. How I conducted myself in this dream was of deep importance. A certain path had to be followed. When the trail was left it had to be left knowingly.
The path had already taken on a certain relentless momentum. From being a group of raiders or explorers, we were now an army on the march. Egyptians and Norsemen tramped side by side with the same extraordinary stamina they showed at the oars. Asolingas and the Bomendando jogged ahead with the Pukawatchi scouts.
Ipkaptam, Gunnar, Klosterheim and I marched at the centre of the main group. The Pukawatchi went to war in finger-bone armour, with lances, bows and shields. They had jackets of bone and helmets fashioned from huge mammoth tusks decorated with eagle feathers and beads. The bone armour was decorated with turquoise and other semi-precious stones and was lighter than the chainmail most of our crew favoured. Some warriors wore the carapaces of huge turtles and helmets made from massive conch shells. Braids were protected by beads and otter fur.
Just as I had noted the size of some of the huge pelts within the wigwam, I wondered at the size of the sea-life which supplied the Pukawatchi with so much. Klosterheim said somewhat dismissively that sizes were unstable in these parts, something to do with the conjunction of various scales. We were too close to “the tree,” he said.
None of this made much sense to me. But as long as our journey took us forward to where I hoped to find the original of the Black Sword, I scarcely cared what rationales he presented.
We were now an army of about a hundred and fifty experienced warriors. Some of the women and youths and old people were also armed. At the far end of this mixed force of pirates and Pukawatchi came the unarmed women, the infirm, children and animals who would follow us until we began to fight. From what I had seen thus far, I expected the city to be a primitive affair, probably a stockade of some kind surrounding a dozen or so longhouses.
The Pukawatchi had no real beasts of burden, unless you counted their coyote dogs that pulled the travois on which they carried their folded lodges. Women and children did most of the work. The warriors rarely did anything except, like the rest of us, march at a steady, dogged pace. Those women who had what they called “men’s medicine” dressed and armed themselves like the men and marched with the men, just as one or two of the men with “women’s medicine” walked with the group at the back. Klosterheim told me such practices were common among many of the peoples of this vast land. But not all tribes shared values and ideas.
Ipkaptam, joining in, spoke of certain tribes who were beneath contempt, who ate insects or who tortured animals, but even those peoples they had exterminated he spoke well of, as people of honour. We Melnibonéans had never experienced noble feelings for people we sent to oblivion. Melnibonéans never questioned their own ruthless law, which they imposed on all they conquered. Other cultures were not of interest to us. If the people refused to accept our scheme of things, we simply slaughtered them. But we had become too soft, my father complained, looking always at me, and allowed the Young Kingdoms to grow arrogant. There had been a time when the world never dared question Melniboné. What we defined as the truth was the truth! But because it suited us to have fat cattle at our disposal, we allowed the people of the Young Kingdoms to proliferate and gain power.
Not so, the Pukawatchi! They believed in the law of the blood feud, so gave their enemies no chance to retaliate. Every member of the rival tribe had to be eliminated or the babies taken to substitute for any Pukawatchi killed. Once they had been so few they had stolen infants from stronger tribes. Now they needed no foreign babies.
Yesterday the Pukawatchi had been despised, said Ipkaptam, both for their stature and their intelligence. Today all took them seriously. Their story would survive. And when the Kakatanawa were conquered, the Pukawatchi would dominate all worlds. They had grown strong, he said, until they were the strongest of all.
They were certainly sturdy. When walking and water were the only two means of travelling long distances, the calves and the arms became capable of enormous endurance and power. Their means of transport ensured them success in battle.
The Pukawatchi would have preferred the greater speed of water, but we were moving north and upstream of a small river which was too narrow to take any kind of craft. Klosterheim said there was a mooring rendezvous about two days ahead of us where we would acquire canoes so that the war party could make better progress. He seemed to have a greater sense of urgency than the rest of us. Of course, it was his magic, his energy, which was holding our rivals at bay. He suggested that soon the army should move on at a trot to the rendezvous, leaving the armed women and children with a small guard of warriors. I elected to command this guard. The idea of trotting did not appeal to me.
For the time being, we all continued at our regular pace.
Again I was impressed by the size to which everything in the region grew. Plants were far larger than anything I had seen before. I should have liked to have stopped and examined more. The terrain we were crossing was wooded and mountainous, and we travelled through a series of valleys, still following the winding course of the river, as we drove deeper and deeper into country nobody was familiar with. It had been deserted of people, Ipkaptam told me, since a great disaster had struck here. He believed that the whole country around the Kakatanawa land was dead, like this. As you got closer, even the game began to disappear. But he had only heard this.
Before the beginnings of this war, no Pukawatchi had ever been allowed to cross the human lands, let alone visit the land of the Kakatanawa. They had come east in his grandfather’s time. Equally, the Kakatanawa were forbidden to leave their own land. Until recently they, too, had kept to their pact. But others, such as the Phoorn, had done their work for them. Some of these Phoorn adopted human form and bore a resemblance to me, though my physique was different. Others were monstrous reptiles. Now that he knew me, said the sachem, he realised I was more like a Pukawatchi, yet it was still difficult, he said, to trust me. His instinct was to kill me. He could not be sure this was my natural form.
The Pukawatchi had never been this far north, and Ipkaptam worried that he did wrong. But wrongdoing had become the order of the day. Once the people of the south, north, west and east had respected one another’s laws and hunting grounds. They had a saying: The West Wind does not fight the East Wind. But since White Crow had come to the world, Chaos threatened on all sides. In their fighting the Lords of the Air produced the hawk-winds which destroyed whole peoples and created demons who ruled in their place. These demons were called Sho-ah Sho-an and could only be defeated by the lost Pukawatchi treasures.
Ipkaptam also admitted that he was nervous of being sucked off the back of the world. At some point you must tumble into the bottomless void, fall for ever, eternally living the sharp, despairing moment when you realise your death is inevitable. Far better to die the warrior’s death. The clean death, as some called it. To Pukawatchi and Viking alike a noble death remained more important than longevity. Those who died bravely and with their death songs on their lips could live the simple, joyous warrior’s life for eternity.
My own responses to these notions were rather more complex. I shared their idea that it was better to make a noble death than lead an ignoble life. There was not one among us, save Klosterheim, who did not think that. The Ashanti, the Mongols, the Norsemen knew the indignities and humiliations of old age and preferred to avoid them, just as a promise of inevitable defeat made them anxious to take as many of their enemies with them as they could.
The Pukawatchi, so provincially self-important and so certain of their imperial rights, had a shared sense of afterlife which favoured those who had died bloody deaths and sent as many others as possible to equally bloody deaths. The fate of women and children in these cosmologies was vague, but I suspect the women had their own more favourable versions which they told among themselves. For all their domestic power, they were more frequently the unwilling victims of the warrior code. Certain warriors prided themselves on their skill at dispatching women and children as painlessly as possible.
As we began to speak the same language I learned more about the skraylings, as Gunnar still insisted on calling them. The supernatural understanding of these natives was sophisticated, though their powers of sorcery were limited and usually restricted to needs of planting and hunting. Only the great line of shamans, of whom Ipkaptam was the latest, understood and explored the world of the spirits. This was where he drew his power.
Ipkaptam’s was not an especially popular family. They had often abused their privileges. But the Pukawatchi believed in the family’s famous luck. When that luck failed, I suspected, Ipkaptam would no longer be revered, tolerated or perhaps even alive.
Gunnar walked by himself much of the way. Few sought him out. The Pukawatchi suspected him to be some kind of minor demon. They displayed an instinctive dislike of me as well. Some were still convinced I was a renegade Kakatanawa.
Our alliance could break down at any moment. Gunnar and Klosterheim had common goals, but there would come a day when they would be at odds. Equally, no doubt, Gunnar was scheming how he would dispatch me when I had served my turn. Like my late cousin Yyrkoon, Gunnar spent a great deal of time planning how to gain the upper hand. Those of us who did not think competitively were always surprised by those who did. For my own part I responded with appropriate cunning or ferocity to whatever situation I found myself in. When one has had the training of a Melnibonéan adept, one rarely needs to anticipate another’s actions. Or so I thought. Such thinking might well have led to our extinction as a people.
Yet Gunnar’s weakness was also typical, as he believed me to be scheming as hard as he was. This might have been true of Klosterheim and Ipkaptam, but it was certainly not true of me. I was still prepared to believe that I could easily be following a chimera. The black blade’s maker was my only interest.
The Vikings remained fairly cheerful. They had seen enough to know that there might be a city somewhere which could be looted, even if it was not made of gold. They knew the superiority of their iron weapons and had a fair idea of the way back to the sea and their ship. They probably believed a longer sailing would avoid the more terrifying aspects of the journey here. So most of them saw this as a standard inland expedition from which they might emerge with wealth and knowledge. They knew the value of the Pukawatchi furs and quickly understood how the Pukawatchi valued iron. The only iron the Pukawatchi worked was moon metal or ingots chipped from the rock. Somehow they had lost their legendary power to mine and smelt metal. As a result, a small iron dagger would buy a lot of valuable furs.
In my company, at least, the Vikings also had the sense that they carried secret power. I was surprised that my shield, the Pukawatchi stolen Shield of Flight tight under its cover, had not been sensed by their shaman, seemingly so sensitive to the supernatural. It remained to be seen whether it would give the gift of flight to anyone who carried it or whether spells and chants were involved to invoke the spirits associated with the shield.
Experience shows most magic objects depend far more upon the gullibility of the purchaser than on any blessing by the spirits. The shield could have no particular properties at all, except those of superstition and antiquity. How Gunnar found it in Europe, he refused to explain, but I had the impression he had come by it in trade some while ago, perhaps from one of the People of the West to whom, Ipkaptam said, it had been given. But here the People of the West would live far away from the sea, unless we were on a large island. If we were on an island, then it was possible the People of the West had somehow sailed around the rim of the world, as Gunnar would have it, from the China Seas, as he himself had done with the Rose. Or was this a treasure Gunnar had brought back from the expedition they made, when he had returned in The Swan while the Barbary Rose captained her own twin-prowed ship, The Either/Or?
There was some dispute among us as to whether we should make the quick march at all or keep to our present pace, so that we remained together. Klosterheim spoke of the gathering winter. It was becoming noticeably colder by the day. We were marching north. Normally, both Pukawatchi and Vikings reserved raiding expeditions for the spring. Winter made movement almost impossible. Ice would form on the rivers soon, and they would not be able to use the canoes.
So we called a further conference. Eventually it was decided that the two Ashanti, Asolingas and the Bomendando, who were our fastest runners, together with a Pukawatchi called Nagatche, would go ahead for a few miles to get the lie of the land. Then we could make a better-informed decision.
The three runners set off as the evening sky grew black overhead. An east wind began to blow steadily, biting through layers of clothing. I felt the lash of sleet against my cheeks.
Night fell. Ipkaptam, Klosterheim, Earl Gunnar and I again conferred around an uncertain fire in a small temporary lodge. Ipkaptam believed that the season was coming unusually early. He would have expected another month before the snows arrived. Again he spoke anxiously about offending the winds. It would be best to reach the water as soon as possible. With snow, our journey to Kakatanawa would be far more difficult. With ice it might be impossible, and we would have to wait until the next year. He turned to Klosterheim for suggestions. Were there any other magical allies he could summon? Was there some way to placate the wind so that it blew the snow away from them? What if he were to offer the Snow Wind his most valuable possessions? His children’s lives?
Klosterheim pointed out in Greek that most of his powers were already being used to sustain his supernatural ally Lord Shoashooan threatening our enemies. He had only been able to summon the demon in the first place because of the strange nature of this realm’s semi-sentient winds, which Ipkaptam had already remarked on. It was even possible that Lord Shoashooan was drawing the bad weather to them. But if White Crow was allowed to take the Black Lance back to Kakatanawa, then the Pukawatchi would never defeat their ancient enemies, never redeem their honour. As for summoning powerful spirits, that was now entirely beyond him. With all his experience of the supernatural, he had never been able to control two such forces. Gunnar mumbled something about having made too many bargains already and said he was thinking on the problem. I—whose powers were virtually non-existent here, but needed fewer drugs and sorcery to survive—was equally helpless.
“Then we must do our best with our natural brains,” said Klosterheim with some humour.
The next morning one of the Ashanti returned. The Bomendando was glad of the camp. He stood by the fire shivering, his lanky body wrapped in a buffalo robe. He was uneasy and seemed frightened. He said he had left the other two guarding their find while he came to tell us what it was. They also would return if it became too dangerous. They had remained in case they should catch a glimpse of what they guessed was occupying the hills.
I had never seen such a disturbed look on the Bomendando’s face. Clearly, he thought he might not be believed.
“Come on, man,” demanded Gunnar, reaching a threatening hand toward him. “What have you seen out there?”
“It’s a footprint,” said the Bomendando. “A footprint.”
“So there are other men here. How many?”
“This was not a man’s footprint.” The Bomendando shivered. “It was fresh, and we found others, fainter, when we looked. It is the footprint of a giant. We are in the realm of the giants, Earl Gunnar. This was not part of our agreement. You told us nothing of giants, nothing of the Stone Men. You spoke only of a poorly defended city. You said how the giants had been driven from this land by men and halflings. You said giants were forbidden to go outside their city. Why did you not tell us of these other giants? These roaming giants?”
“Giants!” Gunnar was contemptuous. “A trick of the eye. The track had spread, that was all. I’ve heard tales of giants all my life and have yet to see one.”
But the Bomendando shook his head. He held out his spear. With his hand he measured off another half-length again. “It was that wide and more than twice as long. A giant.”
Ipkaptam became agitated. “They are not supposed to leave their city. They cannot leave it. They are forbidden. The giants have always guarded what they are sworn to guard. If they left, the world would end. It must have been a human you saw.”
The Ashanti was adamant, tired of talk. “There is a giant out there, in those hills,” he said. “And where there is one giant, there are often others.”
There came a shout from the margins of the camp. Warriors ran towards us, pointing over their shoulders.
In the slanting sleet I saw a figure emerging. He was indeed very tall and broad. My head would scarcely have reached his chest, but he was a third the size of any giants I had previously encountered.
