by Doug Kelly
Outside the ring of spears, Aton took his stand on the battlefield beside the remains of a grand old oak tree that had fallen a long time ago. A blanket of velvet moss covered the dead tree, which was on a higher section of ground, and Aton thought that this elevated position could give him an advantage when he shot his bow. The tribe begged him to enter the circle, and when that did not work, Hauk forcefully tried to pull his friend into it. Aton explained to Hauk that he could not shoot if they surrounded him, and he intended to divert the nomad’s attention away from the women and children. They gripped forearms, and Hauk went back inside the defensive circle, drawing his sword, ready to fight.
Aton unslung his quiver, and placed it on the ground by his feet. He stuck the tips of several arrows into the dirt, so that he could grab them quickly, and then he clutched two arrows in his left hand while he held the bow, ready to launch an arrow with his lethal precision. The arrow he had nocked to the string was ready to kill, but he suddenly wondered if he was prepared to engage another enemy in combat. Aton had thought he was through with war, but he found himself yet again observing an enemy advance toward him, intent on snuffing away his life.
The nomads began to trot down the slope. Because of the rough terrain, they could not surround the hill people, and the aggressors could only advance for a frontal assault. Aton felt his breathing and pulse become rapid, and he felt the tension of impending battle rise in his body. He felt a nervous tremble affect his hand. The effect of this anxiety made him think of Briand and his cousin’s brave behavior in the heat of serious battle.
He heard his friends call from inside the circle, begging him to retreat and enter the safety of the defensive perimeter. He began to doubt his courage. He looked at the circle of tribesmen with spears held ready for combat, and for a brief moment thought about joining them, but he repressed the urge to dash behind their spear tips in search of safety and refuge from the impending battle. He turned to look at the nomads, and they were still advancing. Then he had a sobering thought. Why should I be scared? It was a legitimate question, because he had already survived combat in service to Grinald, the cruelest of warlords. He had already proven his bravery on the battlefield, and he had confidence in his expertise with a bow and arrow. However, in another moment of self-doubt, he took his eyes off the advancing enemy to look at the safety of the circle again. The teary eyes of a terrified child, whose mother held her tightly in a loving embrace, brought him back to his senses. He knew what he had do, which was protect this tribe, so he raised his bow. As his resolve to fight finally solidified, his vision tunneled, and he saw nothing but a confused mass of charging men on their galloping beasts, coming toward them, closing the gap. The nomads were within range of his arrows. He selected his targets, who were the men leading the charge. He pulled the bowstring, planted his left foot solidly on the ground in front of him and aimed for a horseman’s throat, but instead of piercing the neck, the arrow hit the moving target in the center of the advancing enemy’s chest. The nomad slumped off his charging horse, and hit the ground, tumbling like a discarded ragdoll.
After the nomads saw their point-man fall, they paused and widened the breadth of their frontal assault. Each charging man raised his spear to be ready for the throw when the advancing pack approached closer to the hill tribe’s defensive circle. For his next victim, Aton chose the chief, who was giving orders and directing the charge. He quickly drew back another arrow. The bow obeyed, and the string hummed. The metal-tipped arrow flew as straight as an eagle, swiftly plunging through the air, searching for its prey. The arrow embedded deep into the chief’s throat. The nomad leader’s arms went limp, and his body leaned back in the saddle with the arrow’s shaft pointing straight up into the air, like a flagpole of surrender. Without their chief, the horde of advancing nomads lost their organization and discipline.
The hill people shouted with joy and raised their long spears. Aton shot again, and another charging nomad collapsed to the hard ground. Although the enemy was closer, making the mounted nomads easier to hit with his arrows, Aton noticed that the advance had slowed. He shot more arrows; all of them found their marks, and more dead nomads went to the ground. The hill people screamed loudly with delight. Completely unfamiliar with this type of fighting, and after losing their chief, the nomads finally retreated. Aton sent death through the air again, and more nomads collapsed during their withdrawal. Aton felt the rage of battle burn deep inside him. His eyes gleamed. His lips were open, and his nostrils were wide like a horse running a race. He felt indestructible. As he snatched up his quiver, he shouted for Hauk to raise his sword and for the hill people to follow him with their spears, and he ran forward to pursue the retreating enemy. The nomads fled quickly, but they stopped at a safe distance from Aton’s arrows.
Aton ran at full speed. He was lighter and swifter than the others were, and he left them behind. In the lead position, he charged the horsemen as they formed a line to commence another attack. He kept the higher ground as he ran, but stopped suddenly when he found a grassy knoll to continue his offensive from an elevated location. His arrows flew through the air, raining down misery on his enemies, and more nomads fell dead to the ground. A dozen of them galloped toward Aton, but they also charged directly into his swift arrows. Those in the lead died, and the rest withdrew. The hill people came running to Aton, and he ordered them to attack the retreating nomads. His confidence gave him authority, and they obeyed his commands. As the hill people charged, he shot a barrage of arrows, and the deadly projectiles found their victims with ease. Suddenly, the nomads turned and fled into the brushwood on the lower slopes.
Breathless, Aton sat down on the knoll, and the hill people swarmed around him. They raised their spears, cheering for Aton and the victory. Before they had a chance to speak, there was a shout, and they saw a cluster of neighboring tribesmen descending the hill. The messenger had successfully summoned hundreds of them. The other arriving tribesmen were too late to join in the fight, but they had seen the last of it. The hill tribes examined the battlefield. In many instances, the arrows had nearly gone through the bodies, which lacked defensive armor. Then, for the first time, they understood the immense power of the bow and arrow in combat with skillful hands. They retrieved the spent arrows and gave them back to Aton.
Aton was overwhelmed with attention, and they almost crushed him when they surrounded their hero. The woman he had seen protectively holding her crying child with a loving embrace, as if it were the final hug they would share, fell at his feet and kissed them, but the archer was speechless; the adrenaline was gone; he just wanted to rest.
At the encampment, he threw himself on the grass by the fallen oak, relaxed under tree branches thick with green leaves, and cleared his mind. The tribe talked all night about Aton and Hauk’s adventures in the marshes of the ancient city of Baton Rouge, the boat Aton had made, the cougar Hauk had killed with just a knife, and Aton’s skilled archery.
The next morning, the camp set out for their summer home in the hilltops, and hundreds of hill people joined the exodus. The tribespeople gave their two newest guests souvenirs of the fallen nomads. They gifted Aton and Hauk with golden earrings, coins, other jewelry, and a gold broach from the chief’s horse blanket. Hauk gave some of the plunder to the women.
After a day’s long march, they arrived at the tribe’s summer home. The tribe had named this place Greenhill. Aton immediately saw how easily they could fortify this location. There was a deep and narrow valley that appeared like a groove or green trench opening to the south. At the upper end of the valley, a hill rose, not very high, but steep, narrow at the ridge, and steep again on the other side. Over it was a broad and wooded valley of great beauty, and beyond that, more rolling hills. Toward the foot of the narrow ridge, a succession of cliffs hindered an approach from that direction. There was a spring in the gorge of the enclosed, narrow valley. The hill people had formed pools of water for their animals, one after the other, and farther down, where the vall
ey widened, there were open acres of meadow for grazing. The spring then ran into a babbling brook that formed a border with the rugged forest.
Aton's idea was to erect a log wall along the boundary of the brook and up both sides of the valley to the ridge. There, he could build a fort. They could connect the edges of the cliffs with a wall to form a complete enclosure. He mentioned his plan to some of the chiefs, but they did not seem to care for it, or maybe they just did not understand its advantages. The rugged nature of the country had not easily permitted the nomadic horsemen to enter. On the hill, they had always been secure without a manmade barrier, because the slope of the hills provided a defensive advantage, but now they were so completely under Aton’s influence, that they set his idea into motion just to please him.
Aton had to show them how to make a sharp post for a defensive wall of logs, and he made the first one, exhibiting his skill with an axe. The hill people were adept at building a wall with loose stones, without using mortar, but the construction of a log palisade was unfamiliar to them. Soon they had the wall along the brink of the cliffs erected, and they constructed the fort on the top of the ridge shortly after. The fort consisted merely of a circular wall as tall as a man, with openings for archers that would only be useful if they should ever adopt that weapon and attain that skill.
When it was finished, Aton had a sense of leadership and confidence. In this fort, he felt as if he could rule the world. From day to day, hill people came from the more distant parts to see the famous archer, the brave swordsman, and to admire the enclosure. Although the idea of a fortification had never occurred to the hill people, now that they saw it, they fully understood its advantages. Based on Aton’s advice, two other chiefs erected similar garrisons. While Aton explained the details of effective fort building, Hauk enjoyed the attention provided by the tribe’s eligible women.
Aton and Hauk needed new clothes. Their long journey had stained, tattered, and torn their garments. The people of Greenhill had unanimously accepted Aton and Hauk as members of the tribe, so the elders decided that their honored guests should also share the same attire. A representative of the chief brought them to the woman that usually made most of the tribe’s clothes. She had years of experience making the wool fabric from which she had created much of her tribe’s apparel.
They arrived at her hut to see that she was busy instructing an apprentice how to use a loom. Standing behind her, they briefly watched as she skillfully turned wool yarn into a wide length of fabric. Hauk had already met the woman, so he introduced her to Aton. She was very glad to meet Aton and even more happy to be doing a service for these mysterious strangers. She began by taking an estimate of their sizes. Precision was not necessary to tailor their style of clothing. The tribespeople wore similar clothes, leather pants and a wool tunic. In their society, members of the tribe did not use garments to designate status or as a fashion statement. Apparel was purely functional.
At first, Aton did not notice the ring that Hauk had given to the woman, which was on the middle finger of her right hand. Hauk had taken it from one of the dead nomads as a souvenir. It was large for a woman’s finger and made of silver, but she did not consider it valuable, just a trinket. When her hand swept by Aton’s face as she measured the width of his shoulders, he realized something about the ring; it had an insignia. He asked to see it, and the woman graciously complied and offered it to Aton as a gift. She thought that he desired it for himself, which was odd to her, because she was used to men, or at least the men in her tribe, not wearing jewelry. Aton did not really want the ring. He just wanted to get a closer look at it, so he pulled her right hand closer to his eyes, and to his astonishment, the ring’s emblem was that of the warlord Olar Regalyon, Esina’s father. Now, Aton did want the ring. He told the woman that he actually needed it, because the silver band meant something to him that he could not explain to her. She did not care, because it was just a trinket, something from a battlefield. She shrugged her shoulders at the request and waved her hand in his direction to offer him the ring. To thank her for the ring and the clothes that they would soon receive, he dashed to their treasure trove of jewelry in the dark leather bag, and he removed a gift for her. It was a gold ring, set with a faceted ruby. It glittered in the sunlight, not like the tarnished silver band she had just given him. She graciously accepted the present. Aton told her that the gold ring was a gift from Hauk and him. It fit nicely on the middle finger of her right hand, not like the other ring that was bulky and got in the way when she wove fabric with the loom.
After measuring the men, she let them know it would not take long to make the tunics. The fabric was complete. All that remained was to stitch the seams, and for that task, she had the help of an apprentice. The leather pants would be ready later that night. She sent them on their way to the stream to take a bath, but before they left, she gave them some lye soap. She thought they stunk worse than the tribe’s herds of goats or flocks of sheep.
While Aton and Hauk were naked in the water of a nearby stream, scrubbing the stench from their bodies with the harsh lye soap, she delivered them two new wool tunics. She put the new garments on a bush beside the creek and took their old clothes with her, wanting to burn the stinking clothes in a fire. She admired her new gold ring, set with a faceted ruby, which sparkled in the daylight all the way back to camp.
After they dressed, Aton showed the silver ring’s insignia to Hauk and explained to him that he had no doubt it had belonged to someone important in Olar Regalyon’s service. Most likely, the nomads had killed an important man and taken the ring from the corpse. Either the nomads were raiding closer to Aton’s home, or someone from the warlord’s estate had traveled far away, into dangerous territory. Regardless, the thought of raiding nomads anywhere near Esina was uncomfortable to say the least. In his mind, Aton scolded himself again for running away from Olar’s estate and abruptly leaving his family and Esina. He resolved that he should have stood his ground, fought, and remained with the woman he loved, but he had not, and for that, Aton felt very ashamed. Now, he felt more than ever like he needed to return home, which was where he could redeem his honor, and most of all, extract his revenge.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Aton was anxious to continue his journey, but he did not want to leave the hill people. Nestled in the rolling hills, his life was so pleasant here, which was in sharp contrast to that through which he had suffered. His dreams of love for Esina and revenge against Lanzo were becoming more vivid as each day passed. It was hard to think of anything other than getting closer to home, his family, and the woman he loved. He desperately wanted to know if she was safe. As for Hauk, he had never been happier in all of his life, because he was free, and the hill people had no concept of slavery or prejudice against him. To these people, the scars on his wrists were as much a symbol of masculinity and bravery as were the scars on his chest. In fact, his wounds were very appealing to the tribe’s women, who were a carnal indulgence that Hauk found hard to satisfy.
As usual, when pondering his thoughts, Aton wandered over the hilltops, and then into the depths of the peaceful forest. At first, the Greenhill tribe insisted on at least two of their men accompanying Aton when he ventured away. They were fearful that the nomads might find him alone in the forest, or if he got too close to the swampland, a cannibal from the glade might pounce on him like a cougar from the shadows, but in either case, the unintended outcome of the surprise encounters would be the same for Aton: death. This accompaniment was annoying to him. In time, he convinced them that he was a much better hunter than any man from Greenhill, or any man from the other tribes of the surrounding area, so the council of elders eventually permitted him to roam alone.
During one of these expeditions into the forest, he discovered another beautiful lake. He looked down on the water from the summit of a bare hilltop. He thought it was not far across this lake, because he could see to the other side. On the opposite shore, the grassy meadow was dotted with tall oak trees. Th
e woods framing the open field joined with the oak trees farther away and became one extensive forest. Beyond it were rolling hills covered with lush, green vegetation. He imagined a stockade of his own in the little clearing. Through the grassland on the left side, he visually traced the course of a large stream flowing down to the calm water, entering it on the right, and the lake gradually narrowed to a river on his left. Once more, he wondered if this were where he could start a new life with Esina, away from the political corruptness that surrounded her family. He yearned for the day that he might make it back home.
He followed the course of the stream that left the small lake, occasionally disturbing wild boars as he walked along, and twice he saw white-tailed deer under the oaks across the water. Farther along, he saw that the river flowed in the direction of Lake Pontchartrain. This stream was a tributary to the lake from where he had originally started his journey in the crude sailboat.
Curving toward him, a short cliff almost overhung the river and jutted out into the newly discovered lake. A fort on that cliff could command the entrance to the river. The cliff was a natural breakwater, which would allow a harbor at its base. The stream appeared broad and deep enough for merchant vessels. Aton was enthralled with this spot and the beauty of the small lake, the unmistakable richness of the soil, the beautiful river connecting with the larger lake, and the cliff commanding its entrance. In all his imagination, he had never thought an expanse of land so desirable for a settlement and the founding of a city. He remained here a long time, designing it all in his mind.
The base of his imaginary fort would be next to the brook, because it looked more peaceful there than on the shore of the lake. He desired to clear the forest back a little way and erect a wall that enclosed a large pasture of grassland for livestock. Beside the shore of the lake, he wanted to build a town, so that his fleet of ships might easily engage in commerce and increase his riches. His vivid daydreams kept him here almost until sunset and prevented him from noticing the brewing storm clouds. A clap of thunder closed the curtains on his imagination’s theatrical performance, and he saw a rainstorm rapidly approaching.
