Enchanted Pilgrimage (26 page)

He touched the empty socket with his forefinger and with it traced the scar. The hand had three fingers missing; there was only the forefinger and the thumb.

He fixed Cornwall with his one remaining, glittering eye.

“Hand to hand,” he said. “Me and him. An old boar bear almost as mean as I was. And I was the one who walked away. Not the bear. He tore me up, but I was the one who walked away. We ate him. We dragged him home and cooked him, and he was the toughest meat I ever knew. Tough to eat, hard to chew. But his was the sweetest flesh I have ever eaten.”

He cackled at his joke. Most of his teeth were gone.

“I couldn't eat him now,” he said. He pointed at his still open mouth. “The teeth fell out. Do you know why teeth fall out?”

“No, I don't,” said Cornwall.

“I'm no good no more,” said the Old Man. “I'm stiff in the legs. I have only one good hand. One eye is gone. But these fellows here,” he said, gesturing at the group of Old Ones who squatted behind and to either side of him, “these fellows, they don't dare to tackle me. They know I am mean and tricky. I was always mean and tricky. Wouldn't have lived this long if I hadn't been mean and tricky. I hear you are a god and carry a shining blade.”

“I carry a shining blade,” said Cornwall, “but I never claimed to be a god. It was Broken Bear—”

The Old Man made a disrespectful noise. “Broken Bear is full of wind,” he said. He jerked out his elbow and caught Broken Bear squarely in the ribs. “Aren't you, Broken Bear?” he asked.

“No more than you, broken man,” said Broken Bear. “You have more wind than any of us. It all comes through your mouth.”

“He would like to take my place,” said the Old Man. “But he won't. One hand on that big neck of his and I would strangle him. The good hand, not the bad hand. I'd take care to grab him with the good hand.” He guffawed toothlessly.

“You talk a good fight,” said Broken Bear, “but someone has to help you up. You can't get to your feet alone.”

“I wouldn't have to get to my feet to strangle you,” said Old Man. “I could do it sitting down.”

“What's all this jabbering about?” asked Jones.

“He's bragging about how beat up he is,” said Cornwall.

Out beyond the corner where they sat, three great fires had been built on the ledge that extended out from the rock shelter. Grills of green wood had been set up over the fires, and on them meat was cooking. There was a great scurrying about, women bustling with the importance of the moment, racing children romping about and getting underfoot, packs of dogs circulating haphazardly, with a wary eye kept out for a flailing foot, but at the same time maintaining a close watch on the carcasses on the grills.

Coon, crouched between Hal and Mary, peeked out to have a quick look at the dogs. Mary hauled him back. “You stay put,” she said. “I know you licked a half dozen of them, but now you are outmatched.”

Hal grinned. “Did you ever see the like of it? They never even laid a tooth on him. Let him get backed into a corner and he can hold his own.”

“Nevertheless,” said Mary, “he stays here. He hasn't anything to prove. He handled those that jumped him and that's enough for one day.”

Gib nodded at the Old Man. “When do I give him the ax?” he asked.

“Give him time,” said Jones. “He's probably building up to it. Broken Bear would have told him there was a gift, so he must know. But there's tribal protocol in a thing like this—very solemn protocol. He can't appear too anxious. He must be very urbane. He must uphold his dignity.”

The Old Man was saying, “You have traveled far. You come from unknown lands. You crossed the Blasted Plain. You outran the Hellhounds. But how did you get past the Castle of the Chaos Beast?”

“We did not outrun the Hellhounds,” Cornwall told him. “The Hellhounds ran from us. We stopped at the castle and the castle now is a heap of ruins. The Chaos Beast is dead.”

The Old Man raised his hand to his mouth to express amazement. “Truly,” he said, “you indeed are gods. And this one who travels with you who is not honest flesh and that travels on three legs, as would no honest man …”

“He is magic,” Cornwall said, “as is my shining blade.”

“And the horn the female carries? It is magic, too? It comes from a unicorn.”

“You know of unicorns? There are still unicorns about?”

“In the Place of Knowing. There are unicorns in the Place of Knowing.” He made a gesture out into the darkness. “Beyond the gorge,” he said. “No man travels there. It is guarded by Those Who Brood Upon the Mountain.”

Cornwall turned to Jones. “He is telling me about the Place of Knowing. He must mean the university. He talks about a gorge and says that it is guarded by Those Who Brood Upon the Mountain. Not, you will note, He Who Broods Upon the Mountain.”

Jones nodded. “Undoubtedly he has it right. He should know. A bit of bad translation on the part of someone. That is all it is. And there is a gorge. It is the very gorge we traveled to reach this place. I know. I traveled it.”

“Seeing none of Those Who Brood Upon the Mountain?”

“Not a one,” said Jones. “But I traveled on a bike and, as you may recall, it makes hell's own amount of noise. Maybe I scared them off. Maybe they like to know what they are guarding against. Too, I was traveling the wrong way. I was traveling from the university, not toward it. There's something I want to talk with you about. This robot of yours …”

“What is a robot?”

“The metal man who's traveling with you.”

“Later,” Cornwall said. “I will tell you later.”

He turned back to the Old Man. “About this Place of Knowing. Could we travel there?”

“It would be death to try it.”

“But there must have been others who traveled there. Just a few seasons ago. A man and woman …”

“But they were different,” said the Old Man.

“How different?”

“They went in peace. They traveled hand in hand. They had no weapons, and there was only goodness in them.”

“They stopped here. You saw them?”

“They stayed with us for a time. They could not talk with us. They did not need to talk. We knew the goodness in them.”

“You tried to warn them?”

“We did not need to warn them. There was no need of warning. They could walk in safety anywhere they wished. There is nothing that could touch them.”

Cornwall spoke softly to Mary, “He says your parents were here. Then went on to the university. He says it was safe for them. He says there was nothing that could hurt them.”

“Anywhere anyone else can go, we can go,” said Jones.

“No,” said Cornwall. “Mary's folks had something special. It is past all understanding.…”

“Broken Bear tells me,” said the Old Man, “that you carry something for us.”

“That is right,” said Cornwall. “Not a gift. Not from us. It is something that belongs to you.”

He motioned to Gib. “Give him the ax,” he said.

Gib held out the package, and the Old Man grasped it in his one good hand. He put it on the ground in front of him and unwrapped it. Once it was unwrapped, he sat there staring at it, unspeaking. Finally, he lifted his head and stared intently at Cornwall with his one good, glittering eye.

“You mock us,” he said.

“Mock you!” Cornwall exclaimed. “All we are doing—”

“Listen,” said the Old Man. “Listen very closely.…”

“What is going on?” asked Gib. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Something's wrong,” said Cornwall. “I don't know what it is.”

“The old stories say,” the Old One said, “that this ax was given long ago, in friendship, to a man of another place who passed our way. Now you bring it back and the friendship ends.”

“I don't know,” said Cornwall. “I know none of this.”

The Old Man bellowed at him, “Our head is in the dust. Our gift has been thrown back into our face. There is now no friendship.”

He surged to his feet and kicked the ax to one side. Behind him the other Old Ones were rising, gripping their spears.

Cornwall came to his feet, jerking out the sword.

Behind him came a snicking sound. “I'll mow 'em down,” said Jones. “You stack 'em to one side.”

“Not right yet,” said Cornwall. “Maybe we can reason with them.”

“Reason, hell,” said Jones in a disgusted tone.

“We fear no gods,” the Old Man said. “We will not be mocked by gods. We die before we're mocked.”

“We did not mock you,” Cornwall said, “but if you want to do some dying, now's the time to start.”

The Old Man staggered forward a step or so, lifting his arms as if to ward off an unseen enemy. Something protruded from his chest and blood ran down his belly. Slowly he collapsed, fighting to stay erect. Cornwall, startled, stepped back to give him room to fall. When he fell, it could be seen that a spear shaft protruded from his back.

Broken Bear stood, with empty hands, behind him.

“And now,” he said, “the old bag of wind is dead. You and I can talk.”

A deathly silence had fallen. The children no longer ran and screamed. The women stopped their chatter. The dogs swiftly slunk away. The men who stood with Broken Bear said nothing. They stood unmoving, spears grasped in their hands, faces hard.

Broken Bear motioned toward the fallen leader. “He would have got us killed,” he said. “Some of us, all of you. We didn't want that, did we?”

“No,” said Cornwall. “No, I guess we didn't.”

“I still do not know,” said Broken Bear, “if you be gods or demons. I think one thing one time, then I think the other. The one thing I do know is we do not want you here.”

“We will gladly go,” said Cornwall.

“But first,” said Broken Bear, “you barter for your lives.”

“I am not sure,” said Cornwall, “that we will barter with you. All of us, you say, and you may be right. Some of you, you say, but let us change that to say an awful lot of you. And I promise you, my friend, you will be the first.”

“We will not be greedy,” said Broken Bear. “All we want is the stick that smokes.”

“What is going on?” asked Jones.

“He wants the stick that smokes. Your weapon.”

“It would do the damn old fool no good. He'd probably shoot himself. You have to know how to use the thing. And I'll not give it up.”

“He says it is dangerous to one who does not know it,” Cornwall told Broken Bear. “It can kill the one who has it if you're not friends with it. It is powerful magic and not for everyone. Only a great wizard can learn how to use it.”

“We want it,” insisted Broken Bear, “and the horn the female carries and the shining blade.”

“No,” said Cornwall.

“Let us talk deep wisdom,” said Broken Bear. “You give us the stick, the horn, the blade. We give you your lives.” He made a thumb at the fallen Old Man. “Better than he offer. He have many dead.”

“Don't bicker with the bastard,” said Jones.

Cornwall put out a hand and shoved Jones' weapon to one side.

“They have us surrounded,” said Hal. “We're in the middle of them. The women and the kids have grabbed up clubs and stones—”

Someone from behind shoved Cornwall roughly to one side.

“Hey, what's going on?” yelled Jones.

A ropelike tentacle reached down and wrenched the sword from Cornwall's grip.

“You can't do that!” yelled Cornwall.

Another tentacle slammed against his chest and thrust him off his feet. As he scrambled up, he saw that there were many tentacles—as if the air were full of writhing, darting ropes. They extended up and out into the press of Old Ones who were shrinking back against the shelter wall. The tentacles among them were snapping in and out, snatching spears out of their hands. One tentacle had a dozen bundled spears and, as Cornwall watched, snapped up another.

“What the hell is going on?” yelped. Jones. “He took away the rifle—”

“Bucket,” Cornwall bellowed, “what the hell are you doing?”

The Old Ones who had been with Broken Bear were huddled against the wall, but out around the cooking fires there was a screeching and a running as the women and children rushed wildly about. Dogs went yelping, tails tucked between their legs.

Bucket was hurling the spears he had collected out beyond the shelter's edge, out into the darkness of the gorge. Other tentacles, sweeping across the area out around the fires, scooped up clubs and rocks that had been dropped by the women and the children, heaving them after the spears.

“He's gone mad,” yelled Mary. “He even grabbed the horn.”

“I'll cave him in,” screamed Jones, “if he damages that rifle.”

Bucket bristled with tentacles. He seemed to be a metal body suspended from many tentacles, bearing some resemblance to a spider dangling in a sagging, broken web. Tentacles seemed to have issued from each of the holes that perforated his body.

Now the tentacles were pushing them along, herding them across the ledge, to where the path wound up from the gorge.

“He's got the right idea,” said Gib. “Let's get out of here.”

Down in the gorge there was a howling and screaming. Some of the women and children had either fallen or had scrambled down in the darkness, escaping from the ledge. The group of Old Ones who had been huddled against the wall were moving out, but very cautiously.

As Cornwall and the others came to the path, Bucket pushed them along. He handed the horn back to Mary, the ax to Gib, the bow to Hal, and the sword to Cornwall. Jones' rifle he hurled out into the center of the ledge.

“Why, goddamn you!” frothed Jones. “I'll bust you up for scrap. I'll dent you out of shape—”

“Move along,” growled Cornwall. “He knows what he's doing.”