Across The Lake

by Doug Kelly

  The men quickly discovered his strong intellect, but that did not surprise them. It was extremely common for unfortunate people to descend to menial positions when they left the clan to which they naturally belonged. That occurred easily when one was without the benefit of nepotism. Proud men, outside the influence of their family, were less than the lowest servant was. His new acquaintances would have resented any show of pride, and would quickly have made his life intolerable, so he showed none. He had swallowed his pride deep and washed it away with the ale they shared, but they still expected him to do more than his share of the work.

  Aton listened with amazement to the revelations of the inner life of the camp and court. Grinald’s weaknesses, his extravagant greed and continual intoxication, his fits of temper, his follies and eccentricities seemed as familiar to the stable workers as if they had resided with him. As for the field commanders, they knew all their vices, too. Greed and crime must have their vehicles; illicit vehicles were always careless, and therefore secrets escaped. All the rumors circulating around Acadia, the secret collusions with other cities, the influence of certain women…there was nothing that they did not know.

  Seen from below, from the bottom of the food chain, the whole society appeared rotten and corrupted, foul to the last degree, and exhilarated only by the lowest motives. That very gossip seemed criminal to Aton, and he did not think that it was just the tales of servants. Had members of the ruling class used such language, then it would have been treason. As the son of a clan leader, Aton had previously seen things only from the point of view of his own class. Now that he associated with the stable workers, he began to see society from their point of view, and recognized how feebly brute force, intrigue, and a woman's flirtations held it together. It would take just a push to overthrow it, but there was no one to give that push, and if any such plot had formed, those very slaves who suffered the most would have been the men to eagerly give information and to torture the plotters. There was no honor among thieves.

  Aton had never dreamed that common and illiterate men, such as these peasants, could have any conception of political maneuvering, or the cunning intentions of courts. He found that, although they could not read or write, they had learned the art of reading men to such perfection that they could immediately detect motive, even if it was camouflaged. They read men the same as a hunter reads a tracked animal. They understood men just as they understood their horses and dogs. They knew every mood in those animals, just as they did with their masters.

  Aton thought of himself as a skilled hunter, and understood how to work with wood. He quickly found how mistaken he had been. He had acquired woodcraft as a privileged person, and now he learned the common man’s talented skills. They taught him a hundred tricks of which he had had no idea. He began to understand that high principles and abstract theories were only words to the masses.

  One day he saw a warrior from the warlord’s ranks accost a merchant in the midst of the camp, in broad daylight, and rob him of all his coins. At least a dozen people looked on, but they were only servants and slaves. The word of a warrior in Black Fang’s service would stand against anybody; therefore, he had plundered the innocent citizen with impunity. The villain flung the smaller coins to the crowd, keeping the gold and silver for himself, and walked away.

  Aton saw a slave with his bloody arms stretched around a tree, and someone had driven nails through his wrists to hold him there. Someone cruel had left him to die in agony. No one knew what he had or had not done. Maybe his master had simply grown bored with him. They placed a guard to prevent anyone coming to answer his cries for mercy. Aton could not express his horror and resentment. He was totally helpless.

  On certain occasions, Aton was not sure of his own state of mind. He did not understand whether his spirit had been broken, whether he was disgusted by the men with whom he lived, or why he remained with them. He understood that he did not need to practice their evils, but after they had exposed their sinful ways to him, they repulsed him because he knew that he had greater morals and human character. Therefore, because of the mental conflict, he remained apathetic, and the days passed on. He really did not have much to do, but discipline was so lax that the rest put their burdens on him because the commanders treated the slackers equally as well as the most reliable. The two things that all the men around him seemed to rejoice at were gorging themselves with food, and dry weather, because in the misery of camp life when hungry or the weather was stormy, those two things made camp life almost unbearable.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  There was a review of horses outside the war camp, and Aton, required to attend to his commander’s steed, was occasionally near his new warlord when going around the camp. On one of those occasions, Aton finally saw Grinald from a close distance, and he looked every bit of what rumors had reported him to be. A man of unusual size, his bulk rendered him conspicuous in the front of the masses. His enormous head seemed to fit well with the reign of absolute power. Grinald’s skin was as black as his hair. His hairline was receding because he was not a young man, but thick ringlets of dark hair covered the back of his head so densely that it partially concealed the laurel wreath that he wore to signify his position. His hair reminded Aton of the wool from a black ram. Grinald had thrown off his shoulders an elegant cloak that reached the middle of his thigh. A long sword hung at his side. He owned a powerful black horse, eighteen hands high, by far the finest animal on the field. Whenever he mounted his steed, the two large beasts melded as one and appeared like a slow moving mountain of darkness as the horse trotted under Blank Fang’s great weight. He was a giant of a man and required a massive animal because of his size. Therefore, his horse was also of colossal proportions, and was by far the largest steed in his war stable. His entourage had to keep a wide mounting block close by to help him mount and dismount the horse. If no mounting blocks were convenient, the back of a slave would do just fine.

  Aton passed near enough to notice that the color of Grinald’s eyes were as black as night, and from that same distance, he saw the origin of his battlefield moniker, the notorious Black Fang. In such sharp contrast to all his other straight white teeth, he had one canine tooth that was as black as his skin, so dark it appeared as an empty gap, but it was there: long, sharp, and black, like a black fang.

  One fable told that he had acquired the dark tooth during his childhood while living near the swamp. In all of the versions of the story, a few variables remained consistent; a cursed alligator had attacked him when he was a young child, alone near a marshy section of the lake. Prior to the attack, the alligator had strayed into a forbidden and haunted section of the swamp, near the devastated remains of the ancient city of Baton Rouge. The lingering poisons surrounding the ancient inhabitation had overcome the alligator, weakening it, which allowed the spirits of the dead who haunted the area to use the reptile as a vessel to escape from where their cursed souls had lingered for many generations. The possessed alligator, now black from the tip of its snout to the tip of its tail, slinked away through the polluted waters, under the control of a demonic force. Later, the dark alligator found its victim, young Grinald, near the water’s edge, and the boy was unsuspecting of the impending offensive. When Grinald leaned over the lake, his hands cupped to drink from it, the long dark snout of the alligator thrust through his reflection, which had been vivid and well defined on the smooth surface of the water, and pierced the tranquility of the moment by snapping at him with the sharp teeth of its narrow jaws. During the struggle with the attacking reptile, Grinald had bitten it to defend himself, and eventually killed it with his bare hands during the fight. Through one of Grinald’s clenched teeth, as it pierced the alligator’s thick skin, the haunting spirits had fled their dying reptilian vessel and infected their newest host, trapping themselves in one of his upper canine teeth, which caused its darkness and deformed shape, like a black fang.

  From the warlord’s face, the impression Aton observed was that of a strong intel
lect, but a still stronger physique. Aton assumed the strength of Grinald’s form could easily overrule another man’s intellect. All the people looked at their leader with great admiration, and it was difficult to think that he could degrade himself by floundering in unrefined indulgences.

  As for the review of troops, although it was a magnificent display of personal arms and brave horses, Aton could not help but notice that these soldiers appeared extremely unorganized in their movements and constantly quarreled about order and precedence. As the troops displayed themselves to the crowd, their vanities fought for dominance. He soon understood that discipline was irrelevant in that venue. The troops were displaying their personal courage and dexterity. The review was the prelude to battle, and Aton had hoped to have some actual lessons in warfare.

  He was mistaken. Instead of a grand assault or a regular approach, the fighting so far was merely a series of skirmishes with small detachments and clusters of the enemy. Two or three warriors with their servants and slaves would go across the stream, and after riding right past the sieged city, attempt to sack some small community or the homestead of a wealthy merchant. Because of those regular affronts, a small counter attack from the city would usually follow. Sometimes the two foes only threatened each other at a distance, the first retreating as the second advanced. Sometimes they shot a few arrows, occasionally making contact, but the casualties were rarely heavy.

  On one occasion, a squadron of enemy horsemen followed a returning party that had attacked a nearby town. The attackers and their pursuers headed toward the stream near the warlord’s quarters, and got within a spear’s throw of it. Enraged at their approach, several from Grinald’s cavalry mounted their horses and rode out to reinforce the returning detachment, which had acquired plenty of loot. Finding themselves reinforced, they threw down their plunder and turned their horses, and Aton saw for the first time a real and desperate fight. It was quickly over. Grinald’s cavalry, with far better horses and mounted by men filled with desire to exhibit their valor to the camp, charged furiously. It was evident in the spirit of their charge that they fully intended to defeat and ride over the enemy.

  Aton saw the troops meet; there was a crash and cracking as their spears broke; four or five rolled from the saddle onto the trodden shoots of corn, and the next moment the entangled mass of men and horses unwound as the enemy hastened back to the walls. Aton was eager to join the fight, but he had no horse or weapon. It would have been his first chance to prove himself in battle. He thought that actual combat would determine if he possessed the spirit of true bravery, or if he might lose his resolve and meander away, like the nearby stream.

  The warlord had been on the back of his horse reviewing the camp when the clash of warriors caught his attention. He tapped his heal into his stallion’s side and it trotted forward with a jolt to get a closer view of the engagement across the stream. During the battle, his men’s bravery had impressed him, and he waited for them to cross the water when they were through. The warriors experienced a battle trance, completely focused on the fight, protecting their lives, and preserving their loot. They had no idea they were performing for such an important audience. After they crossed the stream, they noticed the warlord’s admiring eyes and pulled the reins to stop their horses, then lowered their heads as a sign of respect to their ruler.

  Grinald was superstitious man. Recent dreams of failure had secretly plagued him. Since the nightmares of defeat had haunted him at the encampment, he had been searching for a sign, some revelation that the subconscious curse was not true. His soldiers’ indifference to fear in combat was the sign he was looking for, and he picked it like a spring flower for a new lover, and put it in the vase of a happy memory. They raised their heads when they heard his horse’s enormous hooves pound the ground as he galloped away. With his deep voice he yelled, “We march tomorrow!” He repeated his order throughout the camp and nearly crushed a dozen men as he carelessly raced his horse around the tents and huts. Aton was going to war. He was ready to trade his horse brush and water bucket for a bow and quiver full of arrows.

  After the dust settled, the soldiers spent the afternoon breaking camp and loading their supplies onto the wagons. The commanders huddled together with the warriors from their villages and gave the order to march to the next city at sunrise. They explained to the clan leaders that at a slow march’s pace, it would take several days to get there. The city knew they were coming, and there would probably be small skirmishes with scouting parties and advance troops along the way, but they were marching to a city of merchants, wealthy merchants. The promise of riches rang in every soldier’s ears. Aton had heard the promise, but he also remembered his father’s warning against seeking battle and conquest. He remembered Hauk’s warning, too. The moral dilemma wreaked havoc in his mind. He desired to prove himself in combat and be like his father and cousin Briand. That way he could attest to himself that he possessed bravery and could be a leader of men. A little voice whispered in his mind a gruesome question. “What if you get hacked to pieces?” The query caused him to tremble, and then he sternly told himself that all men must die sometime. He was going to be a warrior and that was it, no more mental debate. He marched back to his tent for the night, and on the way a little voice in his head kept whispering, “Run. Just run away.” The little voice had already planted the seeds of vacillation and now they were germinating.

  The following day he marched with a purpose toward the next siege, almost like he was running from those haunting whispers, but he could not run from his self-doubt. It followed him like a dark shadow. Just prior to sundown, before the expanding darkness of the forest began to creep again across the unfamiliar landscape, they camped close to a stream that meandered like a serpent in the night. Under the silver moon, a gloomy river in the shadow of its banks flowed at the warriors’ feet. That night, when the stream had transformed into a dark and sad cloud, flowing like a channel of tears down a wounded giant’s face, Aton saw campfires across it, glowing like red predator eyes in the night, pocked randomly around the battle camp. Finally, he had a bow and a quiver full of arrows. He had exchanged his horse brush and water bucket for weapons of war, which were by his side as he tried to find a comfortable place on the ground where he could sleep. That night, his dreams turned into nightmares filled with haunting images of desertion and failure on the battlefield. During his bad dreams, he flopped on the dirt like a fish out of water as he tried to escape the chilling voice that narrated his nightmares, continually urging him to, “Run. Just run away.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  In the morning, the dew left reluctantly from the grass and the waning fog revealed a throng of Grinald’s warriors speckled across the countryside, sleeping. They slowly woke as the ground warmed from the rising sun. Aton listened with eager ears to the conversations of fellow soldiers and to the various comments of his companions concerning their fate. After receiving his fill of discussions regarding marches and impending attacks, he returned to his tent and crawled inside it. He wished to be alone with some new thoughts concerning battle and manhood.

  Aton was in a little daze of amazement because he was finally going to fight in real combat. Soon there would be a battle. A siege would follow, and he would participate in all of it. For a while he had to keep telling himself that it was actually true and make himself believe that it was not a delusion. He had fantasized of battles all his life; tenuous dreams of bloody conflicts had thrilled him. In his youthful mind, he had imagined himself in many skirmishes. He had often dreamed that the bright magnificence of his bravery had blinded enemies and kept his clan and family secure. While awake, he had regarded the battle that he had yet to fight as the greatest conflict a man could endure, with everyone remembering him as the hero afterwards. They all would regard him in the same respect given to his father, a great warrior, clan unifier, who had helped consolidate an empire for his warlord. This was his destiny. Briand would be proud, too.

  He had often thought of b
ecoming an archer with a conquering army, especially after hearing tales of great troop movements that shook the land as allied clans marched to battle. Those fantastic stories told by the survivors of many great battles enticed him most of all. Some might have been fables, but there seemed to be abundant glory in them. He had heard of marches, sieges, conflicts, and he had desired to experience all of it. His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures, extravagant in color, vivid with heroic endeavors. His father’s words were the brush, Aton’s imagination was the canvas, and his quest to prove that he was a brave man had framed the masterpiece of his desire.

  His father and mother had tried to discourage him. Davin Matin could calmly seat himself next to Aton, and with no apparent difficulty, give him countless reasons why he was vastly more important to the clan by remaining at the enclosure rather than venturing onto the battlefield. He had certain ways of expression that told Aton that his statements on the subject came from a deep conviction and love for him. Because of that, Aton understood that his father’s principle motive in the argument, the love for an only child, was unyielding. He loved his father and respected his wisdom, but peer pressure was the immovable object to Davin’s irresistible force. A variable in that paradox had finally yielded when Aton fled from the spring festival, framed for a murder that he had not committed.

  When Aton was much younger, rumors and village gossip about whether certain young men would or would not join the warriors for battle, and his own opinions of war and conquest, had roused him on a fateful night. That night at home, as he lay in bed, the winds had carried to him the beat of war drums announcing another clan victory. The sound of the people rejoicing in the night had made him shiver in a prolonged ecstasy of excitement. Returning warriors embraced their families, and they shared tears of joy and the plunders of conquest.