Jonathan Rogers - The Secret of the Swamp King

Pickro poled faster, like a horse headed back for the stall. “Hoooo-weee!” he yodeled. “Ain’t Chief Larbo and the Wilderking gonna be proud of us, bringing Pantherbane hisself to Bearhouse!”

“Hey, Pantherbane,” said Carpo. “You reckon you could growl and make ugly faces when we get out the boat? Maybe kick at us and flop around and show your toothies?”

“It might be kinda disappointing to the boys, you know, if you was to come in all polite and peaceful,” Pickro explained. “It’d just look a little better if you was to act more like a dangerous prisoner.”

“And since you gonna get throwed in jail either way, Pantherbane,” said Carpo, “we didn’t figure you’d mind putting on a show for the boys.” Aidan rolled his eyes. He would be very, very glad to get out of this boat.

They could hear Bearhouse before they could see it. The hammer and clang of metalwork was jarring to Aidan’s ears here in the depths of the Feechiefen. For days, the background noises had been birds, frogs, and bugs with the occasional splash of a fish or alligator, nearly drowned out by the constant, inane chatter of Carpo and Pickro. But Bearhouse sounded like one big blacksmith shop. Clang! Clank! Screeeeee! And the steady rhythm of axes. Chuck! Chuck! Chuck! And the creak and snap and thunder of falling trees.

When Bearhouse at last came into view, Aidan’s heart sank. The north end of the island rose from the black water like the top of a great bald, scarred head. Most of the trees were gone, and the ground cover too. The sun glared down with a punishing brightness on the feechies who scurried to and fro across the bare sand.

“Where are the trees?” Aidan asked.

“Trees fire the forges,” answered Pickro. “Forges makes the swords and spears and axes.”

“You’re feechies,” Aidan said. “Surely you miss the trees, and the animals that lived here.”

Carpo shrugged. “Trees is nice. Critters is nice. But it’s like the Wilderking says, once we whup all the other bands in this swamp, we’ll have all the trees and critters we want.”

“Is the whole island cleared?” Aidan asked. “Is the whole forest gone?”

“Naw, naw,” said Pickro in a reassuring tone. “We ain’t got around to chopping out the south half of the island.” He whistled. “But you talk about natural race horses!”

“Wilderking aims to start a new shiny-works down at Round Pond on the south end,” gushed Pickro. “And we gonna be able to make more cold-shiny than you ever seen!”

“We’ll use the pond for the cooling pool, and them big oak trees is perfect for the forge fires,” Carpo added.

“Oak burns hot,” Pickro explained. He waved dismissively at the trees around him. “Not like these cypresses.”

To the right, a larger flatboat was headed west, away from the island. “There goes more plume bales!” shouted Carpo.

Pickro pointed eagerly at another boat coming the opposite way, toward the island. It was an identical boat, but it rode much lower in the water. “Hee-haw!” the sharp-faced feechie cried. “More cold-shiny!” He broke into song: The plumes go out, The shiny comes in. Larbo’s band Gonna rise again.

They were very close now to the landing in the northern corner of the island. No birds flew overhead. No fish disturbed the surface of the water. No frogs peeped from the maiden cane that managed to survive at the water’s edge. There weren’t even alligators in the water here at Bearhouse. The place was dead, except for the feechies who hurried back and forth.

Pickro poled the boat to the landing, and Carpo pulled Aidan from the boat by his tied hands. Looking very important and self-satisfied, they marched Aidan across the bare sand. The bustling little village stood still as they paraded through. Feechie blacksmiths in gator-hide aprons held their hammers aloft in midblow and turned their soot-blackened faces to follow the civilizer. Forge fires cooled as bellows-tenders stopped their work and gawked.

Aidan’s captors prodded him across the settlement to a wooden stockade surrounded by a palisade of upended pine logs sharpened at the top. There was a door in the wall facing the settlement, and beside the door stood two guards.

The guards were civilizers, the first civilizers Aidan had seen since Massey left him at the south bank of the Tam. They were short, broad, and well armed. “This here civilizer is Pantherbane,” Pickro announced to the guards. He gave them a second to be impressed by this information. “We brung him to the Wilderking.”

One of the guards ducked through the door into the fort. Carpo called after him, “Tell him it was Carpo and Pickro what captured him.” He winked broadly at Pickro and rocked up and down on his feet in smug self-regard.

The guard returned shortly. “The Wilderking says to take the prisoner to the holding cage. His Majesty will see the prisoner in his own time.” Carpo and Pickro were dejected. They turned to go, and Pickro called over his shoulder, “Make sure he knows it was Carpo and Pickro what brung him.”

Aidan’s guards marched him back to the northern edge of the island and into a cage made of thick bamboo poles. They locked the door with a crude iron padlock. The sun drilled down on Aidan. There was no shade, nothing to sit or lie on besides the bare ground. There was nothing to do but wait and watch. He waited all day, and the Wilderking never came.

Aidan spent the long day observing the scene around him. Behind his cage was the open swamp. In front was the feechie settlement. From where Aidan sat, he could see five different forges burning. Blacksmiths took the bars of iron that arrived on flatboats and pounded the metal into arms and armor. Some of it they pounded into more mundane implements, such as shovels and picks. Feechies scuttled back and forth with wheelbarrows, carrying finished armaments from the forges to the Wilderking’s stockade, carrying unfinished metal from the landing to the forges. Feechie timber crews went back and forth, sometimes with axes over their shoulders, sometimes lugging chunks of firewood to fuel the forges.

Aidan had never seen feechies look so busy. He had never seen feechies look so tired. And another thing occurred to Aidan. He had never before seen feechiefolk look so frightened. Every half hour or so, the door to the stockade swung open, and a pair of civilizer taskmasters came out. When they walked around the settlement, the feechies always started moving faster.

On Aidan’s second day in the cage, Pickro and Carpo came back. To Aidan’s horror, they had been assigned to be his jailers. It was like being in the flatboat all over again, with their incessant yammering. Aidan wondered if this was a cruel punishment the false Wilderking had devised for him. When they arrived at their posts beside the cage door, they were already deep into a conversation about what they were going to do after the Wilderking established himself as king of Corenwald.

“I ain’t raising none of them smelly sheep,” Carpo was saying, “but I might could get used to riding around on a horse. I’ll howdy all the pretty civilizer ladies, and they’ll howdy me. They’ll say, ‘Howdy, Mr. Carpo. How you come on this morning?’ and I’ll say, ‘Pretty tolerable good, pretty lady, except I got a bad case of the burps.’ And the lady’ll say, ‘You poor feller. I get the same way sometimes, but I eat a bait of latherleaf, and it mostly goes away.’”

Aidan groaned. “I promise you, that’s not what a civilizer lady would say.”

“What do you know about it?” asked Pickro.

“He’s just mad ’cause his folks ain’t gonna be in charge no more,” said Carpo. Aidan retreated to the back of his cage, away from the two feechies.

“I reckon I know what kind of house I’m gonna get,” Pickro announced. “I seen a great big civilizer house on the river, up on a bluff of honey-color sandstone. Right where the river bends around. Biggest thing I ever seen. It was made of sandstones piled up on each other. And it had a little creek in the front where you can keep your alligators if you get lonesome for the swamp.”