Sn’aker Turncoats
“SCHNOOCT...SNUZZYT...SNORKETOOO...” Helga didn’t know how long she had been sleeping, when the strange whistle awakened her. “SNORKETOOO... SCHZUNCT...” The whistle seemed very loud, almost in her ear, but being encased tightly in the pole-roll, she could not see the source of the noise.
“SZZCHOONCT...SNUZZZYT...SNORCKTOO...” A distant responding whistle, in a slightly different key! Signals of some sort! This realization had no sooner come to Helga, then….ZZZZ-AAAASHH! A sudden flash of brilliant light so intense that Helga’s eyes blinked against it, even within her pole-sack! ZZZZ-AAAASHH! Another flash of intense light!
“AAAIEEEE! AVIAFIAS!” Immediately after the first flash of light, chaos broke loose in the Sn’aker party. “AVIAFIAS! AVIAFIAS! RUN!” The confused, terrified cries came from all directions. Helga could hear the snake-carriers dropping their cargo poles and running helter-skelter. She knew of Aviafias—Vultures assigned to aerial security around Maev Astuté, the immense castle of the High One, ruler of the Hedgelands across the mountains. But she’d never heard of Aviafias anywhere but around Maev Astuté. What did it mean?
As pandemonium and confusion dispersed the main group of Sn’akers, Helga realized that the runners carrying her pole-roll suddenly swerved in a new direction and picked up their pace to a furious run. Why were her runners not panicking and running for cover? Something was wrong—what was going on? The answer came quickly.
“YAR-AHHH! STOP THEM! ZARASHT! AFTER THEM!” The confusion among the Sn’akers had turned into angry shouts and cursing. Although she still could not see what was going on, apparently the main Sn’aker party had now understood the reason for the Aviafia’s arrival. Whatever was happening, the runners bearing her pole-sack were now racing along at maximum speed, with other Sn’akers in hot pursuit. “YAR-AHHHH! THE EDGE! STOP! STOP! DON’T JUMP!” Helga’s rising panic, fed by the frantic shouts of the Sn’akers, told her that she was now being carried toward the edge of some precipice, like some helpless piece of cargo.
Throwing her weight side-to-side, Helga tried desperately to knock her runners off balance. Her pole-sack began to sway back and forth wildly, gaining momentum. She could feel Christer doing the same in his sack. The powerful Pogwaggers slowed their pace as they struggled to deal with the now violently swinging sacks. Throwing every ounce of strength into the effort, Helga and Christer tried mightily to slow the runners enough to allow the other pursuing Sn’akers to catch up. With a final push, Helga felt the balance shift as the runners were knocked off their feet. Too late, Helga realized that all this accomplished was to send the entire group of runners and passengers flying out over the edge of the precipice. Making a long, wide arc, they sailed out of sight.
Amidst the chaotic tumble over the edge of the precipice, the runners let go of the poles and Helga fell free from the sack that had carried her. Tumbling wildly, Helga, Christer and their Pogwagger carriers dropped rapidly. Frantically glancing about, Helga sized up her situation. Brilliant flares still brighly illuminated in the night—apparently dropped by the Aviafias and now swinging slowly to earth on parachutes. Helga could see a river shimmering with a faint silver glow far below and coming up fast toward her. She fought to control her panic. Not trusting the depth of the water and wanting to protect herself against possible rocks, she pulled herself tightly into a ball, pulling her knees tight to her chest with one arm and protecting her tucked head with the other.
Moments later—KER-SPLOOSH—Helga hit the water with a perfect ‘cannonball dive’ and sank several feet below the surface of the river. As soon as she bobbed back to the surface, she quickly surveyed her surroundings. Surprised to note that the water was not freezing cold, she was calmed by the realization that the current was flowing at a slow, almost lazy rate. The Pogwaggers who had been carrying her had landed about 30 feet away. Although uncertain about why the runners had put her in this situation, she sensed that she could not trust them and her instinct told her to flee. She turned quickly away from them, intending to swim away, but stopped short instead.
Not far away she saw Christer bobbing in the water. What did it mean? Why had the Pogwaggers apparently run over the edge with their pole-packs? She did not have long to wonder. In the fading illumination from the flares far above, she could make out a large willow-bark boat, escorted by more than a dozen woven-reed kayaks, heading directly toward them from shore. Helga did not have to be told who these new arrivals were—the stench was unmistakable. Wrackshees! Fierce-faced, stinking with a gut-wrenching stench, and heavily-armed with dozens of small razor-sharp throwing lances carried in bandoliers slung over their shoulders, there was no mistaking who was coming for a visit. Two Aviafias also stood on the deck of the boat.
Helga knew there was no escape. Bowing her head toward the oncoming Wrackshees in an obvious sign of surrender and submission, Helga paddled slowly toward Christer.
“What do you think’s going on?” Christer whispered, when Helga reached him.
“Sn’aker turncoats, it seems,” Helga replied grimly. “Looks like they’re giving the Wrackshees a couple of slaves and some bales of very valuable snakeskins—not a bad haul, without the Wrackshees having to raise a finger.”
“So you think we were sold out, eh?” Christer said.
“Sure looks that way to me,” Helga replied. “This was planned—whistled signals, the Aviafias dropping flares to confuse the Sn’akers and provide light for the runners to carry us over the edge, then quickly back to darkness to cover the escape…yes, this was well-planned.”
Their conversation ended as the first of the Wrackshee kayaks arrived and surrounded them, throwing lances drawn and at the ready should the captives try to resist or escape. Neither had the least thought of trying anything so foolhardy. Offering no resistance, Helga and Christer allowed themselves to be lifted onto the willow-bark boat, where they were made to sit with their backs to the gunwales while their arms were threaded through a series of iron rings and then their bodies chained securely—a slaving boat!
Soon, however, Helga and Christer’s feelings of discouragement were replaced by surprise and shock. One by one, the turncoat Sn’akers were being lifted onto the boat and tied to the gunwales exactly the same fashion as were Helga and Christer! The Sn’aker turncoats apparently were captives also!
An uproar at the rear of the boat caught Helga’s attention. A burly Grizzly Pogwagger was being dragged from the river by means of several stout ropes that had been tossed around her. A crowd of Wrackshees on the boat, together with several more in kayaks, were trying to contain the angry beast and pull her aboard the boat. The powerful Pogwagger struggled wildly against the pull of the ropes.
“GIT YA PAWS OFF ME, YA SCUM-N-BARFERS! YA STINKIN’ MUDBRAINS! TIE ME UP IF’N YA THINKS YA GOT ME, BUT GIT YA PAWS AWAY FROM ME!”
She was not, however, in spite of her spirited audacity, able to break free. A Wrackshee, standing at the railing, raised his arm and, tossing yet another rope, landed it around the neck of the Pogwagger. With her arms already entangled by numerous ropes, the Pogwagger could not stop the new rope from being drawn tightly around her neck.
“Pull hard, pull it hard!” the Wrackshee holding the rope called to several companions. “Silence, stop the struggle, beast, or we will pull until you are dead!” Seeing no slackening in the Grizzly’s struggles, he again roared the command: “Pull hard, pull it hard!”
“AIEEKEEE! GHASPTT!” The Grizzly Pogwagger gasped and spluttered as the rope tightened around her neck. Her frantic struggles gradually subsided as she wheezed for breath. Realizing she would be strangled and drown to no good purpose if she continued battling, the Pogwagger quieted into submission.
Soon she was being hauled over the boat’s railing, then dumped on the deck, gasping for air. Her coarse dark brown fur showed faint red streaks of blood where ropes had torn her hide during her struggle for freedom. Huge black eyes stared angrily at everyone on the boat, and her head, shaved close in Pogwagger style, circled endlessly back and forth, looking for a path of escape. The young Grizzly Pogwagger, yelling loudly at her captors as she was hustled over to the gunwale and tied, fell into sullen silence after she had been lashed beside Helga. As soon as she was tied to the gunwale, the Pogwagger resumed her struggle for freedom. But pulling against her bonds only succeeded in bringing a furious clanking from the cruel irons she now wore.
Helga eyed the Pogwagger with interest. Observing the rippling muscles of her new neighbor, she mused at how the team of powerful Sn’akers had been subdued against their wills, just as she and Christer had been. Curiosity gnawed at her. It was not lack of strength or capacity to elude capture that had made them all Wrackshee captives—there had been no real threat to the Sn’akers up on the trail. The Aviafias were not attacking the Sn’akers and there was no Wrackshee attack force. The reason they were captives was solely that, for some reason, the Pogwagger and her teammates had cooperated with the plan that now had landed them all in irons. Why had they helped the Wrackshees? And why were they also now captives? It made no sense.
Helga looked at the Pogwagger beside her. “Why did you do it?” she asked quietly.
There was no answer. Leaning her head back on the gunwale, the big Grizzly simply closed her eyes as if to go to sleep. Soon the Wrackshees had loaded and secured all their prisoners and stowed the bales of snakeskins aboard their boat.
As the Wrackshee boat and kayaks got underway and moved downstream, the flurry of action temporarily distracted Helga. Her fierce curiosity about the strange occurrences involving herself and the Pogwaggers, however, did not subside. Soon she laid her head, relaxed like, back against the gunwale, and remarked to the Pogwagger beside her, “Well, well, now didn’t we both find out a bit more about the world—for now we do, and later we don’t. And, even when we do as we expected to do, sometimes it turns out we were a little too far to the left, or a little too close on the right. Yes, sir, even when we lay out good plans, life is pretty uncertain and, often, we end up nowhere close to where we set out to be.”
The Pogwagger gave Helga a brief, fierce glance, then folded her arms and gazed straight ahead, saying nothing. Although thoroughly silent, the Pogwagger fidgeted restlessly, seemingly bursting with energy she was consciously seeking to control. The Pogwagger’s manner suggested that Helga’s earlier comment had unsettled her.
Helga’s fascination with the strange circumstances she shared with the Pogwagger, and her curiosity about the Pogwagger’s own story, made her pursue her earlier comment.
“What a heap of trouble, danger, and disappointment we’d miss in life if everything went according to plan,” Helga chuckled, not exactly to the Pogwagger, but to no one else either. “Yes, there’s plenty of times I was lucky that the plan I’d made didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped—oh yes, sometimes it would’ve been better if I’d just stopped a bit short of what I’d planned, or thought it over a bit more before I started. Yes, indeed-deed, sometimes there’s a demon in the details of the fine plans we make.”
“POGS—YOU VARMIT-FACED WOOD COW! YOU’D THINK A ROUNDIE LIKE YOU WOULD UNDERSTAND! POGS!” Roaring out the statement loud enough to wake beasts sleeping miles away, the Grizzly strained so hard against her bonds that Helga thought she’d tear a limb off trying to free herself.
“Whoa, now, there friend,” Helga chuckled, “I didn’t mean to make you ill in your mind! I was just trying to see if you’d talk to me about what just happened to us.”
“TALK TO YOU!” the Pogwagger exploded. “TALK TO A ROUNDIE—A DIRTY, LOW-DOWN POG-BOG FARMER? NO, I WILL NOT TALK TO YOU—I DISPISE YOU UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY. I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TO YOU!”
A period of silence followed this, which Helga, taken somewhat aback by the unexpected outburst, made no effort to break immediately. After a few minutes, the Pogwagger’s agitation gradually decreased. When Helga judged that the Grizzly’s breathing was normal once more, she ventured another comment. “I ought to apologize for causing you anger,” Helga said, “yet, somehow I feel that I’m about to learn something from you, which I need to know.”
Pausing to judge the effect of what she had said, and observing no indication that she was arousing the Pogwagger again, Helga continued. “I was unaware that you harbored ill feelings toward me when I spoke a while ago—but you have shown me that I have somehow harmed you. I would very much like to learn how that is.”
“Pogs,” the Grizzly replied slowly, as if considering how many words to use. “You Roundies ruined the Pog-Bogs and have driven all us Pogwaggers to famine and want. You want a reason I hate and despise you—well, there you have it. If I were free I would hope to slit your gut from chin to toe. I should have done it when I had a chance, but I thought seeing you sold into slavery would be better.”
This explanation sent Helga’s mind reeling. Pogs? Those little annoying frogs whose croaking in the Pog-Bogs kept everyone sleepless during the spring? Pogs? She was sitting here with a well-muscled Grizzly hoping to kill her, because of tiny frogs? How hard the Roundies had worked to drain the Pog-Bogs to open up more space for cornfields, potato patches, and carrot beds. And how soundly the Roundies slept, now that the Pogs were gone. The world was, indeed, a strange and uncertain place.
“But, I’ve never seen a Pogwagger anywhere near the Rounds. I don’t even know anything about Pogwaggers—why, you’re about the first Pogwagger I ever saw. All I know is that you Pogwaggers live somewhere in the Drownlands,” Helga said. “What do Pogs in the Rounds have to do with you Pogwaggers living somewhere, far away, that I have no idea about?”
“Our clans have lived in Open Wets of the Drownlands for generations,” the Grizzly replied, calming down somewhat, but still viewing Helga with disgust. “Our folk used to live by catching Waggers—a big lizard that feeds on full-grown Pogs. There’s two kinds of Pogs you have in the Rounds: female Pogs that come back to the Pog-Bogs to lay their eggs and die, and the young, newly-hatched Pogs—what we call Pog-Willies—the ones just a few weeks old. When Pog-Willies reach a certain size, they leave the Pog-Bogs and migrate to the Open Wets of the Drownlands. There, the Waggers feed on them, and our folk catch the Waggers—we eat them and use their skin, claws, and teeth for lots of things.” The Grizzly paused and gave Helga an especially harsh look. “That is, that’s the way it used to be—when there were still Waggers around.”
“What do you mean, when there were still Waggers around,” Helga asked.
“When you Roundies drained the Pog-Bogs, that was the end of the Pogs,” the Grizzly said in a cold, even voice. “And when the Pogs stopped coming to the Open Wets, the Waggers died off as well—no Pogs, no Waggers; no Waggers, and we Pogwaggers go hungry.” The Grizzly stopped and looked sadly away, as if visiting another place in her mind.
“When I was a small beast,” she continued, “I lived in a bag-house—that’s a lizard skin tent—with my parents, my grandmother, my brothers and sisters, and, usually about 20 Waggers. Yep, we kept the Waggers in cages at one end of the tent and we lived at the other. Waggers are extremely hard to capture. Sometimes you’re having a good day and catch several—and that might be all you’ll be able to catch for weeks, so you want to keep them! Grandmother always kept a swamp grass fire burning in the middle of our bag-house. She would cook up a thick porridge of swamp cabbage, Wagger meat, and wild pumpkins in a large cauldron, and let it simmer all day. I swear, just the smell of that soup would drive me nearly crazy—it smelled so good!”
The Pogwagger seemed to be in a reverie, transported in her mind to those days of her youth. After a time, she turned and look Helga dead in the eye, “But all of that is gone now—all gone now, vanished forever,” she said icily. “The Pogwaggers are scattered to the winds now—everyone scrabbling for some way to live. Our whole way of life is gone—destroyed—everything we had depended on the Waggers. Now we eke out a living as we can, or sit and sadly watch everything we knew fall apart. The young mostly leave and do anything they find to do, or get tempted into—like me and this scheme to steal some snakeskins and take some slaves to sell. But, as you said, that was a plan that should have stopped a bit shorter than it did.”