a feller as ugly as you, I don’t know how to take that.”
Dobro shrugged. “Take it however you want to take it. It don’t make me no never mind.”
Marvin found himself getting annoyed at the nonchalant attitude of this ugly runt, who obviously wasn’t intimidated by him. “Say, boy,” he said, looking intently at Dobro, “how’d you get so ugly?”
“I reckon he’s a feechie,” said one of Marvin’s followers. “Ain’t I always said the Wilderking would come back with feechies?”
Dobro nodded at Marvin. “He got it right. I might look like a civilizer-scrubbed pink and with my mane lopped off-but I’m feechie born and bred.” There was nothing civilized about the green smile he directed at Marvin, or the acrid breath he exhaled in a self-satisfied sigh.
“Well, I don’t believe in feechiefolks,” Marvin insisted. “And if I did, I don’t reckon I’d think too highly of them.” He squirted a jet of tobacco juice on the ground in front of Dobro’s bare feet and wiped his thumb across his grinning lips.
Dobro eyed Marvin, trying to figure out what was the proper civilizer response to such a challenge. He figured he couldn’t go wrong if he responded in kind, so he worked up a nice, foamy glob of spit and let it fly right between the big man’s boots.
Marvin flew into a rage. He raised a huge fist and brought it down like a sledge hammer. It surely would have cracked Dobro’s skull if it had connected, but the feechie was too quick for him. He scrambled between Marvin’s legs and scurried up his back. Dobro reached one arm around the big man’s neck in a choke hold. His free thumb he stuck in Marvin’s eye. Marvin staggered, roared, and rained blows on Dobro, but he couldn’t do any real damage to the wiry feechie. When Dobro reared back and butted the back of Marvin’s head, the big man crumpled to the ground in a senseless heap.
Dobro was feeling a little woozy himself. Butting Marvin’s massive head was very much like butting a tree. When Marvin’s followers made a circle around him, Dobro was a little unsteady on his feet. But his mouth was still working fine. “I weigh ’bout 125 when I’m friendly,” he shouted, “But now I’m angrified, I weigh about seven hundred!”
Marvin’s gang all raised their fists and made menacing faces, but none of them wanted to be the first to take on the wild man who had felled their leader. “I can pick the ticks off’n all you boys,” Dobro roared. “All at once or one at a time, whichever suits you better.”
Marvin’s boys seemed relieved when Errol pushed through them and grabbed the raging feechie by the shoulders. “Enough,” the old man yelled, barely able to suppress a smile. “That’s probably enough introductions for one day.”
With much effort, Marvin’s men dragged their leader to the shady spot and revived him with stream water. The other men surrounded Dobro; they were fascinated by him-a real-live feechie-and awed at his efficient whipping of a man so much larger than himself. Dobro basked in their admiration and kept them royally entertained with his peculiar observations about civilizer life and customs.
The men would have surrounded Aidan, of course, except his father had whisked him away immediately after he had settled Dobro.
“Who are those people?” Aidan asked as father and son walked up the canyon toward the camp and sleeping quarters. “Marvin and his gang? Where did they come from?”
“I’m not sure where they came from,” Errol answered. “They came to the canyons a couple of months ago, claiming to be on the run from King Darrow, so we took them in. That was Aethelbert’s idea-thought they would be good fellows to have on our side in a fight.” Errol shook his head. “They were on their best behavior for a while, but I’ve about decided they’re just common criminals.”
“Or spies?” Aidan asked.
“I’ve considered that,” Errol said, “but I don’t think so. I’m not sure they’ve got enough sense to make spies.”
“Maybe not,” Aidan agreed. “But that Marvin may not be as stupid as he looks.”
“Yes, Marvin’s trouble. He’s trouble if he stays, and he may be more trouble if we send him away.”
“Because he knows we’re in Sinking Canyons,” Aidan said.
“Actually, I’m starting to think everybody in Corenwald knows we’re in Sinking Canyons. King Darrow most certainly knows. The problem is that Marvin and his crowd know where most of our hiding places are.” They walked past a wide, deep place in the canyon stream. “The miners dug that,” Errol remarked. “It’s where we do our washing. Looks natural, doesn’t it?”
He pointed to a crevice in the side of the canyon, no different from hundreds of cracks in the canyon wall. “This is our main hideout and storage area,” he said.
Aidan followed his father through the crack in the wall. It was so narrow they couldn’t walk through side by side. But just a few steps in, beyond the first turn, the little crack broadened into a rounded tunnel, obviously dug by human hands. “This is the miners’ work again,” Errol said, his voice echoing against the walls.
It wasn’t, properly speaking, a tunnel, but a widening of the crevice, which continued above their heads all the way up to the canyon rim and to the sunlight above. They continued deeper into the canyon wall until the tunnel opened into quite a large, round room. A shaft of sunlight made its way a hundred feet down from the canyon rim to illuminate the place. A few wisps of smoke curled up from a banked fire in the center of the room and slithered up the crevice as if it were a chimney. It was all strangely beautiful.
Errol pointed up into the sunlight. “Sometimes when we have been to the villages to trade, we lower supplies down by ropes.
“This crevice is actually the beginning of a new branch of the canyon. As years go by, it will open more and more. Someday this won’t be much of a hiding place. But surely we will have no need of a hiding place by then. For now, it serves just fine.”
Errol pointed at five tunnel entrances that opened onto the large chamber, joining like spokes on a hub. “Sleeping chambers and storage rooms,” he explained.
“The miners dug all this?” Aidan asked. “How long did it take?”
“Not as long as you’d think,” Errol answered. “The rest of us couldn’t carry out the sand nearly as quickly as they could dig it. They’re used to chipping their way through rock. This sand and clay is child’s play for them.”
Aidan looked up at the sliver of sky visible through the crack in the ceiling. “Doesn’t the rain get in here?”
“In here, yes,” Errol said. “But not up there.” He pointed up one of the tunnels. He picked up one of the pine knot torches that lay stacked in piles beside the wall and poked it around in the banked fire until it lit. “Follow me,” he said, and he stooped to walk up the tunnel.
“Even if it floods,” Errol explained, “these chambers stay dry. The tunnels are dug on an upward slope.” The sloping tunnel reached a plateau, from which connected three chambers. “You and Dobro will sleep here on the left with your brothers and me.” Errol pointed to the chamber on the right. “Here are Marvin and the boys, where I can keep a close eye on them. And there at the end of the tunnel, a provisioning room.” He held his torch in the room to show Aidan great bags of flour, rice, and dried beans stacked in neat rows.
It was an impressive feat of engineering and effort. But it was a long way from the life Aidan felt his father deserved. “Father, I’m sorry,” he said. “This is all my fault-your being outlawed, your living in a hole in the ground.”
“It’s not your fault, Aidan,” Errol said. “You do what you have to do. We all do. Life in the canyons isn’t what I had expected, but it’s a very good life in its way.
“Just a few years ago, this place seemed like alien soil, no more like Corenwald than the moon. But now it feels as if this is the only Corenwald that’s left. For us, the land of the free and true has shrunk down to this one barren, godforsaken spot. Here we live free and true. We live like Corenwalders, something we couldn’t do anymore in the Corenwald we used to know. Here, among us outlaws, Corenwald survives.”
Chapter Twelve
