by Joe Zeigler
Slowly, at first, as they absorbed the realization, then faster, the people approached Caddarak, paused before him, and kissed his hand.
Later, Caddarak walked over to see Nabihah, the Raiders’ commander of the warriors. It was important for him to gain Nabihah’s acceptance as he, the Prophet and Nabihah held separate but different and equal powers.
“Good day, Nabihah,” Caddarak said as he sat down beside Nabihah, showing him that he considered them equals. If he remained standing, he would communicate something else entirely, and he could not expect Nabihah to rise. So he sat and said, “That may not be a bad idea the Prophet had, to climb to the trail and ambush Danijel’s people.”
“Yes,” Nabihah answered, “but if we don’t want to lose again, you must let me plan and execute the attack in my way. Too much interference from the spiritual side has contributed to our recent losses.”
Caddarak recognized he was attempting to distance himself from the Prophet, from past defeats, and affirm his control over the fighting men.
“But of course, Nabihah,” Caddarak said, realizing Nabihah was willing to accept him as the new Prophet with the conditions that they were now negotiating. “All of us are tired of being humiliated, driven back, and losing all our wealth. Many of us have seen the Prophet’s meddling hand in our defeats. All that stops now. I understand and believe that it is the duty of the Prophet to determine whom to attack. After that, the Prophet steps back, and it is for you to determine how and where the attack will take place.”
“Then it’s settled. Other than one thing: I must inform you that I will be banishing my second-in-command. He has been unduly influenced by the Prophet and has forgotten his place. Worse, he was led to forget my place and authority. He must go and be made an example of before I can turn attitudes and morale around.”
Caddarak nodded sharply. “Military matters are yours to handle as you see fit. Truly, Nabihah, I am happy to hear what you have said. I have been bothered by our failures and have thought much on who is responsible. Your explanation is clear to me,” Caddarak said, implying his was the superior position, clearly but delicately.
Obsidian
Back up the trail, Gedeon ordered a move at the end of the week. All the groups had passed the trading post and continued down the path. Their work was done here. The Traders would split. Seventy-five people, half of their number, made up of the youngest and led by Gedeon’s newly appointed head buyer, would turn southwest. They would restock their inventory with goods to be sold in the winter encampment in the Lowland. The other half would slowly follow the river down to the southeast. As they traveled, the men would fish in the river, and the women would clean and smoke the fish before finally packing them for eventual sale.
The obsidian workers would keep occupied, too. They had collected a large stock as they passed the cold lava flows around the Smoking Mountains. From the volcanic glass, they made extremely sharp knives, arrowheads, spear points, and other tools. They worked the obsidian by selecting the piece that contained the object and chipping at it with a piece of heavy lava until the object was released. It was harder to work than flint, which was why flint had been the standard for tool making and trade since before memory. But Gedeon had come to believe obsidian could be the superior material if they could learn to produce tools, arrowheads, and such from it. So far there had been some success.
Most of the workers produced adequate but uninspired products. There were some artists, the best being a man named Aitor, leader of the Cliff Dwellers, who had made Gedeon an exquisite knife of black and white obsidian, marbled with red. Half of the blade, the sharp edge, was white on a black background, with red appearing randomly throughout. Aitor had created even serrations on an edge already sharper than any that ever existed. This was an incredible feat of carefully making tiny breaks on the edge. The edge could not be tested in the usual manner of feeling it with a thumb. An admirer had tried that before Aitor could intervene and cut his thumb to the bone. It was such a clean and narrow incision that a woman had wrapped the finger with a thin piece of hide, closing it neatly. In two weeks, the bandage was removed to reveal a thin, red line rather than the huge scar that had been expected.
The knife was Gedeon’s most prized possession. And it was an inspiration to the Traders who were learning to work obsidian.
There was some risk to this adventure, as resources had to be taken from the production of flint tools.
Ambush
Nabihah and the Raiders’ team leaders gathered to begin to plan the attack.
“First, we must arm ourselves.”
They had lost many of their weapons and thus made plans for rearming. Fortunately, they still had Ohad’s stock of flint arrowheads and spear points. They soon realized that once they had mounted all of Ohad’s flint, they would be armed better than ever.
That night, as two of his wives serviced him, Caddarak thought of the blessed outcome of recent events. It was perhaps unfortunate that his good fortune came at the expense of the Raiders’ defeats. But he could fix that; he would fix that.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “Do that some more. Don’t stop.” He need not have worried about Wenerdu having to learn what pleased him. She had, after some initial foreplay, taken active control and demonstrated that she was much more experienced and willing than he had imagined…in his dreams.
All other events were banished from his mind as his body concentrated on what Wenerdu had so enthusiastically engineered. It wasn’t fair, however. He imagined what Wenerdu could put together with all eight wives at once and realized that he was not up to it. When he was younger, he could have taken them all on, but back then, he was rarely able to find even one woman to bed him. Now that he had the power and the women—more than even the young version of him had prayed for—his stamina was insufficient.
With that thought, his current strength was waning in a climax of pain and pleasure. He moaned and moved his hips involuntarily. “Ahhhhhhh…” Caddarak climaxed with a scream of exaltation that brought a smile to faces throughout the camp.
***
Danijel’s people rested the next day. The men were exhausted from lack of sleep and their run up the trail and back, the women from sorting the loot abandoned by the Raiders and collecting the weapons. Danijel worried that trouble was coming and that their run of good luck couldn’t sustain itself. He also knew Ohad was lying about the flint, and the next time they met the Raiders, it might well be on their enemy’s terms. For now, all was quiet. The scouts were out, the women chuckled among themselves as they examined the Raiders’ belongings, and the young boys fished along the river for tonight’s dinner.
As he walked through the camp, he greeted everyone with proud words. And they should be proud after driving off the Raiders. It was his mistake, he realized, to have let the Raiders escape down the river and around his flank. He would not make that mistake again.
He saw Micaela wading in the shallows, cutting reeds for making baskets. She was carefully cutting them to the same length and laying them out on a large, flat rock to dry.
“Micaela,” he called, and she smiled up at him.
“Danijel, good morning.”
“You did well yesterday. Thanks to you, we were able to drive them through the center of our own camp with no one being hurt.”
“Thank you, it is very kind of you to say so. I fear that I was recognized by one who tripped over me. As you know, their Prophet ordered me killed. Now he may know that I was not and may seek to correct that. Or he might take out his anger on Wenerdu, the one who saved me.”
“I don’t believe you to be in any danger,” he said, smiling, although he knew that the Prophet was stubborn about such things. He considered his orders to be from God, and it was not good for his people, or any others for that matter, to see his orders thwarted. But it would not help to worry Micaela.
“I am happy Ohad recovered most of his inventory, though losing the flint has upset him,” she said.
Wit
h a wry smile, Danijel replied, “Yes, that bothered him on any number of levels. And it upset me. We disarmed the Raiders, and Ohad rearmed them. It is unfortunate.”
“Oh, I feel so responsible. It was so stupid of me to let myself and Ohad’s goods be captured. I should have known better than to be exposed like that.”
“Yes, that was a bad mistake, but one that we are all guilty of. We all knew of your plan to lower the goods after the trail was clear, and no one, including myself, saw the danger. So we all feel bad. The blame is not all yours. It is shared, and we all have learned. It will not happen again.”
“Thank you, Danijel. You are very kind.” She smiled and turned, blushing, back to her basket weaving.
Seduced
At dusk, Maxtla approached Micaela as she was straightening her shelter for the night. In his left hand, he carried a freshly killed rabbit by its ears. Purposefully, and without hesitation, he set the rabbit down beside the fire and lifted Micaela to her feet. With one arm around her, he tilted back her head; with the other, he pulled her close and pressed his lips to hers. Reflexively, she opened her mouth widely and extended her tongue into his throat. He convulsed once and regurgitated. Micaela felt faint and kissed him slowly, cleaning around his mouth with her tongue before squatting to clean the rabbit and prepare it for Maxtla. Without consciously making the decision, she knew they would mate later.
The next morning, when Micaela awoke, Maxtla was gone. She wondered if he had been there or if it all had been a dream…or a nightmare. She was conflicted about many things. Maxtla was a nice, good-looking boy, and there was no reason that he would not be acceptable. And as he was so fond of telling everyone, he came from a good clan with the implied promise of giving her healthy children. His features were symmetrical and well proportioned, and his body of some size. So she should be excited. She didn’t understand why she wasn’t now and never had been excited about Maxtla.
Perhaps it was that he was dull and serious. He never made her laugh, and he seemed singularly untalented. As she reviewed her experiences with Maxtla over many years, she realized he performed all the tasks of a hunter adequately, but only adequately, not better. Adequate was not Micaela’s way. She wanted to excel, and she wanted children who would excel, live large and well.
Still, Maxtla might be the best choice. The only option? She had not had many suitors since the Breeding. Well, none except Maxtla…and he had been running hot and cold until last night. Still…
And what was last night? she wondered. I am already pregnant, so what was that about? Was it Maxtla’s way of accepting me as his mate and marking the child as his? She smiled slightly, pleased at the thought. Then she wondered about that.
It had started out correctly, with the rituals of them feeding each other. Then she had disrobed and waited for him in her shelter. He entered and, at first, was tender and loving. Then he became progressively more controlling, not violent, but certainly rough. Finally, he swung her around onto her hands and knees and entered her from behind as he held on to her long hair. Strangely, he seemed to be angry. When he was done, he lay exhausted and fell asleep quickly, without saying a word or even touching her again. In the morning, he had been gone.
It was not as if she had a lot of experience to draw on to help her understand. Actually, she thought with a wry smile, she had no experience other than the Breeding. Shaking her head in bewilderment, she dressed, ate leftover rabbit, and resumed weaving her basket by the river.
Micaela could see the children upstream, playing in the river, sliding over the sandstone smoothed by the water to form a slippery slide leading to a deep, large swimming hole. Her mind wandered as her fingers worked, under their own volition, to create a pattern resembling the waterfall on the basket. It seemed not so long since she had played just as these children did today. She remembered jumping into the water and screaming as she slid over the rock and down the waterslide to the next pond below. Smiling, she considered that there had been quite a lot of screaming, just as there was today. Nothing changed as one generation followed the next. It just felt like things were speeding up. The thought brought a frown to her lovely face. This was only her fourteenth winter, and yet she acutely felt the passage of time. She thought of Maxtla.
My last chance? She wondered and worried, frightened of what might be.
The water swirled into the pond below and created small, still sloughs on the sides of the swimming hole, where rainbow trout lounged, enjoying the heat of the Sun. Two boys had approached one of the still ponds earlier and spooked the trout. Now they crouched at the edge, very still, spears raised, waiting for the fish to return.
Micaela remembered kneeling by the side of this same pond. At least, she thought it was the same pond. She remembered the beautiful yellow fish with black freckles that so foolishly swam slowly into the range of her spear. The water had been clear, and the fish had appeared to be suspended in air. The silvery scales on their sides had glittered in the Sun, which highlighted the pink band.
Then the spear thrust, which, if not aimed precisely, resulted in a terrible spasm of the creature’s muscles, which often freed it. As she launched the spear, she would whisper a prayer to the fish, freeing its soul and thanking it for providing her sustenance. Then she would pull the fish ashore while whispering a prayer of thanks to the Sun for the fish.
“Micaela,” Ohad called as he approached, breaking the spell of remembrances, “we will be moving tomorrow. I’d like to inventory all the goods this afternoon and repack them for the journey. Also, do you know of anyone who has flint they would like to trade?”
“Only Gedeon,” Micaela replied, “and who knows where he and his Traders are now.”
“Most likely they are on their way down and will be here eventually. I would like to remain here to trade with them, but my presence is required by the group. I would like you to stay here, meet the Traders, and obtain as much flint as you can from them. I will leave you with ample trade goods to accomplish that.”
Micaela was astonished. A chill ran through her as memories flowed into her mind. Ohad apparently had forgotten what had happened the last time Micaela had fallen behind the group. He either forgot or doesn’t care, Micaela thought woefully.
“Of course, Ohad, but who will carry your goods?” she finally said.
“Right, right…but then, who? I must have flint to cover the loss,” he murmured as if talking to himself. “Ah, I know just the man. Never mind, Micaela. I will take care of this. I’ll be back after the noon meal to do an inventory and cut out some goods to trade for the flint.” Ohad turned and moved purposefully up the slope in search of Glooscap.
Raising Waarrar
Three generations lived in the camp—the children, the adults, and the elderly. Then came the sick and the healthy. Most of the severe illness was among older people, and if they became too ill to travel during the migration, they were left behind. Such was the case with the aged Waarrar. He had been keeping up and even doing his part until that very morning when he had slipped on a wet stone and broken his ankle. The People knew without a doubt that this would not heal on the trail. There was a chance, although slight that the bone would knit if he lay still but not if they tried to move him.
Waarrar was of Liùsaidh’s clan, and she had known him all of her life. She and Danijel stood apart from him and his children, grandchildren, and wife, who surrounded and sought to comfort him.
“We have to send him up,” she said.
“You know we can’t do that.”
Danijel had realized for some time that Liùsaidh knew. He wasn’t sure what she knew or if she understood what she knew. But she knew something and that it was something that could save Waarrar. Damn!
“He’ll die here, alone. It’s better if we do it.”
“People die alone. This is the way it happens. It’s natural.”
“Gather the others, and we will pray on it.”
Bowing to the inevitable, Danijel reluctantly agreed.
“Waarrar, Waarrar, Waarrar, Waarrar, Waarrar,” they all chanted.
Finally, Danijel said, “All right, all right, Liùsaidh. You just never stop. But this must stop!” He muttered to Liùsaidh, “We must stop interfering so directly. It is against the rules and against common sense.”
She had won though she didn’t understand exactly what she had won. His words confused her. But, she understood that he would save Waarrar, and that was enough—for now.
Louder, speaking to the assemblage, he said, “His will be done.” Then he quietly addressed Liùsaidh again. “I’ll remain with him for a few moments after we depart in the morning and make sure all goes well.”
“Good…thank you, Danijel. I know it’s the right thing.”
***
Later in the day, Micaela bathed carefully in the cold water of the river to prepare herself for Maxtla. It was all very confusing for her, though she assumed, after last night, that she was his woman and had best be prepared to fulfill her new responsibilities. At least her child would have a father. That evening Micaela prepared a meal for Maxtla and herself and then sat by the fire waiting, as darkness fell without any sign of Maxtla.
He must have been delayed by the hunt, she thought. Maybe they killed something large and had to butcher it into smaller pieces before bringing it back to camp. She wrapped the now cold meat—she had no appetite—and hid it away from the animals. Disrobing, she entered her shelter and slipped beneath the furs to wait for Maxtla. She spent the night awake, alone, naked in the darkness, wondering what was happening to her or what had happened to Maxtla.
