- 4 -
From then on, every morning, I taught them for an hour. Nothing else in my life changed, but I did learn their names and started to learn their language, which was incredibly complicated I was surprised to discover. Fall was fast approaching, and once the harvest was in they had us plant some other crops to grow through the winter. I think they were winter feed for the livestock and to attract game for the hunters, but farming really wasn't something I knew that much about.
Sixteen of the other slaves got turned loose once the harvest was done; apparently their sentence was complete, that or the tribe really didn't want to have to feed them through the winter. Three more were traded to another tribe a few weeks later, and one tried to escape and was killed when they tried to recapture him. Or at least that is what they told us.
That left eighteen of us. I had no idea how cold it would get here in the winter. From what I'd been able to pick up, I think we were in the area of what once was southern Nevada, but that had been a desert, and a fairly warm one at that. It was still warm here, at least it had been, but it wasn't a desert here anymore, by any stretch of the imagination. It actually rained fairly often, and it seemed that the rain increased as fall progressed.
I saw the Major a couple of times, but never up close and he either didn't notice me, or just decided not to acknowledge me. My hair had gotten long, compared to the crew cut I'd been sporting, my skin was darker now as I still only had that single loincloth to wear, and I was now filthy. We only got to wash once a week, and considering how much physical labor we did, most of which was pretty dirty stuff, I'm sure my own mother wouldn't have recognized me.
The beard didn't help much either, I'm sure. But at least they would let me trim it once a week when we were taken down to the river and allowed to wash.
So I was completely surprised to find him outside the barracks one morning before I started the daily training. It had been over four months since we'd come here, possibly five. I didn't have access to a calendar of course.
"Just what do you think you are doing?" Major Riggs said looking just a little bit angry.
I stopped and looked him over, he was clean and clean shaven, neither of which I was anymore. His straight black hair was down to his shoulders now and he actually did look a lot more like the locals. He was wearing the local clothing, and it was very nice clothing. He was also armed with a knife and a pistol, one of the first I'd seen since I'd come here, though it was in a button flap holster so I couldn't tell what type it was.
"What I'm told," I said rather bitterly, "I'm a slave now, remember? I must say, you look nice; clean, well fed, clothed, you probably even get to sleep in a warm bed."
"Don't try my patience! I'm supposed to be teaching these people how to fight! Not you! What do you know about fighting?"
"Oh, I don't know, a couple of black belts, golden gloves, just a few things I picked up that I could have sworn were all listed in my records. But hey, I'm a city boy, right? So what the hell could I know?" I asked standing up straight and looking down at him.
"I thought you were supposed to be on some quest to save the world or something, why are you even still here?" I asked, curious. "Hell, why are you even wasting your time with me, a filthy, stinking, slave?"
"You have to stop teaching them! That's my job! You're messing up my classes!"
"It's not up to me," I said throwing my hands up in the air, "talk to Ahiga, you know, the slave master? The one who tells me, a slave, what to do?"
"I did that to save your life, you ungrateful idiot!"
"Uh-huh, sure you did," I nodded, "the beating, the starving, the abuse, all part of your master plan, I'm sure."
"You attacked me, what did you expect?" he said heatedly.
"Well obviously, not becoming a slave, so maybe you deserved it?" I smiled as my 'students' started to show up.
"Tell you what, give me my things back, a pack with a couple weeks food, and I'll be more than happy to strike out for someplace else."
"I can't do that!"
"You should have just let me walk off after we landed, then we could have avoided all of this."
"Then you'd be dead!"
"And being a slave is just so much better. You know, the only thing stopping me right now from taking one of those daggers away from you and seeing if you really are impervious to weapons is the fact that if I really do manage to kill you, these people will lose their savior. And that would suck because I actually kind of like them, they keep their word, honor their debts, and don't abuse their authority." I sighed and looked down at him again, "Unlike some people I know. Now maybe you should leave, because beating you to death is starting to look more and more attractive every passing moment that you stand there."
"Leader Riggs," Atsida said in Navajo, coming up to stand besides me, "Is there a problem?"
"No," Riggs said rather angrily and left.
"He does not like you," Atsida said in English to me, after Riggs had left.
"I learned that a long, long time ago," I sighed. "Before he gave me to the chief and made me a slave."
"You were not a slave when you came here?" Atsida said, looking surprised.
"No. He claims he did it to save my life, but he claims a lot of things."
I shook my head, "Let's start today's lesson, I have no control over my life anymore, so there's no need to waste time on it."
The lesson went well, but I wasn't surprised, my students were rather serious about what they were learning and they already knew how to fight, just not very well. In the four months I'd been teaching them, they'd learned quite a lot, mastering many of the basics fairly quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd had the basics down and be green belts by the time spring came, they were probably the best students I'd ever had.
That thought made me stop and think about what was going on, I pulled Atsida aside as the others left, when the lesson finished. I had a couple of minutes before we got breakfast, then it would be off to help butcher meat and cure hides for the rest of the day.
"Atsida, when is Leader Riggs heading off on his quest?"
Atsida looked at me, his eyes narrowing a bit.
"I was there when he was given his task by the goddess, remember?" I said.
Atsida looked a little sheepish, "Oh, yes. I forgot about that. In the spring, he will be leaving with a war party to go find the weapons."
"Camp Pendleton," I said and nodded.
"You know of it?" Atsida said, looking surprised.
I nodded, "Well, I must go eat and get to work. Practice what I showed you, in private. Apparently Leader Riggs does not appreciate my teaching you."
"Yes, Paul; and I will warn the others to do so as well."
I watched as he walked away, and returned to my earlier thought. If I was figuring the dates right, it was now late November, we got here in July, on the fifteenth. I'd been here for over four months now and I had made no real progress on anything. Hell, I was already starting to think that I'd still be here, still be training these people, come next summer!
And now I'd come to Riggs' attention again, and as always, he just had to find fault and come after me. A smarter man would have just asked to have me assigned to him, and then supervised what I was teaching the others. Then again, with his ego I doubt he would have wanted people to learn that I was a better fighter than he was.
I shook my head as I went to get my breakfast. I had no idea what was going to happen to me next, but if going by the past was any judge, whatever he was going to do to me next was surely going to be worse than being a slave, and whatever that was, I was not at all eager to experience it.
I woke up, very suddenly and I looked around, it was dark inside the barracks still, it wasn't time to wake up yet. It was still late, but I had the feeling that there was a presence nearby.
I held still for a minute, trying to figure out what had woken me, while my eyes adjusted. That was when I saw it, a shape, like a dog, sitting on the end of my bunk!
"I'm a coyote, not a dog," the shape said.
I started at that, a bit shocked by the idea of a talking dog, or rather a talking coyote. Then again, I'd already seen a goddess and been sent to another world, so why should this be any different? I sighed and shook my head; I was familiar enough with Indian folklore at this point to know just who the coyote stood for.
"So why are you here?" I asked. "If all of this was your trick," I waved my hand around, "you really got me good."
The coyote gave a funny sounding little bark-like laugh, "I know right? One minute you're in a jet flying along the top of the world, and the next one you're a slave in almost primitive conditions." He paused a moment, "Well, they're not as bad as that outward bound crap you had to put up with to stay out of juvie when you were twelve, but still. Not what you're used to anymore, right?"
"If I reach down there and throttle you, will it hurt?" I grumbled sitting up slowly, my belly was complaining loudly. Obviously Riggs had stirred up some kind of crap yesterday, because when we came back to eat dinner at the end of the day, Ahiga had taken mine away and given it to the other prisoners.
"Don't waste your time," the coyote said, sounding very serious all of the sudden. "I don't have much time, and there is much that I need to tell you."
"Won't the others wake up?"
I saw the outline of his headshake in the dark, "No, they're all dead."
"What?!"
"Your food was poisoned last night, terrible accident, apparently something bad got into the slave's food."
"Riggs?" I said surprised, "I can think of him doing a lot of things, but mass murder?"
"Oh, don't be too sure about that, I mean you are all slaves in here and all, and this group is the worst of the bunch, present company excluded of course. But no, he didn't poison you, there are other players in this game, and poison really isn't Riggs' strong suit."
"Well, that's a relief," I sighed.
"No, he's going to set the barracks on fire in a short while, burn everyone to death while they're locked inside. Which is why you need to be out of here and gone in a few minutes."
I'm sure I looked like a complete and utter idiot as I just stared at him for a moment, mouth open in shock, trying to think of things to say. What finally bubbled up to the top was: "Why me?"
"Why did someone want to poison you? Or why does Riggs want you dead? Or why did I bring you here?"
"D, all of the above," I replied.
"Your prize pupil, Atsida has been upstaging the chief's son with the things you've been teaching him. So rather than ask for training himself, he figured he'd just put an end to the training.
"Several of your students have been upstaging Riggs' training. You really are a better teacher than him you know, but then, that's why he's in check section after all. He sucked as an instructor.
"As for why I brought you here, well, neither one of us is cut out to be the hero type really, and life really has been giving you a pretty piss-poor deal. I know, I've been there, watching.
"You see, all us gods knew something was going to happen, and it was going to destroy a lot of our people, and their way of life. But there was a lot of contention on how to handle it, I mean gods, right?" he snickered. "We all think we know best and never listen to reason or work all that well together.
"But eventually they all decided on this Riggs fellow. Yeah, he's a bit of an asshole, but he's a determined, narrow field of view, single-minded asshole. And he's a lot like them, the gods that is, and he is half Navajo, so they all decided on him.
"But me? I see too many chances for things to go wrong, plus I don't trust fellows like Riggs, they're way more concerned with their own lives, rather than that of the people around them. That may work well for gods, but it doesn't work all that well for champions or saviors. If my fellow gods spent more time among our people, they'd know that, but well, slumming is a bit below their station.
"So I decided to go out and pick my own champion, not like they really pay me any mind anyway. I tricked a few things, and suddenly here you are! All set to help me out!" He gave another one of those bark-like laughs as he finished.
"So you're the one who faked those airliners!" I said, reaching forward to wring his neck and see if maybe I could hurt him.
"Oh no, that was the Base Commander. He really hates your uncle, and when he saw that girl you were dating? Yeah, he's not big on cross-racial things. He kinda lost it."
"What?!" I was once again shocked, and I stopped, inches from grabbing him.
"What I did, was give the check pilot who was supposed to fly with you a car wreck when I ran out in front of him on the highway. He got banged up enough that Riggs had to cancel his proficiency flight and take you up instead. So ole Estanatlehi got a nice little surprise when she popped in on him, and I got you here on the sly!"
"But, why me?" I said, shaking my head slowly, "Like you said, my luck is shit, Riggs wants me dead, as well as someone else now, apparently, and I'm not even Indian."
"Well, first of all, altering luck is one of those things that I actually can do a little something about, as well as a few other interesting things. So don't you worry about that so much any more! And as for not being Indian? Hate to break it to you, Paul, but your great-grandmother on your mother's side grew up on a reservation in New York, she was half Mohawk."
"So I'm a sixteenth? Hardly seems like enough."
"In this case however, even a single drop of blood is more than enough."
"Okay, so now that I know all of that, what am I supposed to do next?"
"The window on the right side of your bunk isn't barred tonight. I suggest you climb out of it and get well away from here, before Riggs sets this place on fire. This building is pretty dry; it's going to go right up."
"And then what? I don't have anything beyond the blanket on the bed and a rather small loincloth!"
"Yes, I took the liberty of gathering a few things and putting them in a pack, on the bed below you. Now I suggest you better hurry up and get a move on!"
"Where to?"
"East!" He said and suddenly I couldn't see his outline anymore. Waving my hand over where he had been sitting, I encountered nothing. So, I climbed down to the floor below and put on my sandals, and sure enough, there was a pack on the bed. Grabbing it and my loincloth, I pushed at the shutters and the window opened, so I tossed the pack and my blanket through.
I started to climb out, and then stopped a moment; the coyote was a notorious trickster, according to everything I'd ever heard. So I went over to the bunk of the man next to me, Sheffy was his name, and shook him.
His body was cold, and he wasn't breathing.
I climbed out the window as fast as I could, and picking up the bag and my blanket I made a beeline off to the east. There was enough starlight to make my way and the watchdogs all knew me well enough now that none of them made a sound.
Five minutes later I was jogging down the road to the east, trying to stay warm in the close to freezing air when suddenly there was a bright light behind me.
Turning around I could see a very large and very bright fire burning back at the village. Coyote hadn't been lying about the place going up like a tinderbox, and on a moonless night like tonight, the effect was rather stunning.
I turned back to the east and continued on, wrapping the blanket around me for warmth, and putting the pack on my back as I jogged.