SPIRIT WALKER

Chapter 19: The Okanjara (part 1 of 2)

The next morning the party turned north and skirted the fields. The Mammoth Run Plateau was a lush plain that ran six hundred miles in a north-south direction. In summer the valley was thick with wild bison; herds of short-nosed pigs; elk; and small dark brown, three-toed horses with yellow zebra stripes on their rumps. Near the rivers, sloths larger than the biggest bears fed in willow thickets beside giant capybara. In winter, mammoth and woolly rhinos moved down from the north. And as always, there were cats.

Tawny flatland sabertooths followed the mammoth herds, and regal lions lounged beneath the occasional tree to watch over the bison. Between the mammoths, pigs, and brush fires, most trees never took root, and the land remained clear for grazing.

The men surprised themselves in the flat terrain and made twenty miles per day, so that on the second night out of the woods, the eighty-first day of the month of Dragon, they reached the rendezvous at Frowning Idols.

Other traders had already arrived.

The party pushed their wagon beside a small lake at dusk. A dozen bonfires burned near deerskin tents and round sod huts, sending their smoke skyward, showing all travelers for miles around where to meet. Two hundred Neanderthal had gathered, and they had covered fire pits to roast slabs of bear and sloth. The air smelled of sizzling fat and smoke.

"Take heart," Phylomon said as they entered camp, eyeing the wagons with domestic oxen grazing nearby. "If we can't buy cattle, perhaps someone will know where we can get a mastodon."

Someone shouted, "Phylomon! Phylomon of the Starfarers is among us!" and nearly everyone in the crowd came running to see the blue man.

Tull's heart sank as he realized that it was the same cry that had been raised in Smilodon Bay three weeks before. It was so innocent, so full of excitement.

Tull took Wisteria into the crowd, and they weaved among the tents, where goods were often laid out on trading blankets. A woman passed them wearing a hundred bracelets of electrum and silver, advertising her wares on her arm. Most Pwi had brought their trade goods on their backs—intricately carved jade bowls, copper pots, raw dragon horn that was prized for bows. But there were also some human traders: a burly bearded wild man from the north who had a wagon-load of mammoth ivory. Another who'd taken the easy trail up from Benbow to bring in a wagonload of Benbow glass. These two traders drove wagons using domesticated bison—the most common draft animal in this corner of the Rough. Although goods were displayed everywhere—laid out on hides or blankets on the grass—no one was buying. It would not be polite to begin bargaining until everyone was fed and rested.

Wisteria and Tull strolled among the goods, and Tull became concerned: among the dainty earrings were jade pipes, the kind the Okanjara—the Free Ones, as they called themselves—used to smoke opium and hashish. The Okanjara were escaped Thralls from Craal, and generations in slavery had left them changed from the Pwi, more brutal. Many of them, it was said, were in league with the Pirate Lords and worked as slavers. One Neanderthal with black paint beneath his eyes had his arcane drugs all laid out with the paraphernalia. He displayed dried mushrooms, seeds, and pouches of dried leaves. Tull had never seen such things.

He walked softly, feigning interest in the items out of courtesy, but his hand tightened on Wisteria's arm, and he steered her forward, always heading toward the famous idols at the center of the camp—two gray stone statues carved into frowning Neanderthal faces, some twenty feet tall.

They passed a Neanderthal wearing a lion-skin vest, a heavy man with a thick golden beard who wore his leather war helmet and kutow as if he were planning to go to battle any minute. The man knelt, setting ivory spoons onto a deer hide.

Wisteria stopped to look at the spoons, and the man reached for his kutow and looked up. His eyes were blackened, so his face looked like a skull. "How much do you want for the woman?" he asked Tull.

It would be impolite to offend, Tull knew. The man had a defiant, crazed gleam in his eye. Tull spat at the man's feet. "Pwi do not sell their women," he said, deciding that he did not care if the man was offended. He walked on.

"Careful," Wisteria said under her breath. "He is Okanjara."

"He is an Okanjara warrior," Tull corrected, loud enough for the man to hear. "Bastard son of some pirate. Probably a slaver himself. It does not give him the right to offend us. I will kill him if he does so again."

"Excuse me if I have offended," the warrior said loudly at their backs. "I did not know you were Pwi!"

They reached the idols, huge monoliths. Tull rested his back on the down turned lip of a statue and sighed.

Scandal hurried over, spoke quietly. "Did you see the mammoth tusks over there? A trader brought them down from the north just this morning, escorted by fifty Okanjara warriors. They've caused no small stir, mind you. Those tusks didn't come from wild mammoths. They came from domestic herds. All of them are painted with Hukm totems!"

"Hukm!" Wisteria said. The great furred Hukm were fierce warriors, each nearly as large as a Mastodon Man but vastly more intelligent. They never killed their sacred mammoths. To slaughter a Hukm's mammoth was an act of lunacy, akin to slaughtering his children—a declaration of war.

"Only fools would kill such mammoths," Tull said. "I just called one of them the bastard son of a slaver. He begged forgiveness for offending me."

"Ayaah," Scandal said quietly. "You should see the stir Tirilee is causing. Every one of these animals is willing to pay his left testicle for a night in bed with a Dryad. If Phylomon wasn't with her, I don't know how we'd stop them. Right now, they're outnumbered, so they won't start anything now. But sleep light. Ayuvah says this place has bad kwea. The hand of Adjonai reaches even here. For once, I feel the kwea too."

That night, Phylomon held an execution. The party had settled in for dinner, a feast where supplies were shared abundantly. They sat on logs around several huge bonfires, laughing and telling jokes. Tirilee crouched next to Phylomon, clinging to his arm, for many Okanjara had gathered, leering at her.

The harmless-looking old glass trader from Benbow, a fat man with a hint of peach fuzz left on his head, slapped Phylomon's back and introduced himself. Phylomon asked if he'd once lived at a place called Starving Woman.

The fellow sat up straight and in surprise, and said, "Ayaah, but how'd you gather it?"

Phylomon said, "I have a message . . ." and reached for his pack. He pulled out a weathered piece of paper and read, "I Deman Haymaker, was taken slave two years ago——"

The fat man pulled a knife from his boot, and started to rise. Phylomon smashed the man's esophagus with an elbow. The fat man stood up straight, then fell backward over the log he'd been sitting on and kicked his feet, retching as he strangled.

"This man forfeits all property for his crimes. We'll be taking his oxen when we go," Phylomon said. "The rest of you can take his glass as you please."