by B. Muze
The group stopped just across the river and eyed the waiting warriors suspiciously.
“What do you want?” shouted Massern Leader, his weapon aimed and ready.
One of the men, medium height, modest build, responded in a language no one knew. He held up his hands to show they were empty. The rest of the men, even the Gicok, followed his lead and did the same. Massern Leader kept his weapon pointed, though some of the other men cautiously lowered theirs.
The shaman and several of the elders came to the leader’s side.
“What do you think?” Massern Leader asked Yaku Shaman, never taking his eyes off the strangers.
“The spirit warned us that the Gicoks would bring disease. We should not let these people near.”
“Should we kill them?” asked Massern.
“Kill unarmed men?” demanded Sirfen Elder, incredulously. He was a warrior and a warrior trainer. Such things could not be honorable.
“If the Gicoks would bring some, the Gicoks might bring more,” Jatoyen Elder said, thoughtfully. “These men do not seem to threaten us, but if we treat them as enemies, we might make them enemies.”
“We cannot welcome them as friends,” Yaku Shaman insisted. “The spirit has warned us that our loss will be great. We must be cautious.”
“What if we meet them in the mountains,” suggested Takan Elder. “We can go as a larger group than theirs, with weapons. It will keep them away from the village and let us find out what they want.”
“They might have others hidden and waiting,” warned Tapeten. Sirfen Elder nodded his agreement, but Yaku shook his head.
“It is only these five on this side of the mountain. There are no warrior groups waiting.”
“Then they are fools,” exclaimed Tapeten. “We could kill them easily.”
“But we won’t,” remarked Jatoyen Elder. “Perhaps they are smarter than we think.”
It was decided to meet the strangers in the mountains and talk to them, to find out what they were seeking, why they had intruded where they weren’t wanted. A young man, famous for his strong arm and good eye, quickly brought a painted stone. He held it up for the strangers to see. They looked at him confused.
“We will meet where this lands,” shouted Massern Leader.
The strangers glanced at each other confused. The Gicok said something with a knowledgeable air, but their confusion persisted.
The strong young man wound his sling and let the painted stone fly into the hills. The shaman asked the stone to fly to a good place, as distant as possible. It was a very fine throw. A day’s ride could take a group of men on horses there and back easily, yet it was out of sight of the village, and any approach from that place would be seen quickly enough to prepare.
“Go there,” shouted Massern Leader, pointing after the stone. “We will meet you there.”
The strangers still stood, their arms over their heads, looking at Massern, looking over their shoulders at the place the rock was thrown, then looking back at the village.
When they did not move, the people got nervous. More weapons were readied. The tension grew tighter.
In a foreign language, the Gicok said something to the strangers. He said it loudly enough for the warriors to hear that he did not speak their language or even the Gicoks’, but one they had not heard before.
“Go,” Massern repeated, pointing toward the place where the rock had landed.
The Gicok spoke again to the leader of the strangers. The bushy-faced man slowly nodded. He cautiously turned around and led his people away, into the mountains.
The warriors watched them until they were out of sight. Then a group stayed, still armed and waiting, while the council quickly met. It was decided that Massern Leader would go with Sirfen Elder, Yaku Shaman, and seven strong young warriors of Sirfen’s choice. The women and children stayed in hiding, the guard stayed posted, and the group set out immediately. Jovai listened carefully and deeply from her self-appointed post on the eastern hill. There she could see any sudden attack and, if an alarm were needed, she could make everyone hear it.
It was late at night by the time the group of elders and warriors returned. Their faces were dark with frowns, but they called the worried women and children out of the caves and had them all meet in the center of town. They told the people everything they knew. It was not much. No dialogue had been possible since the strangers didn’t speak their language. All the warriors had were guesses. The strangers had made a camp. They planned to stay. No one could discover how long. They had shown them things that no one had ever seen before and whose purpose was unclear. The strangers had carried blades and statues, tools and other things stolen from their people by the Gicoks. But they seemed more interested in the metal and stones that made many of the things than in the things themselves. They had pointed to the stolen blades repeatedly with questions no one could understand. They had seemed friendly and had offered food and drink, but no one had touched it. The shaman reminded everyone once again of the spirit’s warning and told them to beware of disease. They must stay as far away from these strangers as possible.
The strangers chose to make that difficult by sending their leader to the village the very next day. The leader, his empty hands in the air, led his horse toward the waiting warriors. He spoke slowly in his strange language and clearly wanted to be welcomed. The village warriors made it as clear, with readied weapons and thrown stones, that he was not. The man frantically pointed behind him with his thumb. He pointed with his arm toward the place they had met before. Yaku listened. He could still hear no more than the five strangers in the mountains, but he didn’t know what point there was to meet with these strangers again. His people needed nothing from them and wanted nothing to do with them. They had no common language and as far as the village was concerned, no need for one. But the man would not go away.
He went to a bag tied onto his horse and pulled forth a tangle of animal fur. This he held up and then held forward as if a gift. One of the warriors, perhaps for a joke, shot a heavy arrow into the mass of pelts. The stranger dropped it and jumped away. He ran to his horse and quickly led him back to the mountains.
The warriors cheered, but the elders were not so pleased. They didn’t want to make these strangers enemies. They only wanted them to go away.
The next day the leader and the Gicok came back. They carried an extra horse, one of the Gicoks’ magnificent breed. Once again, the leader dismounted. He led the horse to the edge of the river and held the reins forward, in offering. This was a splendid gift. The villagers had long admired these horses but had never been quick enough to capture one during the Gicoks’ raids. Now, here was one simply being offered to them.
They did not risk pushing out the bridge. Instead, Tapeten went bravely forward to where the river crossing was shallowest. Three warriors stood by his side. The stranger followed him along the other side, and when the leader stopped, he started to cross. Immediately all weapons were pointed at him. The stranger stopped, the water to his knees and stared. Tapeten sent one of his warriors to cross the river and get the horse from the waiting man. When the warrior got there, however, the stranger paused before handing him the horse and pointed back to the place where the elders had met with him before. He yelled something, again in his stranger’s tongue. He obviously wanted to meet with them again.
Tapeten looked to Massern Summer Leader, and Massern looked to Yaku Shaman. The shaman did not like it. He did not think a horse, even a Gicok horse, worth the risk. Massern and many of the other elders thought differently, however, and they agreed to go. The warrior returned to the village with a magnificent, strong, young stallion.
Again, the elders and warriors returned to the village discouraged by the meeting.
“They are trying to teach us their language,” Massern Elder told the people, “and we tried to teach them ours, but we cannot understand each other. They want us to come back and try again. It seems they have offered us a mare next time, but the shaman d
oes not think it’s wise.”
“Then the shaman does not have to go,” replied Tapeten.
“The spirit gave a warning,” Yaku Shaman growled.
“The spirit said to beware,” argued Jatoyen Elder. “We are being wary. They do not come into our village, yet we have not made them enemies. But we must talk to them and find out why they stay and what will make them go away. If they will teach us their language, we should try to learn.”
“Then Jovai will go,” said the shaman impulsively. Jovai looked up at her master, astonished. She could not read in his face what his mind was thinking.
Tapeten turned to him angrily.
“This does not concern a child — especially not a female child.”
“Jovai learns languages easily. She can learn to speak to the strangers quicker than I can.”
“Are you not worried about the disease?” asked Takan Elder. “It might be dangerous to expose her.”
“Jovai is a shaman,” Yaku said firmly. “The spirits will protect her.”
Objections were quickly dispensed with, and the next day Jovai accompanied her master, Massern Leader, Sirfen Elder and six young warriors.
Chapter 17
Studying Strangers
Yaku dressed Jovai carefully, as much like a boy as possible, in clothes that covered every open space of flesh which disease might penetrate. He would have covered her face with a fiber mask, but she objected. Such things were for the summer and autumn drama ceremonies only. To use them for something other than the spirits would be offensive. She was right, and he let her go with a bare face.
Already Yaku regretted his thoughtless offer of Jovai. It was bad enough that he should risk disease, but if she caught it too, the village would have no shaman at all. What evil spirit had prompted him to give such bad advice?
“Am I sufficiently ugly?” she asked him when he had finished dressing her.
He held her chin up and looked her deeply in her large, brown eyes. The eyes betrayed her. They were too feminine, too perfectly shaped like a doe’s or a bofimer’s eyes, tilted up slightly at the corners. A man with such eyes would learn to scowl to hide their beauty. She only smiled. He shook his head.
“It is the best I can do,” he told her.
“I would not like the strangers anyway,” she reassured him.
Yaku Shaman knew that. That was not his fear.
“So, am I to be a boy to the strangers?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “You are much more. You are a shaman. You will show them all.”
Jovai looked up at her master worried.
They reached the stranger’s camp by midday. The camp was disordered, or so it seemed to Jovai’s eyes. There were papers, an honored commodity to her people, torn and discarded, along with bones, shells and other offal littering the ground. The tents were placed in no recognizable order. It was not a pattern of power, even for defense. There were less tents than men, so they must share, or some must sleep in the open. The tents were large and not made of leather, but of some kind of shiny cloth which could not be woven from the plants or animals found in the valley. It reflected the sun. They were not afraid of drawing attention to themselves. They must either be exceptionally well defended, exceptionally stupid, or have exceptionally good reason to know they had no enemies. Their tents had no chimney draw, so they had made a communal fire outside. Used cooking and eating utensils lay hastily discarded in the dirt and ashes next to it. They let the horses stand inside the camp, next to the tents, and their manure made the flies swarm and the camp smell.
There were also two wagons, made to be pulled by horses. They used their magnificent horses to haul. It occurred to Jovai that she had yet to see any of them, even the Gicok, ride for any real distance.
Jovai’s people dismounted, leaving one of the warriors to guard their horses, and walked to the group of strangers who waited politely by the ashes of the communal fire.
The men at the camp greeted them with expressions of much pleasure. They talked constantly, Jovai noticed, not only among themselves but to her people whom they knew could not understand them. It reassured her a little, for people who talk so much probably did not listen as well. It was a good measure that gave her people the advantage.
The strangers offered them mats of pelts to sit on, but her people preferred to stand. Jovai took the initiative. She stepped forward, like a man, and greeted the stranger’s leader in her language, then in the words she had heard him use. She guessed he had been giving a welcoming, not a greeting, but she wanted to show that she was trying to speak.
He looked at her strangely and bent slightly from the waist in an awkward bow. Then he held out his hand, toward her. She looked at it confused. He called one of his men, a short man with very dark, peeling cheeks, and held his hand out to him. The man grabbed his arm at the elbow. A cloud of dust arose as the cloths around their arms hit and it seemed as if they were both the dirtier for the exchange.
“Shake,” the man kept saying in his language.
He held his arm out to her. “Shake,” he repeated.
Her arms were covered and her hands gloved. She cautiously copied the movement of the other man and repeated his word, “Shake.”
The leader laughed and nodded, looking very pleased. He let her hand go and thumped himself on the chest.
“Bawlner,” he said.
She pointed at him to verify “Bawlner?”
He nodded. That was his name. Then he pointed to her.
“Aitouku,” she said, pointing to herself. She had meant to say her name but her tongue surprised her and twisted into that — a name for a boy that meant “student,” “learner,” or “apprentice.” Her people looked at her curiously, but she recognized the intervention of a spirit and accepted it. She did not correct herself.
“Aytownko” he tried to imitate. She had to correct him several times before she finally gave up and allowed him to call her “Atty”.
He tried to ask her something she could not understand and made many strange movements with his hands and fingers that made no sense to her. Seeing that she didn’t understand, he finally gave up. He pulled a blade and pointed to it. The way he held it was as no warrior would have handled a blade. He seemed unaware of it as a weapon.
“Silver,” he said in his language.
She repeated the word until she got it right. Now she knew better what he most wanted. She guessed, as the elders before her had, that it was the metal, not the blade itself, which interested him. She pulled out a painted charm of one of the spirits that she had carried that day — a little human-shaped female figure with an overwhelmingly large, open mouth. It was the talking spirit, and she hoped it would help their communication. She handed it to Bawlner to see.
“Silver?” she asked.
He examined it closely, scratched at the paint, then put it in his mouth and bent it with his teeth. Jovai watched him horrified, but he seemed unaware.
“Silver,” he confirmed.
He handed it back to her, but she refused to take it. If he had made the spirit angry, he could keep the anger. He accepted it as a gift, much pleased and stuffed it into a pouch at his waist.
Now she would show him something that they wanted. She walked to the nearest horse and put her hand on his neck. Bawlner followed with a string of words that she could not possibly understand. He did not seem angry, merely talkative. He tried to lead her to another horse, but she resisted.
“Horse,” she said in her language. Then she pointed to him. He was slow to understand. He shook his head and pointed to one of his men, a dark-eyed, frowning man. She also pointed to the man.
“His horse,” she said. Then she pointed back to the horse. “Horse.”
He finally understood and gave her the word she wanted. She made very careful note. She pointed to the horse’s genitals.
“Mare,” she said.
The man laughed and gave her the word.
She found a stallion and got a word for tha
t.
She went to one of the tents and touched the fabric. Again the man came at her with a string of words. She listened, instead, to the sounds within the tents and went to the nearest one with no one else inside.
Bawlner came after her, calling. She motioned for him to follow and went into the tent. It was full of supplies. They had bags of dried meat and fruits, of a kind she couldn’t identify, grains, beans, fermented beverages and water. For only five people, it looked like enough to last them through the winter. That was not a good sign. They had blankets and furs as well. They also had a variety of things that could be used as weapons or tools. Their cutting edges were made of a shiny black stone that was very smooth and sharp and stronger than many of her people’s weapons. There were many other things that she could not identify or understand. There was much that was made of metal, though very little looked like silver.
Bawlner was clearly unhappy that she had chosen to enter this tent. He also, clearly, was afraid to ask her to leave. She pulled him to the nearest bag of beans and asked him for the name. Bag by bag she had him widen her vocabulary. It was buying her people, who crowded in behind them, a good look at the supplies. She especially wanted Sirfen Elder to see the weapons. To her, there seemed many more than only five could wield, hand to hand weapons mostly, although there were some spears.
Bawlner offered her a drink of some liquid — strongly fermented, from a smooth, smoky colored, see-through container. She sniffed it but refused. Bawlner took a large swallow himself from the container, then offered it to her people. It was hard to tell if this were some kind of insult, but she didn’t think so. Her people refused as she had.
One by one, Jovai went into all the tents. She touched beds, woven mats not much different than their own, blankets, pieces of clothes, lamps of a fluid that was not the oil she knew, collections of colored papers and weapons. Bawlner got more and more nervous. She asked the names of everything she touched, and he dutifully gave them, among many other words that seemed pointed to getting them out of the tents.
