Worlds That Weren't

Robre snorted and shook his head. Sacrificial beef was free to any man of the Seven Tribes, but also likely to be old and tough. Lord o’ Sky didn’t care about the quality of the cattle, just their number, it being the thought that counted. He wasn’t that short of silver.

Tomul went on: “See you around, then; we’ll drink a mug. Mind you don’t break the Fair’s peace-bans while you’re here, or it’s a whuppin’ from the Jefe.”

“I’m no brawler,” Robre said defensively.

“Then give me these back,” Tomul chuckled in answer, pulling down the corner of his mouth with a little finger to show two missing molars.

The other warriors around the deerskin howled laughter and Robre laughed back, taking up the lead rein of his forward pack horse and leading the beasts under the massive timber gateway, between hulking log blockhouses. The huge black-oak timbers that supported the gate on either side were carved and painted; Coyote on the left grinning with his tongue lolling over his fangs and a stogie in the corner of his mouth, the Corn Lady on the right holding a stalk of maize in one hand and a hoe in the other, and God the Father on the lintel above. Robre bowed his head for an instant as he passed beneath the stern bearded face of the Lord of Sky, murmuring a luck-word.

The pack horses followed him into the throng within, shying and snorting and rolling their eyes a bit. Robre sympathized; the crowds and stink were enough to gag a buzzard. Nearly a hundred people lived here year-round; Jefe Carul in his two-story fort-mansion of squared timbers, and his wives, his children; his household men and their wives and children in ordinary cabins of mud-chinked logs; a few slaves and landless, clanless laborers in shacks; plus craftsmen and tinkers and peddlers who found Dannulsford a convenient headquarters, and their dependents.

Now it swarmed with twenty times that number; the Dannulsford Fair got bigger every year, it seemed. This year’s held more people than Robre had ever seen in one place before, until only narrow crowded lanes were left between booths and sheds and tents and more folk still spilled over into camps outside the oak logs of the stockade. The air was thick with wood smoke, smells of dung and frying food and fresh corn bread, man’s sweat, and the smells of leather, horses, mules and oxen, and dogs. The Fair came after the corn and cotton were in but before hard frost and the prime pig-slaughtering season; a time for the Jefe to kill cattle for the Lord o’ Sky and to preside over disputes brought for judgment, and for the assembled free men of the clan to make laws.

And, he thought with a grin, to make marriages and chase girls and swap and dicker and guzzle popskull, boast, and tell tales. Robre was a noted tale-teller himself, when the mood was on him. Time to trade with outland men, too.

Dannulsford was as far north on the Three Forks River as you could float anything bigger than a canoe; that meant the Fair of the Alligators was far larger than most. There were Kumanch come down over the Westwall escarpment with strings of horses and buffalo pelts; Cherokee from the north with fine tobacco, rock-oil to burn in lamps, and bars of wrought iron for smiths; Dytchers from the Hill Country with wine and applejack and dried fruits; and black-skinned men from the coast with sugar and rum, rice and cinnamon and nutmeg.

Some from even farther away. A Mehk trader rode by, wearing a broad sombrero and tight jacket and tooled-leather chaps over buttoned knee-breeches, his silver-studded saddle glistening. The great wagons behind him were escorted by a brace of leather-jacketed lancers, short stocky men with brown skins and smooth cheeks, bandannas on their heads beneath broad-brimmed hats, gold rings in their ears, machetes at their belts, sitting their horses as if they’d grown there.

Say what you like about Mehk, they can ride for certain sure, Robre thought: or at least their caballeros and fighters could. Among the Seven Tribes every free man was a warrior, but it was different beyond the Wadeyloop River.

The merchant the lancers served was crying up his wares as he went; fine drink distilled from the maguay cactus, silks and silver jewelry and bright painted pots, tools and sundries, dried hot peppers and gaudy feathers and cocoa and coffee in the bean. He had muskets and powder and round lead balls for sale, too; Robre’s lip curled.

A smoothbore flintlock didn’t have the range or accuracy of a good bow, and it was a lot slower to use-slower even than the crossbows some favored. A musket was useful for shooting duck with birdshot, or for a woman to keep around the cabin for self-defense, but he didn’t think it was a man’s weapon.