SPIRIT WALKER

Chapter 19: The Okanjara (part 2 of 2)

Wisteria and Tull sat within a few feet of Phylomon. Wisteria stood, holding her stomach. "God damn you," Wisteria shouted at Phylomon. "God damn you! Is it going to be this way everywhere we go?"

"Perhaps," the blue man said, watching her calmly.

"Because if it is, I can't take it!" Wisteria said. "I swear, I'll stab you in your sleep!"

"It wouldn't work," Phylomon said. "Others have tried, but where are they now?"

"I've got to get out of here," Wisteria said, staggering off into the darkness. Tull followed, somewhat in shock. He'd known Phylomon for only three weeks, yet the blue man had killed nearly a dozen people in that time.

"Did you see what he did?" Wisteria asked after they left the camp. She shook her head, held her stomach as if she would vomit.

Tull remembered the gagging sounds Wisteria's father had made in the water as he strangled. The same sounds the glass trader had made only a moment ago. "I see the kwea of it. I'm sorry."

They were standing by a wagon, and Thor came up, half-full. The gas giant was huge, and its light threw a blue haze over the plains. Tull could see little desert jackals slinking near camp, outside spear range, waiting for the people to sleep. Fireflies flickered in the air. A warm gravitational wind kicked up, and clouds scudded over the mountains. It looked as if it would be a dark night. Several people gathered around a wagon, pulled back a tarp, and began searching it, and Tull realized it was the slaver's wagon, and the people had come to haul off his goods as fast as they could.

"God, can't they even wait for him to finish dying first?" Wisteria said in disgust and stalked away.

Tull looked to follow her but she had been so cold lately—hardly speaking to him, avoiding his touch. He knew that she wanted to be alone. In the pale moonlight, as people pawed through the wagon, he saw a blade—a sword made of pale green Benbow glass that looked black in the moonlight, gracefully curved, yet even the back edge was jagged and sharp, in a wave design.

It was the most wicked-looking weapon he'd ever seen, something that only a princeling among the Pirate Lords could afford. He picked it up and held it. The dense crystal blade was heavy, as heavy as his kutow, but more finely balanced. He swung it in the air a few times, and liked the feel. It was heavy enough to strike through a parry, yet light enough to be fast. He imagined that he could swing that blade all day and never tire. Measuring the knowledge that it would anger Wisteria if he took the sword against his own desire to own it, he grabbed the scabbard for the blade and carried it back to his wagon.

He walked back to the campfire. A Neanderthal woman was talking wildly to Phylomon, gesticulating, speaking in an accent Tull recognized as Okanjara.

"Quick, come quick! The baby is not coming out as it should! I push on her stomach, but the baby refuses to come."

Phylomon looked up at Tull. "You said you studied once under a doctor. Did you ever help birth a child?"

"Three," Tull said.

"Well, let's make it four."

"I don't have the hands for it," Tull said.

"Come along anyway," Phylomon said.

They found the Okanjara girl in a tent near a small campfire, away from the main group. She was perhaps fourteen, sweaty, wearing a goat hide. Her husband was young and handsome, no older than Tull. Three girls crowded around, leaving little room for Tull and Phylomon.

"Who are you girls?" Phylomon asked.

"We are her sister-wives," one girl said. The thought sickened Tull, that four girls should marry one man. It was not uncommon in the Rough. A man could seduce a Neanderthal woman so fully that the kwea of the time they spent together overcame her sense of decency, and she became one of his wives. Human trappers did it often to women. Tull felt that it was unscrupulous.

Phylomon washed his hands in scalding water, and Tull did the same. He checked the girl's cervix for dilation, found a bit of blood running from it, and the smell of salt. Her water had broken.

"She's halfway there," he told Tull, and then asked the girl. "How often have you been having contractions?"

"She started two days ago," her husband answered, "but the baby decided not to come, not until tonight."

"We will have to take the baby soon," Phylomon told Tull. "What would your doctor have done?"

Tull said, "Have her massage her nipples so she will release oxytocin to get the contractions started. Perhaps have her sit up, to put more pressure on the cervix, thin it."

"I agree," Phylomon said. They helped the girl to her feet, took off her top, and put her husband to work stroking her nipples. They were small and pink, the nipples of a woman who'd never suckled a child.

Tull walked out of the tent, embarrassed at the sight, and sat by a small campfire with a dozen Okanjara. They were speaking of inconsequential things: purchases they planned to make, mending shoes, the perpetual chore of mending shoes. A burly Okanjara in his forties asked Tull, "How is she doing?"

"She will not go into hard labor for several hours," Tull said.

"Then in the middle of the night, we shall have some screaming," the man said, slapping Tull's shoulder. "It always reminds me of my childhood in Bashevgo, eh? Sleeping above the slave pens. If only someone would crack a whip!"

Suddenly, lightning crackled in the clouds on the horizon, and the Okanjara laughed nervously. "Ayaah, Adjonai cracks his whip!" the man said. "I am Tchupa, leader of this caravan." He reached out to clasp Tull's wrist.

Tull felt strange clasping wrists with him. He'd never touched a Thrall, free or otherwise.

"We have been bringing our caravans farther east and south every year," Tchupa said. "Someday we hope to walk freely among the Pwi, let them know we are not enemies." Tull looked at the warriors in the circle, their eyes, lips, and noses darkened so that they looked like skulls. They did not look like friends. "Yet I fear we brought too many men. Your people are uneasy. We will come in fewer numbers next year, but we had a surplus of goods to trade."

The practice of honest Pwi required the Tull speak openly to this man of his fears and hopes, and so he said, "Our people fear you because you come from Craal. Here in the Rough, the Pwi say that Adjonai, the God of Terror, rules in Craal. It is said that many Thralls work for the Slave Lords. It is said that some Thralls eat the flesh of the Pwi."

The big man frowned. "You are blunt. Truly Adjonai does rule in Craal," the big man said. "And some day, his hand will reach out and take the Rough. I have known Thralls to eat the flesh of Pwi in the ghettos of Bashevgo because they were hungry and had nothing else. The human Slave Lords left them no choice. That is why some of us, like my tribe, have escaped here into the wilderness. And every day, an Okanjara dies to keep this wilderness free. Know this, man of the Pwi, the Okanjara are your guardians, and should be your friends!"

Tull looked into the big Neanderthal's eyes, eyes as yellow as a cat's, and saw only honesty there. "Then I will not sleep with my sword tonight," Tull said, and the warriors laughed. "But, I must ask you: I have not heard of Okanjara traveling so far to the east. You say that the Okanjara die to keep the wilderness free, and I have heard that you battle the armies of Craal. Shouldn't you be on the other side of the Dragon Spine Mountains?"

The big man frowned. "We have battled on the far side of the Dragon Spines in the past, but the armies of Craal are many. After this winter, we will battle the armies of Craal here."

Tull's face paled. "Your words cut me with painful fear," Tull said. "You must be mistaken. The armies of Craal are seven hundred miles from here."

Tchupa shook his shaggy head. "Great armies move in the White Mountains—men with cannons and guns. They have put armor on their mastodons, dressing them for war, and they train dire wolves for battle. Their warriors, the Blade Kin, have sorcerers . . ."