So Winna observed the futile attempts by the various village elders to mount their defenses. These peace-loving factotums had no concept of forming an alliance of villages, so in the end they would be left individually vulnerable, just as they had been during the village wars with the same predictable result. The so-called leaders had learned nothing from that woeful experience.
Winna decided to share the intelligence her scouts brought back from the south in an innovative way. When she suggested the strategy to Ugard and Wiglaff, they both endorsed it, though they bore some risk.
Winna said, “I’ll bring the reports to you two shamans, and you’ll modify my scouts’ reports to make them seem to have arisen from your envisioning. Wiglaff will reveal to the village elders what you shamans ‘envisioned’ without divulging that you had independent sources on the ground bringing him bona fide reports. This strategy allows you to interpret the facts that came in the scouts’ reports and to deliver your own recommendations for constructive measures and predictions of future enemy actions.”
Ugard’s knowledge of likely outcomes and enemy strategy made these shamanistic pronouncements authoritative, though the elders routinely disbelieved what they heard from the shamans because shamans weren’t warriors. The elders preferred to act based on their own ignorance of war rather than learn from outsiders, so instead of getting ready for the enemy they caused panic and alarm.
The best thing that they did was to plan an evacuation just like all the other village elders had done, but this plan put Winna’s warriors in danger of having no hut to which to return. To solve this problem, Winna and Onna pledged their hut as a refugee center, but the refugees they accepted were only those who were Winna’s hand-picked recruits. While others might flee, Onna’s hut would become the center of ground defense below the mountain, where the cavern would be their command center and last resort.
One of Winna’s recruits, Ulma, had a poignant story to tell, and Winna asked Ugard and Wiglaff to accept her into the mountain cavern to listen to her.
Ugard was incensed. He said, “I refuse to allow her access to the cavern and all its secrets. Wiglaff should hear the woman’s story on the ground in a forest clearing instead of on the mountain. The enemy practice is to use susceptible village women as their spies. The women comply because after they’ve been violated, they have no choice but to join the enemy because their own villagers would disrespect them.”
So Ulma told her story to Winna and Wiglaff in the forest clearing, where once three elders had tried to violate Winna before she and her brother slew them with knives. Ulma’s story was eerily like what might have happened to Winna on that night of the elders.
“I was asked to talk one evening by two strangers, who led me into a clearing where a third man waited. The three men easily overpowered me and violated me many times. After that, they told me they would spread the word that I was a loose woman and a liar, so my villagers would hate me and cast me out. If I chose to spy for them, they said they’d give me gold and assure that I’d live when the enemy raided my village.”
Ulma looked downward out of shame. Wiglaff nodded, quietly urging her to keep talking. She continued speaking in broken phrases, teary-eyed under the pressure of remembering. The brother and sister listened attentively, knowing what it must have cost the woman to tell the brutal truth.
“Though I hated the men who violated me and wished them torture and death, I determined that revenge required me to remain alive, so I pretended that I would comply with their demands. I returned to my hut, ashamed and fearful, and the next morning I left my village and followed the trunk road north to find someone who would protect me and give me a chance to get revenge.”
Hungry and lonely, Ulma had by chance met one of Winna’s recruiters, who heard her story and then escorted Ulma to meet Winna. Ulma seemed genuine in her story. Clearly, she had experienced violation and she was fearful. Wiglaff, however, detected another message beneath her story.
He asked Winna, “Will you please leave me alone with the woman for a few minutes?”
Winna walked into the forest and vanished to let them talk alone. After the woman warrior had left and seemed out of earshot, Ulma wasted no time transforming from the devastated refugee into a lecherous woman looking for a mate.
“You are tall, dark and handsome. I could make you a fine wife. Take me, please.” She had a wild look in her eyes, and her hand reached out to grasp his forearm.
Wiglaff saw that he had been correct, but he wanted to be sure of what he was really dealing with.
Ulma made eyes at him and did the things that women always do to prove themselves attractive to men. She twisted this way and that with her hips, and her hands braided her blonde hair and flew up and down her garment, lingering in sensitive places. She smiled coyly and batted her eyes. Her voice became low and husky and then modulated.
“What are you waiting for? Can’t you see I want you right now?”
Wiglaff understood what she was saying without her having to breathe another word. When she spoke again, she gave him what he needed.
“I’m all alone in the world, Wiglaff, and I need a man who will take me and make me his wife. You are single and tall and strong. I liked you from the moment I saw you. Are you the leader of your village warriors? Is Winna really your sister? Or is she your lover? I’m at least as good a lover as she is, and I can give you so much more. I can provide the plans of the enemy, and if you like, I’ll return to the south numerous times to get fresh information you will need for your defense.”
Wiglaff spoke with convincing sincerity, knowing the woman was a spy. He turned his words to make her divulge as much as possible of what she knew. “Ulma, you are a beautiful woman, and I can hardly believe my luck. Winna is my sister, not my lover. I don’t have a lover right now, but I need to know more from you before I make a commitment. What can you tell me right now about the enemy’s intentions? And tell me how you know this to be true.” She looked triumphant, thinking she had won his trust. She decided to press her advantage, as she had been instructed to do.
“Wiglaff, the enemy is invincible and without number. They have determined to take every village, one by one, until they command every inch of ground in this country. Their soldiers are tall and manly, and they are magnificent in their uniforms, but their fighting is organized so that they form in tight blocks with steel weapons, shields and spears. They are ruthless. They rape and pillage with impunity. They kill or enslave everyone. They have spies among us, and they know who our leaders are and how to get to them. Only those who join them now will survive. In my village, I was lucky to have been violated.” She seemed to be talking under duress, glad to have been lucky, her eyes filled with tears. “My brother and his friends were violated too, and we would have been preserved when the fighting started.”
“So when the fighting started, that’s when you left on your journey to the north?”
“No, I told you, I left immediately after the violation. I was ashamed and afraid.”
“Yet you were certain that you had every chance to live.”
“I made a bargain for my life, yes. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing? I mean, we’d all rather live than die.”
Wiglaff said matter-of-factly as if simply conversing, “I know some who would prefer to live or die with honor rather than to live at any cost.” He was speaking about his sister. The desperate woman spoke as if she had not heard him.
“So how much would your virtue cost, my handsome suitor?”
Wiglaff kept a stoic, straight face, though his eyes narrowed and he clenched his fists. “Ulma, my virtue is priceless and my sister’s virtue is also priceless. We can’t be bought like cattle. Besides, I am a shaman-in-training.”
“I had no idea. But since you are still in training, you could abandon your calling to be with me. I’d make it worth your while. Besides, I’ve never had a real shaman. It might be fun. What do you think, my handsome suitor?”
“I can
give you a few ideas about what my brother thinks, Ulma,” Winna said, walking up behind the refugee spy and grabbing the backs of both her arms so she could not move. “For one, Wiglaff is not the romantic fool you thought he’d be. For another, he knows deceit the moment he looks at someone like you, and now we both know the truth about you, you despicable spy. And finally, you and your friends have nothing we would value, but I have the solution to your problem in the knife that is now ready to slit your throat. So you’ll die unless you want to tell us right now when the enemy plans to attack the villages and how they’ll advance down the trunk road.” By the grit and determination in her tone, it was clear that she meant business. Ulma’s expression changed from feigned wantonness to fear.
“I don’t know their schedule. That’s always the most secret part of their plan. They took the first village to test their plans. They’ll do an assessment, and as soon as they can manage the troops and logistics, they’ll move on to the next village and continue moving north as fast as possible. They say they depend on surprise and mayhem.”
Silence filled the air. Ulma’s eyes went back and forth between the brother and the sister, her eyes now filled with fear.
“So are you going to kill me?”
“Winna, what do you think? Ulma is a deceitful spy who plans to return to the enemy and tell them what she found, including this meeting with us.”
“I won’t tell them anything, I promise you.” Ulma’s eyes widened. Her voice wavered. It was clear she now was desperate enough to say anything to save her own life.
Winna threatened with an icy edge in her voice, “You won’t tell them anything because you are going to die right here, right now.”
“No, don’t kill me. They violated me, and now you are going to kill me. I’ve only done what you would do if you were in my place.”
“How wrong you are, Ulma,” Winna said. “You are rotten and deserve the worst I could do. But this is your lucky day. I’ve decided what we’re going to do, and it’s worse than anything you’d imagined when you came down here to spy. I’m going to have you escorted back to the enemy, where you’ll be left to say whatever you like. I’m amused to think what you’ll tell them. Perhaps you’ll say that you met a woman warrior and her brother, a shaman in training? If you told that story, I think you’d be laughed right out of camp, but only after half the troops took their pleasure with you.”
The cruelty of his sister made an impression on Wiglaff, who was surprised by the depth of his sister’s scorn. Yet he said nothing, knowing his sister was a warrior whose judgment would become legendary among her scouts and an example to all who knew her. He reasoned that Ulma was a spy and deserved death. Humility and degradation were only part of the penalty for her wanton perfidy.
Winna continued, “So you’ll get just what you deserve. Now, brother, help me bind, gag and blindfold this spy. She’s going back south now to give her report. It’s a long way south, and she’ll have to relieve herself along the way just as she is. I don’t think she’s going to look or smell very attractive when she arrives, but there’s no accounting for taste among the enemy. They might like her that way.”
Winna entrusted Ulma the spy to two of her warriors, who speeded their captive to the south. Acting according to the instructions Winna gave them, the warrior women killed two enemy sentries in the night and tied Ulma still blindfolded and gagged to the sentry post, which stood nearby the entrance to the enemy encampment. There at the enemy change of watch, the fresh sentries found the corpses of the two sentries they were sent to relieve and the woman Ulma. They took Ulma into the encampment to see their leadership. Winna’s scouts returned to report what they had done and to tell her that they saw no signs of imminent military activity along their route.
Back in the village, Winna and Onna laughed about Wiglaff’s interrogation of the female spy Ulma.
“Mother, you would’ve been proud of your son the almost-shaman. He saw right away what I couldn’t see—that the woman Ulma was a cunning spy sent to observe and report on her own people to the enemy. He deflected her charms and got her to confess her role. We both then got the information we needed about the enemy’s intentions. I’m glad my older brother knows about the wiles of wanton women.” Winna had no sympathy for the woman spy. Continuing to be coldly resolute toward Ulma’s situation, she nonetheless was pleased about her shaman brother’s behavior when beset by a scheming temptress.
Onna said, “I worry that neither of you will find a suitable mate. You’re too strong, intelligent and willful. Your brother’s too sensitive, intellectual and reflective. You make a fine team working together, but you break the rules of normal expectations.”
Winna nodded. “Yes, we do, and that makes us stronger, not weaker. Anyway, Wiglaff saved me from violation by resorting to knives, and I am eternally grateful to him. Now he dealt effectively with a woman who had been violated and turned into a spy. He grows in my esteem daily, but he’s nothing like my father.”
“True. Mordru was one of a kind. No one can ever replace him, except perhaps the both of you combined. Now if you and your brother married, that might yield possibilities.” Onna said this with a knowing smile.
“Don’t make me laugh, Mother. That would never work, and besides, it’s taboo even to suggest it. One day a real man like father will come along and I’ll go with him, but until that unlikely day comes, I’ll enjoy my women warriors and seek council with my shamans. This time of threats and uncertainty is not for relaxation and the rewards of peace. We’ll have war before you know it, and then it will take every bit of our effort to survive.”
Chapter Two
The Dun Red Stone
“Any object can become a talisman. It may derive its powers from nature, such as a holed stone, or may be imbued with power by acts of ANGELS, spirits or the gods.”
Rosemary Ellen Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy, Infobase Publishing, 2006, p. 304.
Wiglaff sensed that something was terribly wrong when he heard from his older sister Winna that Ugard had left the village before daylight and gone alone to climb the mountain. Of all the days of the year for Ugard to choose, the solstice was most unlikely for one of the Shaman’s long disappearances, since he held the keys to performing the rituals for this special day when the heavens shifted and the rain began to fall.
The seeds had been planted in the earth, but only Ugard could make the seeds sprout and flourish, and upon his magic the fate of the entire village depended. As Ugard’s only pupil, Wiglaff was now left with the awesome job of enacting the rituals all by himself without his mentor’s help. He wondered nervously if he was up to the task alone. He earnestly hoped Ugard would come in time for the ceremony.
Winna spoke urgently, “Wiglaff, the people have gathered. They’re waiting for the ritual to begin. You can’t delay any longer. You have no choice. Come quickly or there’ll be trouble. And bring the dun red stone so they’ll know everything’s all right.”
The dun red stone lay on a patch of soft deerskin on the ground in front of him. The young man picked it up by the wolf-leather thong that ran through the hole at its center. He pressed the stone to his forehead and his lips, and then he tied the thong around his neck so the stone rested over his sternum. He grasped a sack of grain in his left hand and a long stone adze in his right hand. Then he rose and went through the door of his dwelling into the dawn light, where his people were waiting patiently.
Without a word, Wiglaff stepped into the center of the wide circle of people, where a large square area had been reserved for the ritual. A circular portion of the square circumscribed with a long, curved pole was preserved for the shaman. It had been sprinkled with gray flour, and at the four cardinal points on its circumference, clusters of feathers had been laid—eagle, raven, owl and hawk feathers. Wiglaff set the bag of grain and the adze at appointed places in the circle, and then he gathered the feathers carefully and sat in the circle. He offered the feathers with a gesture to the rising sun,
settled on the ground between the sack of grain and the adze and laid the feathers on the ground before him.
Just as the shaman Ugard before him had done in last year’s ritual, he raised his spread hands and stretched his arms out straight in front of himself. Then he drew his arms to his sides and dropped his hands. He looked down at the feathers and began to rearrange them in a pattern that made no sense to any of his watchers. When he was satisfied with the pattern he had created with the feathers, he picked up the sack of grain and, taking grain in the cup of his right hand, he dropped the seeds in a square-shaped area around the feathers before he sprinkled the remainder of the grain on top of the feathers evenly.
Now Wiglaff picked up his adze and rose. He gestured for the villagers to rise, and then he proceeded to the field where the grain had been planted.
With his adze, he scraped a random furrow to see whether the grains had been planted at the right depth and in the prescribed number. He replaced the grain and earth gently. Now with the adze at his side in his right hand, Wiglaff grasped and fondled the dun red stone that hung around his neck with his left hand. The young man walked slowly back to the circle with the feathers and the grain and took his seat as before. The villagers all regained their seats also. Wiglaff was becoming increasingly anxious, when all of a sudden he decided to focus hard on his training. As he focused, his confidence was restored and he eased into the comfort of the seasonal ritual. He became at one with his task.
The WIglaff Tales (The Wiglaff Chronicles Book 1) Page 4
