Tuscany

by Matthew Thayer

  Coasting to a stop on the gravel beach, we let a few moments pass to assure ourselves that our splashes had not raised an alarm. Shivering behind the log, taking stock in the dim light, it was a relief to find my heavy mace was still strapped to my back, and our bundle of spears remained fastened to the limb where I had secured it. Leonglauix is forever impressed with the knots I tie.

  Swimming free of the log’s branches, doing our damnedest to remain unheard and unseen, we crawled ashore carrying a dozen spears. The clacking of their shafts and the sloshing of our water-soaked clothes seemed so deafening, I was certain a squadron of guards would charge the beach at any moment. The storyteller led the way to the lee of a low bush where we stripped off our wet gear and crammed it under the willow’s bottom branches along with our packs and moccasins.

  When I attempted to wrap a loincloth around my torso, Leonglauix grabbed it and threw it with the other garments.

  “A man fights with more skill when his balls are on the line,” he whispered with a chuckle.

  As planned, the storyteller led his bitch straight for the dogs. Clucking to them in his special way, he coaxed them to refrain from howling and barking. I remained hidden, covering him from the middle of a clump of pampas grass as he waded into their midst and began handing out soggy jerky.

  Within a minute, the pack’s excited yips woke a bedraggled guard. Wiping sleep from his eyes with one hand and scratching his testicles with the other, he called out in a low voice. “Who is there? Who is it with the dogs?” When the sentry was within several meters, Leonglauix abruptly dropped from sight. Crawling a tight circle through the pack, he rose to crack open the man’s skull with a two-handed swing of his stout yew club. The guard toppled into the pack with a surprised grunt.

  After dispensing a second blow to make sure the man was well and truly dead, Leonglauix cupped his hands to his mouth to mimic the sound of a night thrush. He repeated it twice and was preparing for a third go when a reply clicked from the trees. Tying the bitch off with the dog pack, he motioned me to follow him inland.

  We slinked through dew-soaked reeds in the gathering dawn, away from the mournful whines of the bitch. Crickets and frogs were winding down their chorus as ducks called to their mates on the river. Bats flitted through the gray light, gobbling mosquitoes which circled our heads in droves.

  The Tattoo camp was composed of a dozen simple lean-to huts constructed of sticks, pine boughs and sections of tree bark. From experience, I knew the poorly built structures would be empty. The Tattoos utilize their flimsy houses only in foul weather. They prefer to slumber and screw out by the fire, out where the clan can watch.

  Upon reaching the circle of lean-tos, we paused behind a rickety hovel to survey the scene. At least 20 dark lumps of fur and leather were curled up in balls around a smoldering fire. Lorenzo would have been appalled by their lack of order and discipline. Where were the guards? As I wrestled with the moral aspects of killing enemies as they lay napping, the shriek of a battle cry echoed through the trees.

  “Invaders! Get up and fight!” shouted a pair of fleet-footed Tattoo warriors as they sprinted into camp. Jok and his troops followed not far behind.

  As the perpetrators of many a dastardly sneak attack, the groggy Tattoos recognized the situation exactly for what it was. They knew hesitation equaled death. Arming themselves with whatever weapons they found handy, including rocks and half-burned limbs, the warriors and their women met Jok’s challenge head on.

  Having yet gone unnoticed, Gray Beard and I kept to the shadows, lobbing spears into the mass of Tattoos. We threw until we were down to one spear apiece.

  “Follow,” he said, leading me on a trot for the heart of the melee. The wily old man took a hard right turn to disappear at the last moment. I think he may have ducked into one of the lean-tos. Whatever happened, I found myself standing alone in the eye of a storm. Fighting raged everywhere. Jok and his son hammered at a fallen man, while the blue-eyed girl sawed a flint knife across the neck of one of Esther’s witches. Shouting names of loved ones, our fighters swung their clubs with reckless abandon. They seemed so young, so small, compared to the mighty Tattoos. Surprise had given us the advantage, but just barely.

  Catching a flash of movement in the corner of my eye, I whirled, reflexively jabbing with my spear, to catch a Tattoo warrior rising up on his toes to bash my skull with a heavy rock. The lucky stab caught him squarely in the abdomen. Ducking the rock as it dropped out of the attacker’s grip, I struggled to maintain my hold on the spear’s wet shaft.

  Seemingly unfazed by his wound, the heavily bearded warrior clawed out with his fingers to scratch my cheeks, tug at my lips and gouge at my eyes. Grasping the spear for dear life, I pushed it forward to increase the distance between us. With a shudder, the fight left him.

  I toppled him backward over one of his fallen comrades, then levered the weapon back and forth in a vain attempt to extract it from his twitching body. Dying hands held it as tightly as his spasming muscles. Abandoning the spear, I untied the mace from my back.

  Jok’s eldest boy helped me design and construct my mighty war club during our trip west. The shaft is crafted from the iron-hard root of an oak we found wedged along the shore of a distant river. We were sharing our meal one evening when I spied the driftwood root and mentioned it would make a dandy club.

  The prospect of constructing a weapon excited the boy so intensely, he spent several hours surgically burning the silvery, gray root from the long-dead oak. When he was done, we were left with a bat more than a meter long. It tapered from a thin handle to a stout head bigger around than my forearm. Satisfied, I thanked the boy for his efforts. He yanked the club from my hands, declaring it was far from finished.

  Over the next week, he showed me how to grind the handle’s narrow tip against rocks to bring it to a sharp point, great for stabbing down into an opponent’s chest or shoulder. The wide end was ground free of charcoal and down to a slightly concave head featuring four notches, one set every 90 degrees. After much searching, the boy located the perfect stone to affix to its head.

  Flecked with quartz, the reddish rock was a fine-grained volcanic orb larger than my fist. Using a piece of denser basalt as a grindstone, the boy (I am ashamed to say I never learned to properly say his name) spent several days wearing away four deep channels into the orb. When he was finished, the channels served as guides for the leather strips which securely affix the head to the shaft. It is a mighty weapon. I do not believe I ever properly thanked the boy for his help. Now it is too late.

  I had barely slipped the club from my back when the red-haired giant named Troldo leaped from behind a lean-to to confront me. I remembered him from the early days with the Tattoos. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, the burly troublemaker was one of the few original Tattoos Lorenzo did not elevate to his inner circle.

  He recognized me as well, and expected an easy fight from the one his clan ridiculed as “Little Rabbit.” The giant rushed forward with a spear held low in his hands and a smug smile on his crimson lips. He attempted to disembowel me with one mighty thrust.

  Ears burning, bile rising in my throat, I parried his attack with the shaft of my club, then followed with a downward chop which snapped his left wrist with an explosive “crack.” In training, the sound was one that meant “stop.” Although I knew better, my momentary pause gave the smelly beast nearly all the time he needed. Grasping my club with his undamaged right hand, he yanked it from my grip with a mighty tug.

  Turning it quickly, he took a one-handed swipe which would have knocked my head cleanly from my shoulders had it connected. I dove flat to let it pass over my head with a “whoosh.” Springing to my feet, stepping inside the arc of the weapon, I launched the crown of my head to the point of his chin. Grabbing him by the ears, I battered his nose with two savage butts from my forehead, then stomped down on the top of his foot. “Dirty fighting” is what the instructors had called it.

  The blows rocked him back
onto his heels. Locking his wounded left wrist in a tight, two-handed grip, I lifted it up and over my head, then spun so I was behind him, pinning his arm at the middle of his back. Pushing upward with all of my might, I felt the shoulder joint tear from its socket. His cries of agony and surrender meant nothing. The man who once helped wrap me in a rhino skin, and who sat on top of me so the women could better burn my feet, whimpered like a baby goat as I knocked his legs out from under him with a judo sweep.

  Gathering up my club with an intensity of hatred I’d never felt before, I raised it to deliver the coup de grace. One smash, two smash, his blood and teeth were flying when suddenly every synapse in my body cried out as one, “Danger!”

  Diving once again to the ground, I felt a spear’s shaft graze across the small of my back. Rolling quickly, leaping to my feet, I found myself face-to-face with a pair of warrior women–the giant’s wife and daughter. Rising to meet their challenge, I followed the flight of a light-shafted spear as it arced out of the gloom to take the wife through the chest. Seeing her mother pitch forward, the daughter turned to make a dash for the trees. Her retreat lasted no more than three running steps before a spear buried itself deeply in her right thigh.

  Out from the darkness scampered Leonglauix. Covered in mud and blood, leaves and gore, concealing the yew club behind his right thigh, the storyteller approached the wailing girl as if she were his injured grandchild. Cooing soothing words, motioning her to be quiet and still, he ended her life with a side-armed blow across the base of the neck. Though she did not see it coming, I think the blonde-haired girl expected it. After all, she was a Tattoo.

  Once the storyteller had silenced the mother’s gurgled moans with a similar chop, I helped him gather miscast spears. Though sounds of battle hastened our search, the old man was not content until we each had an armful.

  “Help Jok,” he said, pointing me straight toward the shouts and screams. “Go fast. Go smart.” Balancing a bundle of spears over his shoulder, he disappeared into the trees.

  “What the heck does ‘go smart’ mean?” The question rolled through my brain as I made a beeline toward the fight. It sounded a bit like something Papa used to say before I left the family compound for a night on the town. “Don’t do anything stupid,” was his familiar refrain.

  Silently darting from bush to bush over the last 20 meters, taking cover behind a clump of pampas grass, I found Jok and the remainder of our force backed up against the base of a gravel embankment some four meters high. The natural amphitheater protected the four survivors from stones and spears cast from above. A series of nicely situated boulders gave them several locations where they could duck down to avoid the spears, stones and insults flying from their left flank.

  The battle had dissolved into a traditional form of Cro-Magnon skirmishing. In a world where clans are small and warriors’ primary duties are not fighting, but providing protection and procreation, the idea of squandering lives needlessly does not compute. Cro-Magnon warfare is often more symbolic than bloody. At least it used to be. Before Lorenzo.

  Taking turns, shouting every imaginable curse and slander they could conjure, the warriors ran forth to launch spears toward the far-away enemy. Bravely standing out in the open, they followed the trajectory of their casts, then scurried back to the safety of their laughing mates.

  Tomon says in the old days warriors would occasionally be slain in battle, but that was a rarity. He himself once had a spear bounce off the ground and embed itself in the calf muscle of his right leg. The battle ended at that moment. He continues to bear the shame of not jumping to the side in time to avoid the spear’s odd carom. He says he laid there in self-pity, his grandmother tending the wound in his leg, while the boisterous rival clan marched in to claim the young colt which had been the center of the dispute. The Antelope Clan ate the rare albino horse and the Green Turtles did not.

  From what I understand, this has long been the accepted form of minor warfare between civilized clans. Territorial issues and other problems can be solved with decency as well as minimal loss of life and limb. The Tattoos did not play by the rules back then or now. Infused with Lorenzo’s new methods, Kloick and his crew would not be content until we were all dead.

  From my position, I could see the surviving members of the Tattoos were preparing for an all-out assault. Screened from Jok by a mound of gravel, the renegade leader conducted an animated briefing for five warriors and four women. Out in the open, a trio of foul-mouthed younger men exchanged fire with Jok’s misfits. Two others moved about gathering spears and throwing stones.

  Kloick and his troops would be well-armed when they made their assault. He had one of his men by the elbow, instructing him in no uncertain terms exactly what he should do. A light birch spear dropped from the sky to pierce the man through his throat. Springing to safety swiftly as a cat, Kloick knelt behind his wicker shield to study the direction from which the spear did sail. As he gaped, Leonglauix stepped from the tree line. Backlit by the rising sun, he took three mincing steps and launched another missile. This caused the Tattoos to rush about in consternation when the moon shot landed within a half-meter of Kloick’s foot.

  The old storyteller was breathing hard as he spread his arms in the universal gesture which asks, “Well, tough guys, what are you going to do about it?” At the count of three, he shouted a challenge. “You pups will never catch me!” Turning on his heel, he charged bare-ass naked down the trail, back toward the river. Kloick and his entire force broke as one to charge pell-mell in pursuit.

  It was obvious that their route would take them through a choke point where blackberry bushes grew thickly on both sides of the narrow path. Sprinting wide to find a clear field of fire, I surmounted a grassy hillock not seven meters from the brambles. Standing my spears against the side of a scrubby bush, I selected one at random and let fly. The first cast flew a foot over Kloick’s head. The next three brought down a pair of warriors and severely wounded another.

  As the confused Tattoos rallied for a counterattack, Gray Beard emerged from the tall grass at their feet to fire a spear into their midst at point blank range. “You will never catch me,” he taunted as he set off on a shambling sprint in my direction.

  Down to just four spears, I knew I had to make each cast count. The Tattoos obliged by running en masse as I peppered them with a four-shot volley. And then Gray Beard was down. Tripped by an unseen root, he smashed belly-first to the sandy ground. He lay gasping for breath as the Tattoos halted in a circle around him.

  “Kloick! I’m coming for you, Kloick!” The voice was mine, though I had not planned to speak out. What inspired me to step from cover and march resolutely toward the Tattoo leader and his three surviving warriors, I do not know.

  Observing I had no spears to throw, they permitted me to advance without harassment. I pulled to a halt just outside spitting distance, near enough to see Kloick had a new cross tattooed onto his forehead. The crucifix was outlined with the same alternating red, brown and black dots forming the sweeping whorls on his cheeks and nose. Ink eyes stared from his temples as he turned his head to chart the advance of Jok and his weary fighters.

  With a grunt and a point of his finger, Kloick dispatched his warriors to deal with Jok, then turned to address me.

  “Little Rabbit,” he sneered. “Lord-enzo called you that. Have you learned to fight?”

  “Come and find out, boy.”

  Rapping the shaft of his stabbing spear against the frame of his tall, narrow shield, Kloick circled to his right as he closed the distance between us. Leading with the leather-covered shield, pressing forward, he invited me to take a swing which would open my ribs to his counterthrust. Surrendering ground, I kept moving up the trail, away from the storyteller. Gray Beard was now on his hands and knees, gasping for air in the dew-soaked clover.

  Perhaps Kloick had forgotten how often I sat and observed Lorenzo’s training sessions. Or, more likely, my comings and goings weren’t worthy of his notice. The f
act is, even back then, I was well aware of who my enemies were, and I knew one day we must surely do battle. I watched and I learned.

  The young lad Kloick was one of the few natives to grasp the power of Lorenzo’s shields. I recalled how he quickly embraced the concept, much to the chagrin of sparring partners who received many sharp raps from his practice spears. Kloick became one of Lorenzo’s favorite pupils. In turn, the boy recognized Lorenzo as his one and true God. In his eyes, Lorenzo could do no wrong. Fanaticism.

  Spying on their sparring bouts, I noted Lorenzo utilized a spin move which briefly left his flank unprotected. While Jones or Kaikane would have exploited the weakness immediately, the Tattoos were too slow and too new to Lorenzo’s modern ways of fighting to take advantage. It was a showy move which time after time worked to perfection. Disoriented Tattoo sparring partners would find themselves rushing a blank void while Lorenzo emerged at their sides to poke his oak cudgel into their ribs. Soon Kloick was performing the maneuver with similar results.

  Frustrated by my steady retreat, Kloick made a straightforward charge that ended with a spear thrust to my face. Side-stepping the stab, I brought my club down with a thunderous crash upon his shield. Not surprisingly, it held up to the punishment. Constructed with cured willow branches, laced together with tens of meters of leather strips and covered with thick mammoth hide, the shields were sturdy indeed.

  The counterthrust came as expected. I dodged it easily, gave more ground. Parry and thrust, that is how it went for several minutes. Neither one of us was willing to make a fatal mistake. Kloick slowly herded me toward the blackberries. Fear and frustration began to show on my face as I was backed steadily into a corner. Lip quivering, I lashed out ineffectually with my club as I struggled to hold him at bay. Stumbling backward, raising my hands over my head, I knew the spin move was coming before Kloick did.