Chapter Eight
The Aidanites’ Rally
The mob was so raucous, so joyous, the people didn’t seem to notice Aidan’s protests. There was such jostling and bumping the men carrying Aidan didn’t even pay any mind to his wiggling efforts to get off their shoulders. Percy steered his bearers toward his brother, and when he was next to Aidan’s ear, he shouted, “Stop struggling! Let’s just go with it! You’ll get your chance to make a speech. Then you can set everybody straight!” He nearly fell off when one of the men carrying him tripped over a dog. “But shouldn’t we find out as much about these Aidanites as we can?”
Aidan nodded. For the moment at least, he had no choice but to “go with it.” And Percy was right: The more he knew about his “followers,” the better he could undo the damage they had done. But he also had the nagging suspicion that his brother’s suggestion was motivated not by prudence but by his appetite for the ridiculous.
Dobro, for his part, was having tremendous fun. To a feechie, a roiling mob looked a lot like a regular party. The scene was downright homey for Dobro, unaware as he was of the larger trouble it represented. He took every hand that reached up to him. He waved at the children, many of whom ran away in terror. Dobro was almost as big an attraction as Aidan himself, being the only feechie the Hustingreeners had ever seen.
The buglers were joined along the way by a drummer and a xylophone player. It wasn’t clear, however, whether they were trying to play the same tune. The mayor, in his self-important way, led the procession to the middle of the village square, where trading was done on market days. A general murmur quickly grew into a loud, rhythmic chant: “Speech! Speech! Speech!”
Aidan was more than happy to make a speech. It was going to be a stem-winder too. He was going to set these people good and straight. But before he could collect his thoughts, the mayor bounded to the platform in the middle of the square (he was surprisingly agile for a man of such roundness) and raised his hands for silence.
“For years we have labored in the dark shadow of tyranny,” he began in deep, dramatic tones.
“Tell it, Mayor!” came a woman’s voice from the crowd.
“No more tyrants!” A man in a wool cap shook his fist in the air.
The mayor raised his hands again in acknowledgment of his hearers’ comments and kept going. “Too long have the wrongs of an unjust ruler been heaped on the backs of hardworking villagers like yourselves.”
“My back’s killing me!” called a voice in the crowd.
“Hear him!”
“Yes-s-s-s!”
“Where are the young men of Hustingreen?” asked the mayor. Moans from the audience. “I ask you, where are our young men?” Young wives throughout the crowd began to cry loudly. Aidan noticed for the first time that, except for Percy, Dobro, and himself, the crowd was composed entirely of children, women, and men over forty.
“Drafted into Darrow’s army, that’s where!” The mayor shook with indignation as he answered his own question. “Dragged off to the Feechiefen Swamp to fight for a king who doesn’t care if he throws away the lives of his own subjects!”
The wailing of women grew louder. The mayor paused for silence. Or was he just enjoying the effect of his own oratory? “But today a new light has dawned!” An approving murmur rippled through the square. “The Wilderking prophecy has been the only hope of an unhappy people. Today it is coming true!” The murmur grew louder. “Today Aidan Errolson has come out of the swamps and forests—just as the Wilderking prophecy said he would—back to his people, who have longed for his return!” The mayor had to shout to be heard over the rapturous crowd. “Hail to the Wilderking!”
“Hail to the Wilderking!” the people replied in a deafening shout.
Aidan’s face was ghostly white. This was much worse than he had imagined it would be. He felt as if he might faint.
A group of schoolchildren was herded onto the platform. A polite silence fell over the crowd as the spectators turned their attention toward the children who, as their tutor proudly explained, had memorized the Wilderking Chant in class.
The recitation got off to a ragged start. One of the boys obviously didn’t have it down yet; he appeared to be mouthing the words “Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon,” and his hand motions were a full second behind those of his peers. But the rest of the children’s confidence grew, and by the time they had reached “Watch for the Wilderking,” the crowd joined in on the refrain in a kind of responsive reading.
It would have been quite a moving experience, this public recitation from the old lore, if Aidan didn’t understand what it all meant. When the children reached the line “Watch for the Wilderking, widows and orphans,” a widow in the fifth row raised her hands and fainted rapturously away.
When the children had shuffled off the stage, a mime troupe reenacted the Battle of Bonifay Plain. The players had to cut it short, however, when the mime playing Greidawl the giant fell off his stilts and wrenched his knee. It was all so ridiculous, Percy couldn’t help howling with laughter.
Eighteen years old, Aidan thought, and I’ve already passed into legend. The villagers, in fact, were so taken with the legendary version of Aidan being presented on the stage that they paid surprisingly little attention to the real Aidan. They gave a very warm welcome to the bard who stood to sing “The Ballad of Aidan Errolson.” All of Hustingreen seemed quite familiar with this versified (though not precisely accurate) account of his first expedition into the Feechiefen:
It’s a dangerous thing to be feared by a king,
And Aidan struck dread in King Darrow.
His most loyal service just made the king
nervous
And pierced his black heart like an
arrow.
One feast night the king sentenced Aidan to death
As he sat in his pride and his pomp.
He said with tongue forkéd, “I want a frog orchid,
And it grows in the Feechiefen Swamp, boy,
Nowhere but the Feechiefen Swamp.”
Oh weep, won’t you weep for a kingdom whose royalty
Can’t tell high treason from untainted
loyalty.
It seems funny, don’t it, that the old boy who wanted
The orchid sat safe in his hall
While the bold son of Errol ran headlong toward peril
And dispraised his king not at
all.
Young Aidan was neither the first nor the only
To outdare the vast Feechiefen.
There were brave men of yore who dared to explore,
But none of them came out again, boys.
Nobody comes back again.
I ask you, what good kings—who else but dictators—
Send subjects to get et by panthers and
gators?
Last Camp hangs grim at the kingdom’s far
limit.
Beyond it? That’s anyone’s guess.
Beyond it, pure mystery throughout all of history.
But beyond it lay young Aidan’s quest.
At the great river’s bend lives a tough breed of men;
The Last Campers fear very few.
But they said with a shiver, “If you cross that river,
Dear Aidan, we sure will miss you, boy,
Dear Aidan, we sure will miss you.”
Aidan stood by the Tam with his pack in his hand
And watched where the brown water swirled.
He said his good-byes to all things civilized,
Then he stepped off the edge of the world, boys.
He stepped off the edge of the
world.
Could you face the Feechiefen, there take your chances?
Could you leave your country with no
backward glances?
Aidan went for to wander way over
yonder
Where graybeard moss sways in the breeze.
Where gator jaws snap and craney-crows flap
And moccasins drop from the trees.
Who knows what occurred? No one ever
heard.
Our young hero never did say.
But he somehow survived where so many men died
And he brung the frog orchid away, boys.
He brung the frog orchid away.
And thereby was proven, or so it would
seem,
Young Errolson’s friendship and love for the king.
Back at the palace, King Darrow the
jealous
Mused on the murder he’d planned.
Imagine his gloom when the boy he had doomed
Marched in with the orchid in hand.
Aidan soon understood that his gift was no
good,
So he wheeled and ran swiftly away.
He returned again to the deep Feechiefen,
And there he has stayed to this day, boys.
There he has stayed to this day.
The crowd was delighted, but Aidan had heard enough. He pushed his way to the front and mounted the platform. The crowd roared at the sight of him, and the chant quickly arose again: “Hail to the Wilderking! Hail to the Wilderking!”
“Quiet!” Aidan shouted over the noise. “Be quiet! Let me speak!”
Gradually the noise subsided enough for Aidan to make himself heard. “People of Hustingreen!” he yelled. “You have a king! His name is Darrow!”
Hissing sounded from the audience. “Darrow ain’t my king!” a voice called.
“Hail to the Wilderking! Hail to the Wilderking!”
“No!” Aidan shouted. “No! This is treason! This is a gathering of traitors!”
Percy watched with some concern as smiling faces turned sullen and grumbling rumbled across the village square.
But Aidan didn’t care. “I will have no part of this.” He remembered something Bayard the Truthspeaker had told him years before, and he repeated it to the Hustingreeners. “A traitor is no fit king. How can a man be king of Corenwald if he betrays the king of Corenwald?”
Quizzical looks contorted a few faces as Aidan’s hearers tried to work out the tricky logic of the question.
“Looks to me like Darrow’s the traitor,” the village blacksmith shouted. “The way I figure, he’s the one who ain’t fit to be king!” Heads began nodding again. People were slapping the blacksmith’s back and shaking his hand.
Aidan could tell he was losing them again. “People of Hustingreen! Aidanites!” he yelled, straining to be heard. “It is not your job to make the ancient prophecies come true!”
“We ain’t making the prophecies come true,” Wash yelled back. “You’re doing a fine job of that your own self!” The crowd laughed and whooped in appreciation. Wash pressed his advantage. “Aidan Errolson, did you or did you not kill a panther with a stone?”
“Well, yes,” Aidan admitted. “But …”
“He did, he did!” Dobro yodeled. “I seen it with these two eyes!” Dobro had gotten caught up in the mob’s enthusiasm. But a stern look from Aidan silenced him.
“‘With a stone he shall quell the panther fell!’” Wash triumphantly quoted the Wilderking Chant, sticking his chest out and jabbing a finger in Aidan’s direction.
“‘He will silence the braggart, ennoble the coward,’” piped an old veteran, also quoting from the chant. “I was there at Bonifay, young man. I saw that braggart giant go silent. I was one of the warriors of Corenwald who were ennobled again in our most fearful hour.”
“Where you been these three years, Aidan Errolson?” asked a woman Aidan recognized as the village baker.
“I’m sorry,” the woman called sweetly. “I didn’t hear that last part.”
Aidan cleared his throat and spoke more loudly. “The Feechiefen Swamp.”
“Interesting,” the woman said. Then she lowered her voice for dramatic effect and recited the last three lines of the Wilderking Chant:
Look to the swamplands, ye misfit, ye outcast.
From the land’s wildest places a wild man will come
To give the land back to his people.
“I’m ready to get my land back!” bellowed somebody in the back.
“Me too!” yelled another. “When do we get started?”
The village square erupted again with raucous laughter and good-natured jostling.
“Hear me!” Aidan screamed as loudly as he could. “Hear this well! I will have nothing to do with any rebellion against the king! I will not stand by, either, and let anyone revolt in my name!” But nobody heard him or paid him any mind.
Aidan jumped off the platform to rejoin Percy and Dobro. “Let’s get out of here!” he still had to shout to be heard, even though he was standing beside them. “These people are all fools or traitors!”
“That may be!” Percy shouted back. “But that doesn’t mean they’ve got it all wrong!”