Jonathan Rogers - The Way of the Wilderking

Jasper pointed to the face on the coin his father still held. “Halverdy got its name from this man-Halverd the Antlered. It was he who first united the warring tribes of the continent’s eastern plains and great forest into a single kingdom to fight the Pyrthen hordes that were sweeping in from the north and west.”

But Arliss was only minimally interested in continental history. He wanted to know more about this Halverd. “But how in the world,” he asked, “did he get antlers?”

Jasper laughed. “He probably just attached a pair to his helmet. His crown was decorated with antlers too. But he went down in the old lore as Halverd the Antlered, as if the antlers had sprouted from his head.”

“Like Harvo Hornhead,” Dobro offered, as if everyone knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Like who?” asked Arliss. Though Arliss famously had the “miner’s head” for finding his way underground, he had no head for history. He was already feeling overwhelmed by Jasper’s discourse, without adding feechie history to the mix.

“You know, Chief Harvo, the first Feechie chief,” said Dobro, a little exasperated at the poor miner’s ignorance. “Head like a buck deer, body like a hefeechie.” Arliss still looked blank. Dobro continued. “Harvo was the one what caught six turkeys at one time. Put his head down and run through a flock of them. Skewered the rascals on his antlers. Then he roasted them. Just leaned out over the fire with them dangling from his antlers.”

Everybody was listening, but to Dobro’s chagrin, only Aidan knew what he was talking about. “If you ain’t the ignorantest bunch of know-nothings I ever run into!” Dobro exclaimed. “What kind of history do they teach you people?”

Aidan had heard the legends about Chief Harvo while he was living in the Feechiefen. But he had never before considered the similarities between Harvo and Halverd the Antlered.

Errol was holding the coin at arm’s length, trying to focus enough to read the inscription on the back. “V-E-Z,” he struggled to read. He handed the coin to Brennus. “Your eyes are younger,” he said. “What does this say?”

“It’s not just your eyes, Father,” Brennus said. “This is hard to read. V-E-Z-something-somethingsomething-N-D.”

Aidan pointed to a blurred spot in the middle of the inscription. “Is that an L?”

Percy squinted at the coin. “V-E-Z-something-Lsomething-N-D.”

Errol shouted, “Veziland! Veziland! My grandfather used to sing ballads from the old country about Veziland.”

“So this coin,” began Aidan, speaking slowly because he wanted to be sure he had it right. “This coin came from the place you call Veziland some three hundred years ago-two hundred years before the first civilizers came over from Halverdy.”

“Looks that way,” Jasper answered.

“But how did it get here?”

“Maybe a coin collector dropped it?” Percy suggested, though not very confidently.

Aidan looked around at the desolate landscape-an inhospitable environment for coin collectors. “Doesn’t seem very likely.”

“Maybe this is an old feechie settlement,” said Brennus. “Maybe feechies traded with Vezilanders three hundred years ago, before any civilizers came over.”

Dobro scoffed at the idea. “This ain’t no feechie settlement. Feechiefolks don’t cut down trees to make cabins.” He pointed at the corroded plowshare they had found earlier. “Feechiefolks don’t scratch up the ground with cold-shiny blades. And feechiefolks don’t live in holes in the ground!”

Dobro had a point. Nothing they had found at this site suggested feechiefolk.

“Maybe we’ve always had it wrong,” said Percy. “Maybe civilizers got here earlier than we thought.”

“We haven’t been wrong about that,” Errol insisted. “All four of my grandparents came in the first flotilla from the continent. I know for a fact that there weren’t any civilizers on this island when they got here.”

Aidan took the coin in his hand again and wondered if he would ever see through to its puzzling origins.

After morning drills a few days later, Errol took Aidan aside. “I think it’s time you went to see this Lynwood,” he said. “The chief of the Aidanites. The chair of the-what was it?-the Secret Committee for the Ascendancy of the Wilderking?”

“I thought he might come see us,” Aidan said.

“From what I know of Lynwood,” said Errol, “he’s not the sort to go to that much trouble if there’s someone he can pay or cajole to do it for him.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s a merchant and a very wealthy one. Lives with his wife and daughters in one of the finest houses in Tambluff.”

“If he’s so rich, what does he want with a new king? Sounds like things have gone well enough under the old king.”

Errol thought on the question. “I don’t really know the man; we met only once or twice, so most of what I know of him is second hand. But he strikes me as the kind of man who wants to have a king who owes him a favor. He’s done well enough under King Darrow, but Darrow doesn’t know him from Adam. He’d risk a charge of treason for the satisfaction of being in a king’s inner circle.”

“Is he a bad man?” Aidan asked.

“He’s a man who doesn’t know his own heart. He probably tells himself he does everything for the good of Corenwald, and he probably believes it.

“Now that he’s given you an army, it’s probably only fair that you should tell him where you stand with things.” Errol thought for a moment, then his eyes brightened with an idea. “Dobro’s been dying to get out of these canyons.”

“Time to leave these neighborhoods,” said Aidan.

“Right. If anything would throw cold water on Lynwood’s desire for a Wilderking, it might be having a genuine feechie in his house. Why don’t you take Dobro along?”

The village of Ryelan was the nearest civilization to Sinking Canyons, ten leagues across scrubby plain. In truth, it just barely counted as civilization. The mean little village was the sort of place people left the first chance they got. But horses could be bought there, so Aidan and Dobro made it their first stop on their journey to Tambluff. They wore hooded robes over their tunics to conceal their identities.

“Listen here, Dobro,” Aidan said when the low buildings of the village came into view. “I think it’s going to be better if you don’t talk while we’re in Ryelan. We need to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible. And if we can keep people from noticing you’re a feechie, so much the better.”

“Seems a shame,” said Dobro, who had begun to think of himself as something of a feechie ambassador to the civilizers.

“Here’s the thing,” said Aidan. “Even if you don’t mind breaking the Feechie Code-”

“Aw, Aidan,” Dobro interrupted, “half the civilizers in Corenwald believes in feechies these days.”

“That’s not the point,” Aidan insisted. “When people realize who you are, they realize who I am. You heard what those militiamen were saying. Everybody’s been talking about how I brought a feechie with me when I came out of the Feechiefen.”

“Folks don’t say you come with one feechie,” Dobro corrected. “They say you come with a whole mess of feechies.” He took some pride in the fact that popular gossip had multiplied him into a band of feechie warriors.

“The last thing we need is a bunch of Aidanites and Wilderkingers following us to Tambluff. So when we get to Ryelan, don’t speak to anybody.” He thought about Dobro’s green teeth; tooth brushing was one aspect of civilizer life Dobro hadn’t yet mastered. “Don’t smile at anybody either.”