The Long Warpath

© 1981 by Philip Jose Farmer


Bottom line: yer average PJF tale – fast, action-packed, creative if grounded.

Verdict: I liked it. Nothing earthshattering, but I couldn’t put it down. Finished it in three hours.

Fade from black: the spinning earth; when we come to the southwestern United States, telescope downward. As we do, we see a landscape riddled and blackened from nuclear war. Then, the words “Centuries Later …”

Fade in upon our hero horseback on the trail. A young kid, name of Benoni, stars in his eyes and a whistle on his lips. Starstruck and in love, though another has his eye on her, too. Joel. The two scuffle, amusing the elders on the drive, and justice is meted out quite strictly.

Benoni and Joel are youths of the people of Fiinicks, in the land of Eyzonuh. They’re “unblooded” – never killed a man – and soon they’re set upon as they sleep, blindfolded, and, with a dozen other young men, are whisked out into the desert, naked, weaponless, to go on their first warpath. The object is to return with a scalp. Some do, many don’t. Many never return.

And thus, twenty pages in, the adventure starts.

[minor spoilers]

From years of experience and preparation, Benoni is able to live off the land. He fashions a tool, a weapon. He kills small game. Clothes himself. Strengthens himself. Comes upon some Navaho, gets ready to strike for his first scalp after a day of tracking them, when –

Joel is bound and tied, captive among Benoni’s prey!

What to do, what to do.

Needless to say, as our hero does the right thing – and is promptly betrayed by the ungrateful Joel.

Then the long warpath really begins.

We follow Benoni, left for dead, slowly regains health and vitality. He sets about ruthlessly to avenge himself upon his nemesis. He heads westward (following a secret mission sub-plot he’s been given) … crosses the Msibi, the Great River … befriends a black man from a different people … and encounters the Kaywo, a Roman-ish culture set squat in the center of what was once the eastern United States. The great nation is at war with Skego, and has its eye on the west …

Now Farmer really kicks it in to overdrive. Benoni and his friend enlist as mercenaries in the great army of Kaywo – and immediately encounter Joel again! Through a series of fortunate and unfortunate events both deus ex machina and not so much so, Benoni earns his way up the ladder of power in Kaywo, eventually catching the eye of the beautiful, intelligent, and dangerous queen. A ship from the stars, buried under centuries of dirt, is found, and the rush of armies is on to be the first to gain its treasures (hence the title The Cache of the anthology). Benoni negotiates the battlefield and the politics to please the queen, save his people, deliver a can of comeuppance to Joel, and, make his way back home as, perhaps, the greatest champion of the Long Warpath.

Grade: B+

A side observation: I loved how fragments of our society leaked forward post-apocalyptic into this world. Quite obviously in the place titles (Fiinicks = Phoenix, Eyzonuh = Arizona, Msibi = Mississippi, plus quite a few others). The Lost Books and the Found Books – scripture of some sort, though never too deeply elaborated upon – interested me even more so than Benoni. And the ships from the stars, though piloted by large, hairy creatures, made me wonder whether the nuclear apocalypse wasn’t some sort of alien invasion gone wrong instead of man flexing his self-destructive muscle. Oh well …