“And the overbrush; made great little houses. Then we put in a crop and practiced fishing while we watched it grow.”
“Catch anything?”
“Just coelacanths, but they’re not half bad with a little…”
“How about the farming?” Rod said quickly.
“Couldn’t be better. Grew real fast, too, and real big; nice soil you’ve got here.”
“A regular Garden of Eden,” Rod said drily. “Who was the snake?”
“A bright-eyed boy, eager to make good.”
Rod had been getting bored, but he suddenly gained interest. “A boy?”
“Well, okay, so he was about forty. And the brightness in his eye was pure greed—but you couldn’t call him grown-up, really. Still couldn’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy. He decided he was a magician and a priest all rolled into one, and went around telling everybody they should worship the Elder God.”
Rod frowned. “Who is the ‘Elder God’?”
“ ‘What’ would be more like it. Nobody’s ever seen it, mind you…”
“That’s the way it is with most gods.”
“Really? From all the stories I hear, it’s just the other way around. But this shaman drew pictures of him for us; it was a huge bloated grotesque thing, with snakes for hair and little fires for eyes. Called him the Kobold.” Yorick shuddered. “Gives me the creeps, just to think about it.”
“Not the type to inspire confidence,” Rod agreed. “And he was hoping to win converts with this thing?”
Yorick nodded. “Didn’t get ‘em, though—at least, until his buddy Atylem got lost at sea.”
“His buddy got lost. This made people think his god was true?”
“No, it was because Atylem came back.”
“Oh—the Slain and Risen One.”
“Not really. Atylem had been out fishing, see, and he hadn’t come back. But finally he did, two weeks later—and he said he’d found a whole new land five days across the water. And it was just chock-full of Flatfaces!”
“Oh.” Rod lifted his head slowly, eyes losing focus. “So. Your people decided the Eagle was wrong, eh?”
“You’re quick, milord.”
“And that meant the Kobold was right.”
Yorick nodded. “Doesn’t really make sense, does it?”
Rod shrugged. “That’s the way people think. I mean, we’re talking about public opinion, not logic.”
“Sure.” Yorick spread his hands. “Put yourself in their place. Why would the Eagle bring you so close to your old enemies if he were really powerful and wise?”
“But they were all the way across the water,” Rod said reasonably, “a day’s journey.”
“That’s what we all said.” Yorick nodded toward his friends. “We were Eagle’s leadership cadre, you see. I was his right-hand man—and Gachol over there was his left-hand.”
“And the rest were the fingers?”
“You got it. Anyway, we all said the Flatfaces couldn’t bother us much—not with all that water to cross. But one day we looked up, and there was a Flatface floating in the sky.”
Rod stiffened, galvanized. Toby, on his spy mission! But hadn’t Yorick left something out? A little matter of a raid?
But the Neanderthal plowed on. “Well! The fat was in the fire, I can tell you! That shaman—Mughorck was his name—he was out and about the village before the Flatface was out of the sky, shouting about how Eagle had betrayed us and now the Flatfaces were gonna come over like a ton of devilfish and knock us all into the gizzard!”
“Didn’t anybody argue with him?”
“A few of us did try to point out that one Flatface does not an army make—nor a navy, for that matter. But, I mean, this Flatface was flying! Everybody was panicking. Some of them were so scared, they actually started digging themselves holes to crawl into! I mean, they were talking magic, and they were talking sorcery—and Eagle had made a big point of telling them that he wasn’t magical, and he wasn’t a sorcerer. Not that anybody believed him, of course, but…”
“But it laid the egg of doubt,” Rod inferred. “I should be so lucky!”
The apeman frowned. “How’s that again?”
“Uh, nothing,” Rod said hastily. “I take it the people began to believe him, at just the wrongest time?”
“Right. After all, there was Mughorck the shaman, running around telling people that he was magical, and was a sorcerer—and that his god, the Kobold, could make them strong enough to defeat the Flatfaces, and, well… people don’t think too clearly when they’re scared stiff. First thing you knew, everybody was yelling and shouting that the shaman was right, and the Kobold had to be a true god, after all.”
“Didn’t you begin to get the feeling that the climate was turning unhealthy?”
“Just about then, yeah. We”—Yorick jerked his head toward his companions—“began to feel the wind shifting. So we headed up to the High Cave, to tell the Eagle to fly.”
“I hope he listened to you.”
“Listened! He was ahead of us—as usual. He had our knapsacks all packed. While we were slinging our packs onto our backs, he slapped our bows into our hands. Then he told us to disappear into the jungle and build a raft.”
“Raft?” Rod frowned.
Yorick nodded. “We had some really thick trees, with really thick bark, and they floated really well. He told us not to worry about where we were going—just to paddle it out into the ocean and hang on. Oh, and he told us to bring plenty of food and lots of drinking water, ‘cause we might be on that raft for a long time.”
“Without a sail or oars, it must’ve been.” Rod noted silently that the Eagle, whether or not he was a wizard, obviously knew the odd bit about science—which he should have, if he’d been running a time machine. It seemed that he knew about the Beastland-Gramarye current. “Did he tell you where’d you’d land?”
“Yeah—the Land of the Flatfaces. But he told us not to worry about it, because these Flatfaces were good people, like him.” He clapped his hand over his mouth, eyes wide.
The slip, Rod decided, had been a little too obvious. “Didn’t you want me to know he was good?”
“Uh… yeah.” Yorick took his hand away, bobbing his head eagerly, grinning. “Yeah, sure. That he was good, that’s all.”
“Thought so. I mean, you couldn’t’ve been worried about letting me know he was a Flatface—that’s been pretty obvious all along.”
“Oh.” Yorick’s face fell. “You guys are good at manipulating symbols, aren’t you?”
But how could a Neanderthal realize that words were symbols? His education was showing again. “So you built your raft and paddled out into the ocean—and the current brought you here.”
“Yeah.” Yorick eyed the wall of spearpoints that hedged him in. “And I don’t mind telling you that, for a while there, we thought maybe the Eagle had been wrong about you.”
Rod shrugged. “Can you blame them? Some of these men are locals; and your boys hit a village not far from here a few days ago. They turned it into toothpicks and meatloaf—and some of my soldiers had relatives there.”
“They what?” Yorick stared at him in stark horror. Then he whirled to his own men, pouring out a furious cascade of gutturals and barks. His companions’ heads came up; they stared in horror. Then their faces darkened with anger. They answered Yorick in growls of rage. He turned back to Rod. “I don’t mean to sound callous, milord—but are you sure about this?”
Rod nodded, fighting to keep his face expressionless. Yorick and his men were either actually surprised and shocked by the news—or very good actors. “They hit a village up north, too. I was there; I saw it. Most of the villagers got away, but they carved up my soldiers like hams at a family reunion.”
Yorick’s face worked for a moment; then he turned his head and spat. “That skinny, catbait Mughorck! He’s got to be behind it somehow!”