The Long Journey Home (Across The Lake Book 2)

by Doug Kelly

  The last rays of the sun gleamed through the thick foliage and glanced on droplets of water clinging to leaves, making them sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow. It was late, and they were too fatigued to think of returning to the shore that evening for their possessions. To conserve their store of dried meat, they ate a meager meal of dandelions, snails, and mussels that they had caught earlier along the shoreline, and they tried to rest. The past excitement of losing the boat and all the drama that had caused, the long march away, the lack of good food: all of it stirred in their minds, and it was all they could do to relax while they silently hoped that they had escaped the cannibal’s realm.

  Weary, they could move no farther along this path, so they tried to rest. The time passed slowly. The sun sank below the watery horizon, and the wind fell to nothing. In an open section of the high canopy of leaves, where an old tree had fallen to the ground and exposed a window to the night sky, the stars appeared against their dark canvas. Night had arrived, and they were restless and weary of the shadowy woods deep in the interior of the forest, so they decided to sleep near the trail. They had chosen a spot under an oak on the green mossy slope, near the trodden path. The night was warm and humid to a degree that Aton did not miss his hunter’s covering, but there was no rest for him, because of his racing mind. Hauk stomped a patch of tall grass flat to the ground and used it like a bed. He put his hand on the handle of his sword, and closed his eyes. Toward dawn, Aton finally fell asleep with his back to a tree’s rough bark. He woke in broad daylight to see Hauk standing next to a man armed with a long spear.

  Aton sprang to his feet. He yelled, “Hauk!” and instinctively felt for his knife, but he immediately realized that the stranger intended neither of them any harm. The man was smiling, leaning on the shaft of his spear, which also doubled as a shepherd’s crook. They looked at each other curiously for a moment. The visitor was clad in a tunic and wore a hat of woven straw. He was very tall and strongly built. The spear was his only weapon, and it was twice his height. His long beard came down on his chest and swayed in the gentle breeze.

  “Relax, Aton. His name is Tig. I met him on my way back down to the beach.”

  Tig, still smiling, bowed his head tranquilly. Aton held out his hand as a gesture of peace, which the other took. Speaking with an unusual accent, Tig expressed his greeting. When Aton tried to explain their predicament, a word Tig spoke reminded him of the race of hill people that roamed the plains and lived on the hilltops near the neighborhood of his clan’s territory. His family had traded metal tools for wool with people that had spoken like the stranger standing in front of them. Aton mimicked his accent, which Tig understood to be another friendly gesture. Slowly, as they continued to speak to each other, their mutual level of comprehension increased.

  Tig told them that he had seen the travois sled, and Aton learned that he was a scout sent ahead to see if the path was clear of enemies. His tribe was on the march with their herds of goats and flocks of sheep, and to avoid a recent influx of cannibals in this section of the marshy woods, they had deviated from their usual forest path to follow the level and open beach to the gap in the trees that Aton and Hauk had already found. While they were talking, the clatter of sheep hooves grew louder from the direction of the beach. Others from Tig’s tribe were arriving.

  Tig explained that during summer, they marched in the night and early morning to avoid the heat of the day. Their resting place was close, but he must go on and see that all was clear. Aton and a joyful Hauk accompanied him. Hauk ecstatically thought that this was their first step out of their forest prison. He had wealth in his pockets and he wanted to spend it. He desperately wanted to taste a free man’s life and was anxious to get to a village to buy his new future.

  Along the dirt trail within the woods, Tig found a freshwater spring. The herder threw down his spear, and began to dam the trickling water with rocks and clay dirt to form a pool where the animals could drink. Hauk assisted him, and the water promptly began to rise. Tig would not allow an entire flock to rush to the water. To avoid confusion and the destruction of the improvised pool, a tribesman and his dog brought in a few sheep at a time. There were plenty of sheep, but only a few cows and goats circled the rising spring water. They had no horses. Their baggage came on the backs of their animals.

  When done at the pool of spring water, the women lit several fires. The women’s stature hardly differed from the men. Both were tall and stout. It was not until the logs burned brightly in their pits that the others gathered around to hear the castaways’ story. The women, after learning that Aton and Hauk were hungry, ran to their inventory of food, and gave them flatbread, goat cheese, butter, dried meat, and a bladder of fresh milk. They could not eat it all. Eager to show his wealth, Hauk gave Tig a darkly stained silver coin, which was one that Aton had gathered at the ancient city, and Tig handed it to the group.

  All the tribesmen laughed, and told Hauk that it was of no value to them, but they passed it from hand to hand, and he noticed that they began to look curiously at Aton and him. Then Tig pointed to Aton and Hauk’s leather shoes, which had remained blackened and appeared scorched. Tig remembered the gloomy staining on the travois sled’s canvas sling. From the mysteriously darkened appearance of these items and the strangers’ clothes, they inferred where the men had been. Superstitious tradition considered survivors of a journey to that region of the lake to be almost like deities. The whole camp now surrounded the two newcomers, and the tribe’s intense curiosity surrounded them, too. With some linguistic difficulties, Aton described their journey over the site of the ancient city, which was interrupted with constant exclamations, questions, and excited conversation. He told them everything, even about the treasure, which meant nothing of value to the tribesmen. The discolored silver coin made its way back to Hauk. To make room at the bottom of his pocket for the coin, he removed the cougar claws, and when he did, several members of the tribe gasped. Hauk made a gratuitous offering of the claws to the hill people, and they happily accepted these symbols of power and virility.

  To the people of Tig’s tribe, cougars were a scourge. Around the forests, they plagued their goats and sheep, and were responsible for much destruction. Understandably, the tribe hated these great felines, but respected them for their abundant strength, stealth, and agility. Although as a group, the tribe had killed cougars with the assistance of their dogs, no one had ever heard of or met a man who had singlehandedly killed one of these nocturnal demons of the forest. After the tribe explained the symbolic power of possessing cougar claws, and the aphoristic attraction it had with women of their community, Hauk’s superstitious mind decided to keep one for himself, because he had found himself attracted to the women of the tribe.

  After Aton and Hauk shared their stories of adventure, the tribe’s disposition toward them changed. At first, the tribesmen had been hospitable, but now they teemed with a deep respect that was somewhat like worship. The elders and their chief treated them with formality and marked admiration. They brought children to see and even to touch them. Their amazement that these men had escaped from the deadly vapors and Hauk’s story of killing a cougar with just a knife and his bare hands was so great that they attributed it to divine intervention, and the tribe looked at them with superstitious awe. The elders asked them to stay, offered them a choice of any of their daughters for marriage, and begged them each to take a place on their tribal council.

  Aton told them that he could not speak for Hauk, but politely offered to stay with them for a while, which was all he could do because his love was for one woman, Esina Regalyon, and he desired to return to her as soon as possible. It had seemed to Aton that as each day passed since his escape, his fondness for her had continually increased. There was only one conclusion in the back of his mind. He could not run away any longer; he had to go back, and by any means necessary get revenge on Lanzo Brill. He was sure that he had made the correct decision to return home. Since he had a general idea of the locat
ion of old Interstate 55, he knew that he could find home again, and in that same direction maybe fulfill his desire for revenge that burned in his heart with an intensity just as hot as the flames of his passion for Esina.

  Hauk enthusiastically agreed to stay and take a woman, but after Aton put a hand to his friend’s shoulder and explained the complexities of cultural differences, Hauk changed his mind. He trusted Aton’s intellectual wisdom and agreed to stay for only as long as Aton did. However, while Aton was scratching a crude map onto the dirt, Hauk did not shy away when a group of women asked him again about fighting the savage cougar. He removed his shirt to show them the bravery of his scars, and he relished the affectionate attention given to him by the tribe’s women, who lusted after the wounds on his chest and ignored the scars of slavery on his wrists. Freedom was truly delightful.

  Aton, after discussing their location on the dirt map, mentioned their hidden possessions and got up to return for them, but the tribe would not allow it. Two tribesmen volunteered for the journey back to the beach, so Aton gave them directions to the hiding spot, which was not necessary. They were confident that they could find it because the travois sled was an easy landmark and not that far away. The tribe remained where they were the whole day and rested from their long journey.

  The herders bombarded Aton and Hauk with more questions, and they answered the tribesmen as clearly as they could, struggling with the accent. They felt too grateful for the tribe’s thoughtfulness not to return their requests with kindness. While the curious people of the hill tribe handled Aton’s bow, they passed his red-fletched arrows around so that the quiver became empty as they inspected his weapons, and the arrows scattered in many inquisitive hands. He astonished them by exhibiting his skill with the weapon, striking a tree with an arrow at a distance much farther than any of their spears could possibly travel. They had never seen shooting like this. Although they were familiar with the bow, it was not a preferred weapon. To them, the spear was more practical. They had nothing but spears and knives.

  While they waited for their fellow tribesmen to retrieve the sled, Aton helped a woman chop a dead, dry branch from a fallen tree. Then he used an axe to make a stack of wood, which he carried for her. Aton preferred that women did not have the burden of physical labor. The women looked on with astonishment, because in their tribes, they considered female labor valuable and appraised it like that of any beast of burden.

  Without knowing it, Aton had appeased and won the respect of the two most powerful parties in the camp, which were the chief and the women. By refusing to lead the tribe, the chief was flattered, possibly preventing future jealous hostility. The act of chopping the wood and carrying the bundle of logs gave him the hearts of the women, because they did not think their labor was oppressive, but it was pleasing to them that he had offered help. That action secured respect from the women of the tribe.

  The two tribesmen who had gone for the sled and supplies, including the buried treasure that Hauk had hidden in the sand, did not return until the next morning. They stepped into the camp, each with the sharp tip of his wooden spear red and dripping with fresh blood. When Aton saw the blood, he wondered if it was from a human. He had seen enough blood spilled and wanted to be finished with the horrors of combat if he could avoid it.

  Nomads had infiltrated the area, and they were searching for their comrades that the cannibals had abducted. Some time ago, Aton and Hauk had found one of the captured nomads who had escaped from the cannibals and died behind the boulder on the beach, and they had witnessed the two remaining captive nomads slaughtered in the bay. The enslaved nomads had already perished at the hands of the cannibals. Evidently, the nomads were still searching for their friends, not knowing that the cannibals had already murdered them. While the nomads had been unsuccessfully searching for their abducted comrades, they had decided to follow the hill people.

  To escape the nomad’s pursuit, the two tribesmen had decided to attack. They took their revenge by climbing into trees that arched over the trail. As the nomads passed under, they stabbed them with their long spears.

  All of the hill tribes had feuded with the nomads for many generations. The nomads followed them to and from their pastures, cut off stragglers, destroyed or stole their sheep, goats, and cattle, and occasionally attacked a tribe. Lately, the skirmishes had increased in frequency and bloodshed. The population of nomads seemed to be increasing.

  Mounted on swift horses, the nomads had an advantage over the hill people. On the other hand, the hill people, being men of great stature and strength, could not be defeated if they had time to form a defensive circle, which was their custom of battle. During times of conflict, the hill people had lost many men to the spears thrown by the nomads, who had ridden to the edge of the hill people’s protective circle, cast their lances, and retreated. If anyone from the hill tribes had ever left their protective formation, the nomads could have easily trampled them down, but when they maintained their defensive perimeter, they would only lose a few, and save many. Large battles were rare. The nomads had watched for opportunities and had executed raids against the hill tribes. The hill people retaliated, and therefore the endless hostilities continued. Wanting to avoid conflict, the hill people regularly posted sentinels, and always sent scouts forward to determine if the way was clear. These skirmishes were so frequent that even the children were accustomed to the horrid scenes of war.

  The tribe’s scouts returned soon after sunrise, which had been coming earlier every day going into the summer months. After their return, Hauk quickly verified that the leather bag of treasure was among their belongings. Sand from the beach was still in the folds and wrinkles of the leather bag. No one had opened the bag since he had buried it on the beach. The camp had patiently waited for the return of these men, and after their arrival, began to move. The march this morning was not a long one because the sky was clear, and the penetrating heat soon exhausted the flocks. Ahead of the animals, Aton accompanied the scout. Hauk trailed behind and flirted with the women. Armed with his bow, Aton was ready to encounter the nomads, but he was wary of another battle. Aton had thought he was through with war when he had escaped Grinald’s war camp, but he was wrong.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  For several days, Aton and Hauk marched onward with the hill people, and then they came to a range of rolling hills, which ancient trees covered in a dense forest. Earlier that year, at the beginning of spring, when the grazing pastures around the hills were still sparse with grass, their herds and flocks had moved to the meadows in the flat lands near the lake for better foraging. In the early days of summer, they returned to the hills, but in the fall, they would return to the pastures of the lower ground. Their tribal homes were in those hilltops, and that was where they thought they would be relatively safe from attacking nomads, but they were wrong.

  The scouts returned with grave news. They reported that a large group of nomads was moving in a direction that would cross their path tomorrow. The chief held a council of the elders, and they determined that the tribe should immediately make a forced march along another route, more to the east, because they thought that by doing so, they might reach the relative safety of their own tribe’s hills by evening. The distance was not great, and the tribe could have easily navigated the new route, but the flocks of sheep and other animals could not travel swiftly. For assistance with the nomads, the chief sent a messenger to summon other tribes from the surrounding hills, and the march began. Traveling off the trail and going through the woods and underbrush made the movement exhausting. The cumbersome route drained everyone, and they all walked lethargically. Toward evening, the trees began to thin, and the slowly marching column reached the first slopes of the hills. There, another tribe joined them, a congregation from the nearest camp. The tribesmen thought that the danger had passed, that the nomads would not attack them on the hill, but that was a mistake.

  Coming along the slope on the right, a large horde of nomads almost immediately
appeared. The nomads were furious that several of their men had recently disappeared, and they suspected the hill people of foul play just as much as they did any tribe of cannibals. Whoever was responsible for the abduction of their comrades was of little concern, because they could easily justify the aggression if they attacked their multi-generational enemy who resided in the hilltops, and extracted revenge for the perceived offense. Spilling the blood of a long-time nemesis would quench their thirst for vengeance, until the next alleged transgression.

  Because of their open movements and numbers, it was evident that the nomads intended battle. The hill people drove their flocks and herds into a narrow valley. All the armed men of the hill tribes formed a circle to envelop the women and children. Standing inside the circle, Hauk watched the hurried men to whom he had given the cougar claws. Men of the tribe were passing the claws around, sharing the sharp amulets with one another as if they possessed some mystical power, a residual energy from the cougar’s jungle spirit, which would augment the bravery of whoever possessed them during battle. Hauk had put one of the claws deep into his front pocket. He pressed the palm of his hand on it, and he felt its outline bulge through the fabric of his pants. If the claw could act as a conduit of supernatural energy, he would gladly accept the bravery of the cougar’s spirit on the battlefield. He had his sword, and he was ready to fight in hand-to-hand combat.