bowmen notched steel-tipped arrows to their bowstrings and pulled them tight. They laughed cruelly at the stocks and clubs of the North Swamp feechies; old-fashioned weapons had no place in the new world ushered in by their Wilderking.
But the North Swamp feechies were undaunted. They formed a line and faced their adversaries without flinching. The air crackled with tension as the two ferocious armies glared at each other across the clearing.
Behind the line of Bearhouse feechies, the door to the stockade swung on its hinges, and Aidan got his second look at the man who claimed to be the Wilderking. Stepping into the morning sunlight, he was a dazzling sight. A long robe of fuzzy white egret plumes trailed behind him, and around his head, egret plumes shot out in all directions like the rays of a fuzzy sun in the headdress he had worn the night before. Even in the daylight, the false Wilderking’s face was more or less obscured by the plumage. Beside him stood an old feechie in a wolf-hide cape- Chief Larbo, Aidan figured. Six thick-bodied civilizers, his bodyguard, formed a protective semicircle.
With a clear voice the false Wilderking addressed the Bearhouse feechies: “For this I have trained you, my hearties. You are strong of arm and strong of heart. Your steel is strong too.” He raised a plumed spear above his head. “For Bearhouse! For Larbo! For the Wilderking!”
The North Swamp feechies braced for the onslaught. But before it came, a wild cry echoed across the clearing:
Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo… Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo.
All eyes turned to the bamboo cage from which the watch-out bark had come. Aidan stood with his face pressed between the poles of his cage. Chief Larbo’s voice was the first to break the silence. “A watch-out bark!” he called across the battleground. He glanced at the spearheads and arrowpoints glinting all around. “If you don’t mind my saying, young civilizer, it looks to me like you the one ought to watch out.” The Bearhouse feechies snickered.
“That may be,” answered Aidan. “But you’d better watch out too. All of you.” The authority in Aidan’s voice captivated the attention of every feechie within earshot. “Things will never be the same if you turn those cold-shiny weapons on other feechies.”
“That’s what I know!” shouted one of the Bearhouse feechies. “Larbo’s boys gonna rise again!” A rumble of agreement rose among the Bearhouse feechies, punctuated by two or three enthusiastic whoops.
But Aidan’s voice silenced the crowd with a single word: “No!”
All eyes were once again on the civilizer’s cage. “If you win this battle for this pretended Wilderking, no feechie will ever rule in this swamp again.”
The false Wilderking’s plumage shook with rage, and he began to speak: “This fool has-” But a glance from Chief Larbo silenced him, and Aidan went on.
“If you turn a cold-shiny weapon on another feechie, you won’t be just killing a feechie. You’ll be killing all feechiedom.”
The Bearhouse feechies had been foolish, but they weren’t altogether stupid. They were listening to Aidan now.
“Today you have a choice to make.” Aidan waved his hand in a sweeping gesture to indicate all of Bearhouse Island-the forges, the desolate landscape, the Wilderking’s stockade. “Choose this, and you can never go back to the life you lived in your home band. You can’t have both.”
Aidan noticed that the forest of spears across the battleground were held a little lower. He pressed his advantage. “And you’re not just choosing for yourself. You’re choosing for the mamas and sweethearts you left behind. You’re choosing for your daddies and your granddaddies, for the wee-feechies who can’t choose for themselves.”
Aidan looked into the silent faces of the Bearhouse feechies. “That’s all I have to say.”
In their training, the Bearhouse feechies had used their swords and spears to do all sorts of horrible things to fake enemies stuffed with graybeard moss. But now that real enemies were in front of them, they looked more like cousins and former bandmates than enemies. It’s not that they minded attacking the invaders. North Swamp boys had no business, after all, on Bearhouse Island. But how much fun could it be to cut them up with cold-shiny weapons?
The Bearhouse feechies threw down their swords, spears, and bows. The North Swamp feechies threw down their clubs. And the two lines rushed headlong toward one another with flying fists, flying feet, and flying leaps. The Battle of Bearhouse was on, and it was ferocious. Aidan had witnessed a few feechie fights. There was nothing in the civilizer world to compare to a feechie fight for sheer brutishness. Fighting bears would be more civil. The Battle of Bearhouse was a hundred such fights, raging in every direction.
Aidan hung from his cage poles, whipped into a frenzy by the fracas around him. On one hand, he longed to get at the impostor who had tricked and enslaved the Bearhouse feechies. On the other hand, he was thankful for the protection afforded by his bamboo cage. He did his best to cheer the North Swamp boys, but it was hard to tell who was who.
Across the way, Aidan could see the false Wilderking dancing with rage. “You fools!” he screamed over the din of the battle. “Strike! Kill!” Every jerk of his head, every twist of his body was so magnified by his elaborate costume that the figure he cut was more comic than commanding. Larbo, seeing that the battle was being fought the old feechie way, couldn’t resist and left the Wilderking’s side to join the fun. The bodyguards, on the other hand, stood as if their feet were glued to the sand. They were confused and terrified by the feechies’ primal ferocity. The civilizers had weapons, and they didn’t mind using them, but they had underestimated what feechies could do in a free fight.
The battle raged. Feechies flew through the air, some leaping to the attack, others being thrown and flipped by their adversaries. In several cases, Aidan noticed that both of the combatants in a hand-to-hand fight were Bearhouse feechies. Because they outnumbered the North Swamp boys, there weren’t enough opponents to go around. Some of the Bearhouse feechies had to fight one another-the way girls at a ball sometimes danced with one another when there weren’t enough boys. As the battle swirled around him, Aidan noticed a new light in the Bearhouse feechies’ eyes. The old, fiery feechie spirit had chased away the dullness born of overwork and a love of cold-shiny. Their swampy exuberance made them more formidable enemies than their flashing weapons ever could.
Dobro Turtlebane, recovered from his earlier setback, now tangled with an unusually large feechie wearing an alligator-claw necklace. And things weren’t going well for Dobro. The Bearhouse feechie lifted Dobro over his head and hurled him against Aidan’s cage with such force that the whole structure collapsed in a heap. Aidan went to the ground, covering his head against the falling poles, and Dobro landed beside him with a thud and a clatter. He rolled over and moaned. “See, Aidan?” he groaned, holding his ribs. “I told you I’d get you out of this cage.”
Aidan spied the false Wilderking across the way. He was still stomping, raging, and waving his arms. Aidan rose to his feet and started walking a straight line toward him. Fists and feet and feechies flew all around him, but on he walked, driven by a single purpose. He stared unblinking at the gyrating, gesticulating fraud, stalking closer, closer, yet the Wilderking was too self-absorbed to notice. Some of the feechies noticed, however, when Aidan stooped to pick up a discarded club. Hyko left off his combat and fell in step behind Aidan, and so did Pobo, Orlo, Tombro, and Odo Watersnake from Chief Gergo’s band. Even Dobro joined in as best he could, limping and holding his ribs.
Aidan was thirty strides away when the Wilderking’s bodyguards hustled him inside the stockade. They drew their swords and waited for Aidan and his following. But Aidan kept coming, undeterred, and his following grew. The guards were well armed. But they could count, and it was obvious that they couldn’t hold back what was quickly growing into a feechie mob. They, too, retired to the safety of the stockade.
Still Aidan kept coming. His step was quicker now. When he arrived at the stockade door, he raised his club high and brought it down on the doorframe with all his might. Thwack!
“I am Aidan Errolson of Longleaf Manor.”
Thwack!
“I have come for the impostor who calls himself the Wilderking!”
Thwack!
“I am Pantherbane!”
Thwack!
“You have enslaved a free and happy people!”
Thwack!
