“The secret of our success against the three elders may provide a key. What if we identify our warriors from among the least likely villagers to perform the security role? Imagine what shamans and women warriors might do!” Her pacing back and forth as if deep in thought indicated she was excited about the prospect.
“I’ll have to reflect on these matters, but I agree with you in principle. Something must be done. It must be done soon. Then too, it must be created in a form that can endure. I wonder particularly what a shaman can do to help.” Though captivated by the idea, Wiglaff was genuinely unsure if a shaman could truly be helpful.
“You did plenty the other night protecting your sister. I’m proud of you and most thankful too, my big brother. It turns out you’re a warrior after all.”
“I’m nothing like our father, who was repelled by what I am—the total opposite of everything he was and stood for. I succeeded the other night because the elders underestimated me and thought they could violate my sister right in front of my eyes with impunity. There was no lesson for anyone else in what we did, but that’s good for us and our plan. Think how you might form a group of women warriors quietly, perhaps as a club with exercise and outings. Consider too how weapons with poisons might be employed so that we won’t have to rely on brute strength. Cunning can defeat mindless butchers, at least I hope so.” Wiglaff sounded confident, though he wondered how thinking could defeat those whose only recourse was to violent action.
With those thoughts, Wiglaff returned to his studies and Winna returned to the village. While he trained to be a shaman, Wiglaff spent a lot of time considering how his form of magic could assist the village in time of war. The questions he posed on this issue with Ugard drew an unexpected response, since the shaman master had been brooding on the same questions since the village wars began.
“Wiglaff, we need to think hard together about how to proceed. I’m deeply troubled. The village wars are just the prelude to what’s coming. We’re all fighting amongst ourselves when a much greater force than we have ever faced is poised to destroy us all. To prevail, we must think differently than we have ever done. We’ll have to ask people to act when we’re distrusted to know the right way.”
For her part, Winna was at first confused. She was unique among women in her village because she had been treated as a protégé by her father, who was the paradigm of a warrior. She was a natural leader of men, but because she was a woman, no one would give her a role that suited her temperament and abilities. She resolved to seek out other girls and women who might be nurtured to become warriors, and she found them not in her village but in villages that surrounded it.
Winna excluded from her recruits the friend who had informed her of the intentions of the three elders. It was too dangerous to let the woman have access to the secret that would unlock the mystery to which she alone had the key. Onna suspected what her daughter was doing, but she respected Winna’s privacy. She let her proceed and even encouraged her.
When Winna asked about poison recipes, Onna realized the magnitude of her daughter’s secret activities. She who was already her daughter’s tutor in culinary arts became Winna’s tutor in the secret arts of concocting deadly poisons. She happened to be an expert in this area because of her husband’s role as a warrior and defender of the village, and she did not want her daughter to make a fatal mistake.
Onna also suspected that her eldest son and eldest daughter were colluding in whatever they were doing to improve the security of the village, and that pleased her because she believed in the defense of her people.
At dinner some weeks later, Wiglaff asked his mother in front of the whole family, “Do you have a plan for taking the children somewhere safe in times of trouble?”
Onna replied, “In time of trouble, I’d do the same thing that I did during the village wars at your father’s direction. To the north I still have relatives who’ll accept them all into their huts for whatever period of time is necessary.”
Wiglaff suggested, “Mother, please set up regular communication with those relatives right away, perhaps by exchanging children. That way, you can keep your contact current just in case of problems.”
Winna nodded in agreement. “I know that trouble never announces itself in advance. When the time comes, we’ll have to move swiftly to protect the children.”
Wiglaff added, “As a precaution we must teach the older children how to find their way north to our relatives’ village, alone if necessary.”
Onna started training her children the next day.
Meanwhile, Winna’s twelve recruits began their weekend outings as a walking and hiking club. When Winna outlined the club’s program to them, the girls’ parents were delighted that the thirteen would be participating in healthy exercise together.
Winna called her group “the scouts,” and girls felt proud to be a part of Winna’s team. She taught them how to hunt and trap, find food in the forest, dry meats and vegetables, sew clothing from hides, cook in the wild, and a hundred other tasks. She had them swim in gelid waters and took them for night adventures in the rain. She taught them how to think like a warrior and follow orders.
Those who grew tired of the regimen, Winna let go after making them swear on their lives they would say nothing about the secret training they had been privileged to know. She replaced them with new recruits who were taught by the older girls what they had learned. Winna taught them how to use a knife and a spear. She taught them how to fight a male attacker by using their brains when they lacked the brawn to make a difference. Within a month Winna’s scouts had become a close-knit group of friends with a mission. Within three months, they were ready to learn secrets and how to keep them.
Winna taught her trainees how to coordinate their movements in the forest and how to fabricate weapons out of branches and roots. She formed them in squads of two, and she showed them how they were to keep cohesion when their leader died or went away.
By the sixth month Winna’s scouts were becoming warriors, and she began to teach them what her father had taught her from the time of her earliest memories of him. Her scouts were from ten villages, which she called “the alliance” though none of the elders from any of the villages knew anything about this. She often worried that having warriors from multiple villages could backfire in that one could become a spy and turn on the others. She reasoned the sheer amount of connections made up for any concomitant danger.
Winna was also savvy enough to know the power of her presence among her recruits. There was no question among them that Winna would mercilessly execute anyone who was discovered as an informer. More important from her perspective was the secrecy of her women warriors’ mission. One of Winna’s most secret sayings was that no man should know anything about the real reason for the scouts’ existence. Hers was an invisible band of women warriors about which the male warriors had no clue.
Winna went to the cavern to talk with Wiglaff about her progress with her scouts, and Wiglaff suggested that she share what she had been doing with Ugard also. So the three sat in the cavern and talked about war and fighting.
Ugard’s perceptive comments on her exploits impressed Winna, who said, “You know a lot about war for being a shaman.”
Ugard did not hesitate to reply, “You know a lot about war for being a woman.”
To Wiglaff’s surprise, both Ugard and Winna laughed until their sides were about to split. That broke the ice, and they formed a cabal to explore what Winna’s forces could do if the need arose. Ugard was particularly interested in what Winna had learned about poisons. He wanted her to tell him in detail which villages were involved in her alliance and how her command structure would work in case of attrition. When they had finished their discussions, Ugard got a peculiarly proud look in his eyes.
“You are both your father Mordru’s children, though one has become a shaman and the other is a woman. I see possibilities in the fact that you are, for all intents and purposes, an invisible force. I’ve also be
gun to see how what a shaman does can complement what a warrior does. Tell me, did the two of you dispatch the three evil elders in that clearing in the woods? By your eyes, I know it’s true, so don’t say it’s not.”
“Yes, we killed them,” Wiglaff confessed with no hesitation.
“Will you tell me precisely how you did it? I want the version from each of you. You first, Wiglaff.”
“The three elders underestimated me, so I decided to accompany them and my sister and look for an opportunity. I took two sharp knives with me. The elders might have tried to subdue me before they violated Winna, but they didn’t. So when the three men grabbed Winna and left me at my own devices, I drew my two knives, one in each hand, and thrust them into the kidneys of the nearest two men. Things happened very quickly, but as those two men fell dead, I saw an odd movement of the third man, who was holding my sister hard by the waist, and he fell forward dead while she stepped back.”
Ugard nodded approvingly, and then he turned to Winna for her version of events.
“I wasn’t sure what was going to happen,” Winna said, “but I had taken two knives with poison on them hidden in my garments, one on each side slanted downward for an easy draw. The man who grabbed me first was strong. He had a vile smell, and the other two were hard pressed to gain a hold on me. I noticed that the two men behind the one who held me had fallen on the ground.” Winna took a breath, paused and looked at Ugard to make sure he was following. He nodded in response for her to continue.
“When the strong man loosened his grip with one hand to see what was happening behind him, I managed to free the hand on that side, draw the knife and ram it home in his abdomen, up into the region where I knew his heart lay. As a result, the man fell forward and pushed the knife home. As the man continued to fall towards me, I stepped back. Then it was over. After my brother and I assured ourselves that the three were really dead, we wiped our knife blades on their garments and returned to Onna’s hut. We coordinated a story with Onna, who never knew the whole of what happened, but we never had to tell anyone because no one asked us any questions.”
Ugard squinted and thought about what Winna said. He was particularly impressed by the details the woman gave of her encounter. Other women would not have had her presence of mind and cool detachment from what she had experienced. His growing regard and respect for Winna was evident in his glance. Her fierce eyes locked on his. He nodded, stood back and spoke.
“You both did very well, and your coordination on this was instinctive and immediate. You knew that no one would suspect that a shaman-in-training and a mere woman could have killed three elders when all of them were armed. You were right in thinking so, and you were lucky in the event, but then you made your own luck as you went along. I wish that a shaman’s rituals allowed such freedom to innovate during the acts that define them. I’m sure I couldn’t have done as well as you did. Now the village has given up on finding the murderers, and no one has any idea that the three ‘upstanding’ elders intended to violate Winna. So many secrets die with the dead. Anyhow, I want to know how soon Winna’s warriors will be able to fight a real war.” Ugard did not say this in a bitter way. He was simply happy the brother and sister’s deeds had been covered up.
“Our father taught me that the only thing that teaches war is war itself,” Winna said. “You can prepare and drill, but the press of action on the battlefield forces innovation, and only innovation wins a war. Who doesn’t innovate must die. This was apparently a lesson even my father, the master warrior and my best teacher, didn’t learn well enough to help him survive the final combat in which he perished. So to answer your question, we are now as ready as we’ll ever be, but we’ll have to keep in shape to continue to be ready.”
Ugard nodded, thinking about her words and generally agreeing with her.
“Just in case we’ll need more than the forces you already have, find a way to increase your warriors to double the number that you have—without recruiting unsuitable persons. By unsuitable I mean women with inferior physical capabilities or untrustworthy characters. Bring new people into your group and associate each with a seasoned scout you already have in your group. That way your trainees will train the newbies and give you the freedom to improve your first group. By no means should you lower your expectations to suit the raw recruits.”
Winna nodded, agreeing with his words.
“One thing more—watch your troops carefully for signs that they might be tiring of the drills. Keeping your warriors’ interest piqued is the key to leadership. Send your scouts in pairs through the villages to the south along the trunk road and have them report on any threat activity, however slight.”
“I’ll continue to have my warriors perform surveillance. No one will know they are spies, since nothing they wear distinguishes them from other village women. On a related subject, we’re progressing well with making weapons in the field. Whether we must fight another village or a large external force, we’ll have to improvise, and we may not be able to carry all the weapons we’ll need. I trained my scouts to fade into the forests and hide and make do with very little.” Winna said this not boastfully, but with genuine pride.
Ugard liked what he heard and smiled. He responded, “Good. Perhaps our magic can help you prepare the environment for your fighting. Wiglaff and I have been discussing how to affect the elements, but we’ll not have the opportunity to practice our rituals until just before the fighting begins. Please keep us informed of your progress and any problems you encounter on a moon by moon basis, at least. This cavern will be our meeting place because it’s secure. Wiglaff will continue to climb down to visit two days a week and to live at Onna’s hut with you, but he can visit more often than that if need be.”
When their meeting ended, Winna returned to the village to continue her routine and develop new recruits to flesh out her numbers. She briefed her scouts on what to look for on their surveillance missions, and she devised a plan whereby two scouts would establish a listening post well to the south along the trunk road, and others would relieve them every five days.
The first reports after the new routine had been initiated indicated that all was normal between the village and the listening post. At the time, no rumors were current about activities of an imminent invading force. On the third cycle of reliefs, rumors of clandestine enemy scouting activity filtered through the villages farther south than the listening post. On the fourth cycle, returning scouts reported that two men who were clearly enemy soldiers without their uniforms were surveying the territory and making notes on wax tablets about what they saw. Winna immediately went to the cavern to report this news to Ugard.
“This activity by the enemy is a sign that plans are being formed for an invasion along the trunk road. Along that road their supplies of warriors and supplies will flow. Their usual pattern is to scout an area thoroughly and then to send in a small force to test village defenses. After that they’ll send a large advance force to inflict damage and instigate terror among the villagers. This advance force will be commanded and supplied by a larger force to the rear.”
“What do you recommend that we do?” Winna asked him.
“We’re going to have to watch what our enemies are doing diligently. Mark my words, the war we’ve been anticipating is about to begin. Fortunately for us, we’re well to the north of where the enemy must begin, and we’ll be in a position to watch their tactics from afar. So increase the rate of relieving your scouts to three days from five.”
Winna saw the wisdom of his advice. She nodded and said, “Go on.”
“Meanwhile, begin to stockpile spears made from pointed staves and bring them to the cavern, where we’ll stockpile them. Concoct and bring vats of poison also. And brief your scouts not to take chances but keep their distance as they observe the enemy movements. If what we suspect is true and an attack on the villages is planned, the enemy will kill anyone who might be a village spy to prevent her from making any further reports.”
; “The enemy will not suspect women, but my scouts report that the enemy soldiers have avoided making contact with villagers, even when the villagers have clearly seen them surveying the territory.”
The two enemy scouts progressed as far as the south-most village among Winna’s alliance before they turned and retraced the path they had taken. No further surveillance occurred for many weeks, but Winna’s scouts remained vigilant.
The first indication of a hostile invading force came from village refugees who fled when enemy soldiers occupied a village far to the south. The refugees reported that everyone in their village who remained there had been killed or captured. The enemy soldiers had come in such numbers and force that nothing could stop them from pillaging the food and destroying all the huts in the village. The enemy warriors stopped after this first sally into village territory, but the villages along the trunk road did not wait to see whether the attacks would continue. They prepared to evacuate their old people, women and children.
Winna reported the situation to Ugard and Wiglaff, and she explained that she saw an opportunity to recruit from the pool of refugee women. Ugard recommended caution, but he saw the wisdom of recruiting from a homeless throng who had lost everything to the enemy.
“Such women,” Winna said with a grim smile, “have a motive to strike back and do irreparable harm to the advancing enemy force.”
Winna’s recruitment strategy paid off, and soon she had swelled her women warriors to three times its former size. She delegated training to a special encampment run by three of her best warrior protégés, and she personally interviewed each recruit and then observed the indoctrination and integration of them with her veteran troops. By this time, the male village warriors were being summoned to gather and fight, but they had no training and no leadership. Winna wisely refrained from integrating the men with her forces because she knew what would happen if she did so: the men would refuse to accept the females as equals, and they would ruin everything Winna had accomplished. They would also try to violate her warriors and herself, as the elders had tried to do.
The WIglaff Tales (The Wiglaff Chronicles Book 1) Page 3
