by Doug Kelly
He descended the hill and sheltered himself as best he could under tree branches. After the lightning, the rain poured so heavily that it penetrated the dense canopy of tree leaves and pummeled the ground with large raindrops. He unstrung his bow and placed the string in his pocket, so it would not become wet. Instantly, there was a shout on either side, and two nomads darted from the undergrowth toward him. While he had his trusty bow strung, they had followed him, tracking his footsteps, but the moment he had unstrung his bow, they rushed at him. Aton ran wildly between the trees, breaking branches as he did, but in doing so, he opened a passage for them to follow. They could have easily thrust their spears through him, but their purpose this evening was to take him alive and seek revenge for the death of their fallen comrades by torturing him.
When Aton escaped from the trees, he headed toward a distant tribe’s camp for refuge, but three more nomads were ahead of him. He turned again and went to the steep hill he had just descended. With all his strength, he raced up the slope. His swift feet carried his body nimbly through the forest’s numerous obstacles, and he reached the summit. He knew they would overtake him unless he could quickly think of some ploy. In the instant that he paused to catch his breath while on the peak, a thought struck him; a strategy of survival began unfolding in his mind, but he needed a little more time and distance between the angry nomads him and to bring his idea to fruition, so he raced like the wind along the ridge to escape to the smaller lake, along the same path he had followed in the morning.
Once on the ridge, the five pursuers shouted at him tauntingly. They thought they had him trapped like a scared rabbit, but Aton was not yet ready to quit. Aton was young and in superb physical condition. He kept his lead, and even expanded the gap between the nomads and him, but he knew his pace would falter, just like a wounded deer during the chase; it ultimately submits to a pack of stalking wolves, and dies. Aton knew they would track him until they had him. To stop his pursuers, all he needed was enough time to string the bow and draw an arrow, but he could not get a big enough lead. If he stopped running, they would have him before he could string it and fit an arrow, because they were still too close. While he ran, his mind gestated an idea, but now that he attained the ridge, he was ready to give birth to his clever plan.
Aton kept along the ridge until he reached the place where the small lake narrowed to a river, and then he dashed down the hill toward the water. Dead, fallen branches and trees hindered the path to the water’s edge, but he scrambled over and through all of it anyway. Tearing a path through the bushes, he plunged into dense shrubbery. A branch caught his shirt, so he quickly cut himself free. Then, with the bow and knife still in his hands, he headed to the shore of the small lake and dove into the water. His hope was that the nomads, who were used to traveling in the forest and over the rolling landscape only by riding their hill ponies, might not know how to swim. Luckily for Aton, his assumption was correct. His pursuers stopped on the shore and yelled their loudest. When he had passed the middle of the lake, their rage rose to a unified scream for his head, startling a nearby heron.
Aton safely reached the opposite shore, but the bowstring was wet, and now the bow was also soaked, so both were temporarily useless. He struck off at once, straight across the grasslands. He went past the tall oaks that he had admired from the hilltop, and he ran beyond the green knoll where, in his imagination, he had built a fort and started a settlement. He swam through the stream, which he just realized was larger than it had appeared from the ridge. After a quick sprint into the woods, a wall of green camouflaged him. He rested under a thick tree canopy, still panting from the chase, and tried to regain his bearings to plot a course back to his adopted tribe. The nomads obviously knew of Greenhill’s location, and he thought his pursuers would have cut off his return path back home by infiltrating the woods that surrounded it. Aton decided to go on a long, hard trek to another camp farther east, which was not what he supposed the nomads would expect him to do.
Knowing that the nomads were close, he cursed himself for leaving the relative safety of Greenhill to explore the woods alone and for having no other weapon than the bow. The knife at his side was only practical for self-defense as a last resort if the fight transcended into hand-to-hand combat. If he had a short sword or a spear, he would have faced those nomads who had wanted to attack him. He was very angry with himself for making such a foolish decision as leaving the camp alone, and for the imprudence of wandering without precaution into a territory that so recently was full of nomads. He had killed a lot of them with the very weapon in his hand, and had killed their chief, too. They had every reason to desire his capture, so they could extract their revenge. If he had used the ordinary sensibilities of a hunter, of which he had years of experience, he would have noticed their careless hints left among the trees, and he would not have exposed himself on the bare hilltops where a person was visible for a great distance. He knew all too well that because of this type of carelessness, many lone men had perished in the woods. His predicament was humiliating, and he wondered how he would ever explain his foolish actions. The men of Greenhill had been correct; he should not have left the camp alone.
After recovering from the long sprint and swim to safety, he scolded himself once more, then set off at a moderate pace with long, springy steps. The wet forest was in the worst possible condition for a speedy egress. The rain had soaked the ferns and other undergrowth, and every branch showered raindrops on him as he made his way through the thicket. It was now past sunset. The dusk was upon him and faced him like another enemy by blinding his path, but he used it to his advantage and welcomed the concealment of darkness. He traveled until nearly dawn, turned to the right and reclaimed the line of hilltops at sunrise. He rested and then reached another camp after daybreak. Although this tribe was quite a distance from Greenhill, he had already met them when they had journeyed to his adopted tribe. They had come to meet the mysterious strangers from across the lake. After his unexpected arrival this morning, the tribe that provided him refuge sent a messenger to Greenhill, requesting armed escorts for his return journey through the forest.
While he waited for his bodyguards to arrive, the wet and stormy weather kept him inside, so he spent the next day in a thatch hut recuperating from the chase and the all-night trek through the dark forest. The loud claps of thunder did not wake him. The storm ceased the next day.
Aton took his sore body and walked down the slope to work the stiffness from his joints and muscles. Just past a dense growth of tall shrubbery, which he had to walk around to continue down the slope, he saw a nomad and his hill pony lying on scorched earth, both dead from a lightning strike. He went to inspect the burned carcasses and then sat on a rock the size of a stool while he caught his breath from the jaunt down the steep hill. He saw a small pool of water near the roots of a large sycamore tree, and he thought that the nomad must have known of this tiny spring and went there to drink and shelter himself from the rain. The nomad and his horse had died from a lightning strike during the search for water and shelter. Aton went back to the camp to tell his friends, and then accompanied them back to the tree and showed them what he had found. After seeing the dead nomad and his hill pony, the tribesmen gathered stones, blessed them with an incantation, and began to heap them at the site.
Always wary of lightning, it was their superstitious custom to pile a mound of stones wherever lightning had struck. They always did this with an enchanted stack of rocks to warn others and protect the spot from another strike. It was also their tradition to dismember the carcass of any herd animals that lighting had struck and to take all of the pieces of the disjointed remains to a location that they did not frequent, because of the fear that it was something within the animal that had attracted the deadly lightning. They never dared to eat the meat of an animal that something as mysterious as lightning had killed, or even bring its flesh near the camp. As they labored with the nomad’s body, the carcass of his horse, and mound of stones, At
on told them that there was water here, which was not quickly obvious, because of the general dampness in the area due to the recent torrential storm. It was only a casual remark, because he thought they must have already known.
Because the hill people always desired easy water for their animals, and they considered Aton different and special in a certain sense, they took his casual remark literally and treated it like a command. They brought their tools, dug, and found an ample spring. After moving buried rocks and shovels full of clay, the water gushed out and formed a small stream. The tribe gathered around the mysterious water, and rumors began to spread. This gossip merged his reputation with divinity, because many of the tribe thought that he had summoned the lightning to kill one of their enemies.
Aton did not want this superstitious attribute, and he tried in vain to explain that the water was already there, and the nomad and his horse were already dead from a random lightning strike. He wanted them to realize that he could not summon lightning and bring fresh water from the ground, but that was not what they wanted to hear. There had been lightning; a nomad and his hill pony were dead, and there was a spring of fresh water. In their judgment, after Aton had summoned a mysterious power, one of their sworn enemies and his horse had died, and clear water had emerged from the ground, just where Aton had said it would be. To the tribe, Aton obviously had the power of divine retribution. From the perspective of the hill tribes, he was merely seeking revenge and punishing those who had recently tried to harm him and his friends. This news about Aton spread again, but farther this time.
Some of his old friends from Greenhill arrived to escort him home, and they had already heard the rumors of a miracle. Later, other tribes journeyed from far away to see the spring and the scorched earth for themselves. It was time to leave this tribe’s hospitality and return to Greenhill. Five men with spears had arrived as his chaperones. One man was a scout, who would run ahead and assume the point position, looking for hidden dangers lurking in the forest or along the roads, and the remaining four were to stay by Aton as they went home, two men on either side of him.
Instead of going back to the dirt trail that connected the tribes, which the patrol from Greenhill had just used to arrive here, his escorts went toward a wall of trees on the east side of the camp. He did not question the unexpected direction of travel, because he assumed where they headed was a shortcut through the woods to avoid nomads that might be patrolling the trails. Before leaving, Aton thanked the tribe again, and then gave them a final wave before stepping through the wall of dense trees and shrubbery. He was on his way back to Greenhill. Within a short distance, a vast thicket of tall, magnificent trees encumbered their travel. The exploration of these dense woods was difficult in the extreme. The sun could barely pierce through the thick foliage, and it would have been very challenging for them to retrace their way if they needed to turn around.
After they entered the thick woods and traveled slowly for half of a day, they exited the forest to see a long, wide path of ground that was free of all trees. It was very broad, and two parallel trails went through this swath of land. Because of the straggling nomads and his recent ambush, Aton had not realized that they would go back using a road. He had thought they would return to Greenhill under cover of the forest to avoid an additional confrontation with their enemies. The scout was confident that the nomads who had attacked Aton were stragglers of the group whom they had already vanquished. Recent patrols no longer found nomads in the area, so the main highway, which was the ancient road that Aton had been searching for, was clear to use. Aton was delighted. Travel on such a wide and level path would make the journey so much quicker and easier than trudging through all of the dense forest’s obstacles. In fact, if he had a horse, the journey to Greenhill would comparatively take no time at all. Thinking of travel by horse on a wide and clear thoroughfare had brought a thought to him. From the position of the sun, and from where he guessed he was relative to the lake, he thought the ancient highway known as Interstate 55 was directly under his feet. Aton was overjoyed, because he was familiar with this road, and he had already traveled on its southern extremity years earlier. His careless journey away from Greenhill had led him to a path back to his family and Esina. Using a hill pony that they had captured from the slain nomads, it would take him relatively little time to get home. His desire to return to his clan was burning hotter than ever. As they traveled using the ancient highway on the way back to Greenhill, all he could think about was Esina, home, and revenge.
Within a week’s return to Greenhill, Aton’s fame had traveled among most of the hill people. Some had traveled days to see him. He tried to explain away this growing superstitious belief that he had spiritual powers, but they would not listen, because they wanted a deity, something to give them hope in times of despair. The story now was that he had single-handedly defeated the nomads. They no longer had to fear the nomads or the cannibals. Nobody doubted the nomad’s defeat, so the story of Aton’s unassisted victory continued. The tale of Aton’s lightning strike that had killed a nomad and his horse, and had obviously burned the ground as a testament to his divine power, also added to his reputation. The clear-water spring that Aton had identified was also there for the world to see. The water appeared to have emerged through jagged rocks, and that gave it a mysterious appearance, so the story of his healing waters spread with the desire for hope and salvation.
The hill tribes ignored his humble denials of the facts. These simple people understood nothing but the events as they perceived them to be. To them, the defeat of the nomads, summoning deadly lightning, and the discovery of the spring were nothing less than supernatural. Hauk was very brave in the face of battle and had undoubtedly killed a cougar with his bare hands and a knife, so it was obvious that Aton’s great spirit could affect those that surrounded him. Besides all that, it was true that Aton was different from the people of Greenhill. He had spent his life educating himself, and with this superior knowledge, he had set himself apart. Aton was a man unlike any other that they had ever seen.
They also sought his wisdom by bringing him irreconcilable disputes, but he did not want the position of judge. Members of the surrounding tribes persisted, and it was useless to try ignoring their requests. They would patiently wait for the intelligence and fairness of his decisions. What he disdained and feared the most were sick people who wanted Aton to heal them. Some merely went to the spring to drink from the water. It seemed to cure all ailments, or at least that was what the stories indicated, which had increased his fame. Concerning medicine, Aton was firm. He would not attempt to cure or heal, and they went away. He did share his knowledge of medicinal plants and they came back. He feared that if the rumors persisted, an angry tribesman might have an unreasonable expectation of Aton’s abilities and kill him because of emotional frustration due to a sick or dying loved one not recovering under his care. Aton considered this a dangerous circumstance and thought of a way to remove himself from medicine. He announced that he was going to plant a garden of medicinal plants, but not administer any medication himself. He would tell their own healers all that he knew, so that they could use his knowledge. Aton gave wild herbs to the shamans of several tribes, and they carried out Aton’s instructions. When people professed that Aton’s medicinal herbs had relieved certain ailments, it furthered his reputation.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Aton began to understand a constant, everlasting truth: life’s difficulties would always confront him. Success might change the nature of his complications, but it would increase their frequency, too. He realized that his father, Davin Matin, a clan leader respected by the common man, a person with a lifetime of experience exposed to the political complexities that come with the acquisition of power, was correct when he had given him sage advice, instructing him to stay in the figurative middle of the road on his journey through life. There, in the median of life’s road, is where Davin had believed his son would be content, with a humble existence between the extreme
ditches that frame life’s path. He thought that was where Aton could avoid the misery of hardship along with the labor and suffering of most people. Along that straight and narrow path, the pride, luxury, and ambition of being a warlord would not embarrass his son. Maintaining a steady course down a straight and narrow pathway was how his father had found satisfaction, and he thought that should be perfectly suitable for Aton, too. Now that success seemed to smile on Aton, difficulties faced him in every direction, but he had become a man with power. Although he had power, what good was it if it seemed impossible for him to do anything?
Long ago, he had dreamed of leaving the constraints of his clan, and planned to seek adventure while searching for a battlefield where he could prove his bravery in combat. That prospect for adventure had turned into a nightmare when he had to flee his home to save himself from the vengeful backlash of his warlord’s wrath. Whether he had fulfilled his dream of adventure, or had suffered through a nightmare exodus, was irrelevant now, because either way he had left his home, and along that journey had discovered bravery in battle, a good friend, and treasure. He had survived horrific trials and tribulations, and he considered himself a better man for surviving in the midst of such harsh adversity. Now that he was at a place to reflect on his recent successes, which unfortunately was after he had to leave his family and the woman he loved, he began to reconsider the merits of life as a fugitive. He had an idea that he might be able to establish his own clan that could prosper into a city, by using his newfound wealth. If bringing that idea to fruition were possible, he would take Esina away from her father and snatch her from Lanzo’s clenched talons, while saving his family, too.
