Brown John sat in the driver’s box of his colorful wagon at Pin wheel Crossing, where the roads to the border villages joined Amber Road, and several other roads leading to different sectors of the deep forest. The wagon was parked in the afternoon shade on the western side of the crossing. The old man was watching refugees from the demolished villages flow north in a steady stream in hope of finding safety from the Kitzakks.
He had tried to count them, but it was impossible. The Barhacha, the Kavens and the Wowells were in full flight, and among them were Barbarians whose villages had not been raided: groups of Cytherians from Weaver and outlaw bands. The homeless traveled on wagons and drove pack animals and surviving livestock. Only a few weapons could be seen, and no warriors.
Brown John’s head drooped dejectedly. The Kitzakks had reached across continents to harvest flesh. To reach a little farther into the forest would not inconvenience them.
Across the road, under a spreading oak, the tribal chiefs were meeting. They paced and sat on tree stumps talking animatedly. Bone and Dirken stood at the edge of the group. After a moment, the chief of the Dowats, a man called Jathh, with a patch over his eye, turned to the two Grillards and spoke to them. They listened, intently, nodded and dodged through the fleeing multitude to Brown John.
Bone leaped up beside him. “It’s you they need now, it is, and they’ve finally figured it out. They want you to sit with them, and be a member of the Council of Chiefs.”
“Is that so?” Brown John replied slowly. Ideas tumbled behind his troubled eyes, and he turned to Dirken. “Whose idea was this?”
“I don’t really know,” Dirken said with a theatrical whisper. “Someone not so dumb would be my guess.”
“They’ve got no leader,” Bone added. “Not a real one. All they can agree on is to argue.”
With only a trace of the bitterness Brown John felt, he said quietly, “Yes, they would ask… now that it is too late for so many of their kinfolk. They probably believe I will negotiate With their new hero for them. But… they will have to do the waiting now.”
The brothers liked that, and it showed.
Brown John turned to Dirken. “Go back to them. Thank them for their invitation, and do it with sincerity, and tell them that I have pressing business elsewhere this afternoon, but that I may be available this evening.”
Dirken nodded, and pulled at Bone.
“No,” said his father. “He will stay with me. And, Dirken, talk slowly and courteously, but with pride, just as you did in Up by Lamplight. Go now, and don’t run, but leave as soon as you have their answer.”
With a slow, easy manner, Dirken nodded, got down off the wagon, and paraded back through the flowing refugees toward the waiting chiefs.
As they turned to welcome him, his father spoke to Bone, “Take the Weaver Road. We’re going to talk to Robin.”
Bone, grinning with pleasure, cracked his whip, and the wagon lurched forward through the refugees and rolled onto Weaver Road.
Dirken delivered his father’s message. The chiefs huddled briefly, then Jathh approached Dirken stiffly and told him that the council would welcome his father’s participation at the evening meeting. Dirken bowed graciously, walked jauntily to the wagon and climbed aboard as it continued to roll slowly down Weaver Road.
There was only a scattering of elderly people coming up the road. Those were the last people they saw until an hour later when they approached a stretch of apple trees.
A man was sitting on a grassy knoll with his back against the greyish trunk of a tree laden with green apples. He was neatly slicing an apple into sections and eating them. He wore plain leather boots and a leather tunic banded by several buckled belts that carried a wide range of different sized and shaped daggers. A leather skullcap with long, dangling earflaps covered his square head, and he wore a necklace of brightly colored beads interspersed with human finger bones. His eyes were grey and empty, unmemorable. What was memorable was the brilliant red stubble on his enormous chin.
As the wagon lumbered by, Brown John studied the man with the corners of his eyes. When the wagon was well past, he motioned to Bone and his son reined up. The brothers looked at their father with questioning eyes. Before they could speak, Brown John silenced them with a raised finger, picked up his walking stick and got down off the wagon. With a jerking limp and leaning heavily on the stick, he started back toward the stranger.
Brown John stopped a good fifteen feet short of the big-jawed man, and waited respectfully. The man carved and ate three more sections of his apple, then lifted his head slightly, measuring the old man with thin, squinting eyes.
Brown John dipped his head courteously, and asked meekly, “Excuse me, sir, but perhaps you could do a tired traveling player a favor?”
“And perhaps not,” the stranger replied indifferently.
“I understand,” the old actor agreed. “Nothing is certain in these tragic times. Nothing at all.” His deliberately artless eyes met the stranger’s stare. “I am afraid we are lost. I am trying to reach the village called Coin, which I hear has been attacked by Outlanders. I… I have relatives there. Could you tell me if this is the right road?”
“This road leads to Weaver.”
The old man signed tiredly, and sank a little. “Then we are surely lost. Do you, perhaps, have a map?”
“You think I’m a rich man? That I can afford a scribe to draw maps?” His red jaws snapped impatiently.
“No, no! It is only that I can see that you cut your apple with great care and skill. I thought that, perhaps, such a precise and well-organized man might also have a map!”
The man slid the last section of his apple past his pale lips, chewed it slowly, his eyes regarding the old man curiously. He swallowed, and said, “You have sharp eyes… for an actor. Perhaps we can help each other.” He unbuckled a pouch, and removed a folded parchment.
Brown John leaned forward on his stick, but did not move closer. The stranger looked up at him sharply. “You’ll never find out where you are standing over there.”
Brown John nodded. “I know, it is just that a man of my age and physical infirmities must move with care.”
The stranger offered what he considered a smile. It did unpleasant things to his face. “You can die just as suddenly over there as you can over here,” he said. He lifted a small loaded and cocked crossbow from behind a grassy rise and leveled it playfully at the tottering figure. “Come on over and talk to Red Jaw.”
Brown John mumbled meekly, shuffled over under the tree and sat down placing his walking stick across his knee. The bounty hunter handed him his map. Brown John studied it making appropriate murmurs of discovery.
“Humm! Oh yes, here it is. Thank you.”
He looked up to return the map and nearly dropped it.
Red Jaw was holding a black, hand carved doll in his hands. It was a likeness of Gath. Brown John needed all his craft to hide the jolts of shock that went through him.
“Cute, isn’t it?” Red Jaw said conversationally. “Ever see a life-sized version? Or heard words about anyone who might look like this?” He pushed the doll closer to the older man. Brown John hesitated, then nodded, once. Red Jaw, with sudden animation in his empty eyes, drew the map from his limp hands. “My map tells you where your village is, your words tell me where he is. Fair?”
Brown John shifted nervously, glanced back at his wagon, then muttered, “The Shades. He lives somewhere in The Shades.”
“Shades?” Red Jaw’s forehead gathered in folds.
Brown John pointed at the parchment. “It’s on your map. The large forest to the west there.”
Red Jaw, squinting, raised the map to his eyes.
Brown John grabbed his walking stick with two hands, and drove it through the map into the bounty hunter’s chest bone. The blow drove him against the trunk of the tree, pinned him there, gasping. Brown John shouted over his shoulder, “Hurry, lads! Hurry!”
Bone and Dirken leapt out and raced for their father.
Red Jaw, fighting for breath, tried to wrestle the stick aside. The old man held him in place with grunting, sweating effort. Red Jaw drew a knife from his belt, and raised it as Bone and Dirken jumped him. They pulled his arms back and stretched them around the tree until he dropped the knife.
Brown John, without letting up on his stick, bellowed, “Don’t play with him!”
Bone and Dirken blanched at the ferocity of his tone. Dirken dropped on Red Jaw’s head and, using his body weight, slammed him back over an exposed root and Bone drove his sword into his bulging chest with such force that it splintered ribs and backbone. The blade went four inches into the earth before coming to a stop.
Brown John, heaving from the exertion, clutched his chest and sat back. Bone, hands numb from the impact, tried to remove his sword, but couldn’t budge it. His father waved him off, still panting. “Leave it for awhile… you never know… when his kind are truly dead.”
The old man stared at Red Jaw’s bulging eyes. When he got his breath, he whispered, “Bounty hunter.”
The brothers stepped away from the contorted corpse, bodies cocked. The man hunter continued to bleed.
“How can you tell?” whispered Dirken.
“The knives. There’s one for every bone in the body,” Brown John said with recovered energy. “We’ve done well.”
He lifted the doll and map off the ground where they had fallen, held them up. “This is a Kitzakk map, and this is a totem made by the hand of someone very skilled. I would advise you not to touch it. Its magic may be strong.”
They did not argue.
Brown John looked musingly at the black doll and murmured, “Incredible. What detail! As if the doll itself had once been alive.”
He looked up and snapped, “Search him.”
His sons did the work quickly, searched Red Jaw’s many satchels as well as his boots and tunic. Bone came away with a handful of heavy coins, and belts and daggers strung over his shoulders. Dirken, with a dramatic gesture, laid another doll in his father’s hands. It was white.
Brown John held it with trembling, respectful fingers as he turned it over, and over, then said, “Oh, my.”
When Brown John and his sons reached Weaver, at sundown, they parked their wagon outside the Forest Gate. Before their feet touched the ground, Robin was heading for them with a crowd of frightened children. Their faces were tearstained; their little hands pulled at her tunic.
Reaching Brown John, she clung to him crying. “You’re here! You’re here!” Her big feathery eyes, moist with desperation, looked up at him trustingly. “What can we do?”
“What we must,” he said quietly.
“Did… did Gath try to stop them?”
Brown John shook his head.
“Nobody’s seen him.” Bone interjected. “Not for days.”
Robin sank slightly, then lifted her chin gallantly. “I’ll find him. I’ll leave right now.”