“As you all know, we’ve again been preparing for conflict with our vicious army coming from the south. They are about to overrun and kill or enslave the villagers in every village they’ll encounter. They once again think they’re invincible, and again most of the other villagers in our region think there’s no hope of defeating them. Those who despair are wrong as they were last time. We can and shall defeat this enemy army.”
The familiar ritual was executed, with the villagers participating through their dun red stones. In the distance, the booming sound of thunder came from the heavens to the south, and a breath of wind followed from the direction of the thunder. The great storm broke over the region.
This time the storm clouds did not pass over, taking the lightning with them. Instead, they remained fixed overhead and grew black and menacing. The shamans continued to gaze at their adzes and stones while the rain became thick as a wall so that no one could see his hand before his face. Water ran from every hut in the village, flooding the square with the sounds of water dripping and running everywhere.
Now Ugard and Wiglaff rose, restoring the necklaces to their necks and the adzes to their right hands. With the dun red stone in his left hand, each strode back to Onna’s hut. There they were met by Onna, Winna and the other children, all drenched and dripping from the rain—and smiling because they still held their dun red stones firmly in their hands. They had participated in the ritual for the second time, and they knew something of the power that action bestowed on them all. Ugard, noticing their spirit, knew that this village would once again win the war against the coming enemy.
This time Ugard and Wiglaff did not linger in the village but climbed back quickly to their cavern, where they now had another ritual to perform. They noticed that in the mouth of their cavern were now perched four live birds: an eagle, a raven, an owl and a hawk. In unison the birds opened their wings wide and flapped them in place, as if in greeting.
The shamans took their places, kneeling on mats they had laid on the ground. Cages were by the sides of the mats, and each opened his first cage and removed a flawlessly white rat with a pink nose and tail. They held the animals at arm’s length, and the hawk flew up from its perch and took one rat while the eagle flew up from his perch and took the other. The birds landed on the cavern floor and deftly snapped the necks of their prey and began to devour them.
Then Ugard opened his second cage and drew forth a black vole by the tail. The owl flew up from its perch and seized the vole and dropped to the cavern floor to kill and eat it.
Finally, Wiglaff opened his second cage and drew out a freshly sacrificed leveret, and the coal black raven sprung forth and grasped the leveret in its talons, dropping to the cavern floor to devour it.
As the birds feasted, the shamans each prepared incense with mortars and pestles, and they lighted small fires of charcoal and watched them burn down until they glowed. In his right hand, each shaman took a pinch of incense and sprinkled it on the glowing charcoal. The scent in the cavern became rich with incense while the birds continued their feast. Outside the cavern, the black hovering clouds made the darkness seem like midnight, and the torrential rain poured in curtains so thick that the shamans looked at a wall of rain covering the entrance to the cavern.
Ugard knew it was now time to perform his black magic, and he was ready as never before. He rose and placed a cauldron on a tripod and lit a fire under it. In the caldron he placed a viscous liquid that he had worked for months to concoct.
This was no ordinary potion, and it took time for the fire to bring it to a boil. When the concoction began to burble, Ugard placed a thin fabric over the cauldron and peered into the vapor that rose through the fibers of the fabric. In the steam-like substance, images formed and broke up and formed again.
Wiglaff saw in the steam the images of a great army on the march. They marched on a vast plain and covered the plain from horizon to horizon. They marched forward as everything fled that was in the army’s path. Suddenly the army halted, and above it flocked thousands of birds of prey so that the heavens were full of black wings. The birds descended on the troops and with their talons and beaks tore great gashes in their arms and faces. Try as they might, the troops could not fend off the attack of the birds. They flailed with their weapons, slashing and thrusting, but the birds were undeterred and continued to descend to open wounds and feast on human flesh.
The army was falling into disorder, and the leaders did all they could to keep their troops in their ranks, but to no avail. When the birds departed, all the soldiers were streaming in blood from wounds all over their heads and upper bodies.
Then came such hordes of large black flies that they covered the army like a black veil, feasting everywhere blood or sweat could be sensed. The soldiers swatted and hopped up and down and smacked themselves all over, but the flies continued to menace them. Wiglaff witnessed the feast of the flies, and then he saw an enormous fly wing by, and that one was followed by a phalanx of enormous flies that were as large as horses. They landed on the soldiers and feasted on their flesh in large bites while they searched them with their huge, multifaceted eyes.
Ugard clapped his hands, and the flies all disappeared, leaving the soldiers scratching and moaning because of the stinging bites they had sustained. The soldiers felt relieved that the assault of flies had ended.
Then came the wasps. They were not normal wasps, but they were the size of small dogs, and they swarmed just as the flies had done. They landed and stung and then stung again. They changed position and stung, and dozens of wasps stung each soldier so that they finally broke ranks and ran in all directions flailing and swatting, but to no avail. Soldiers dropped their standards and their weapons and shields. Some jumped up and down. Some lay on the ground and rolled all over, but nothing they did could stop the assault of the wasps. Even those who found water could not shake off the wasps by going beneath the surface. The wasps held on and stung and wouldn’t stop. The army was now a chaos of disorder when Ugard clapped his hands and the wasps receded.
Ugard brought out of his robe something that Wiglaff had never seen before: a leather pouch containing a dark-red, beaded substance, which Ugard pinched and sprinkled on the charcoal as he recited the chant of planting in reverse.
Wiglaff knew that the chant of life had thereby turned in to the chant of death. Ugard extended the pouch to Wiglaff, and the young shaman took a pinch and sprinkled it on the fire. Then the vision became one of writhing, twisting soldiers who seemed to be burning from the inside. The soldiers tore at their own flesh, and they hacked their own arms with their knives and swords, or they pierced themselves with their spears and javelins. Some apparently had become one enormous bole of black that spurted when they cut themselves like boils. This did not happen to one or a few of the soldiers—it happened to all of them regardless of rank or rate. Screaming didn’t help, and some asked others to kill them so they could escape the pain they were suffering. Many obliged and then turned their weapons on themselves.
None of them seemed to notice that the clouds had turned black with sheets of a black substance falling from them. These clouds now obscured the heavens as the birds, flies and wasps had done, only now flaming bitumen dropped from the skies and covered all the forces with a uniform mantle of pitchy fire that clung and burned on the outside as the insane fever still burned within.
Ugard studied the image, which Wiglaff could also see, and he clapped his hands and extended his right hand and gestured with his left. The hawk that had eaten the white rat opened its wings and flew up to perch on the shaman’s arm. Ugard waved this arm with the hawk on it towards the vision, and the hawk flew into the vision as an enormous bird and descended on the troops to feast on those who were still alive. Wiglaff did the same service with the eagle, and it also soared above the troops in the vision before it swelled to an enormous size and descended to feast on the living that the hawk neglected.
Each shaman now beckoned to the other birds, and the raven
and owl now perched on their respective arms before flying into the vision as enormous winged carrion-eating creatures to join the general meal and feast on the dead. The birds were insatiable, and they ate and ate. Ugard and Wiglaff watched them eat until all that was left of the soldiers was a field full of bloody bones, picked skulls, useless weapons and standards and supplies without an army to support. Ugard clapped his hands, and now he took another small pouch from under his robe, this one containing a substance that appeared to Wiglaff much like bee pollen, dry and golden and fine.
Ugard sprinkled this substance into the fire, and in a moment in the vision the field of the slain swarmed and teemed with honeybees that love nothing more than blood and animal flesh. The bees got right to work doing their business of creating combs and making honey to fill them. Miraculously, the entire field became a giant hive that swelled with honey. Wiglaff thought he could hear the buzz of bees. When Ugard waved his hand, the vision disappeared, and now the shamans waited while the smoke from a new handful of Ugard’s incense produced a different kind of vision.
In their new shared vision Ugard and Wiglaff saw a splendid court with an amphitheater and a temple and a giant forum, all made of the finest white marble and full of people. Now Ugard became dour and cross, and he took up the leather pouch with the black substance and applied a pinch of the substance to the fire. He handed the pouch to Wiglaff, who also applied a pinch to the fire.
Nothing happened for a long time, yet the shamans continued to watch the scene before them, and the people in it were wholly unaware that they were being watched. Ugard clapped his hands, and a great teeming mass of people dressed in rags rushed into the vision, ripping and tearing at the fine people who had no place to go. The endless crowds trampled and pummeled the others and themselves so that a great confused fight encompassed the entire view. When the struggle finally ended, corpses lay everywhere in the magnificent architecture and dogs, foxes and wolves, lions and bears, tigers, jackals and hyenas came from nowhere to devour the corpses. One particularly large hyena seemed to wink at Ugard, but he disregarded the vision of the animal. He knew more was to come.
Together Ugard and Wiglaff watched as the carnage disappeared and sands covered the buildings, which toppled with age and time. Vegetation overgrew the site, and what had been a resplendent city became a teeming jungle where here a pillar and there an architrave could be found among the foliage. Snakes slithered through the vision and birds of paradise flew from tree to tree. Ugard clapped his hands, and the vision disappeared. Haggard now and exhausted, Ugard gestured that one more ritual needed to be performed.
For this final ritual, Ugard rose and took off all his vestments and donned a pure white robe. He asked that Wiglaff do the same. They took their places once again on the cavern floor, and when Ugard had replenished the cauldron and replaced the fabric over it and stirred the fire, he gazed at the steam that rose and extended his right arm first and then his left arm. He gestured that Wiglaff should do the same, and the two shamans fell into a trance so deep that Wiglaff thought he would fall asleep when suddenly he felt the pinch of talons on both his arms. There sat the eagle and the raven.
Wiglaff witnessed the owl and the hawk emerge from the vapor and perch on Ugard’s arm. The birds flew back to their perches inside the entrance of the cavern and folded their wings. It was the black magic that made the usual barriers between a vision and the reality disappear. So it was with the birds. Ugard then brought out his pouch of bee pollen and shook a little into his hand. He also shook some into Wiglaff’s hand. Ugard applied the pollen to his face and arms in a soft rubbing motion. Wiglaff did the same. He gestured to Wiglaff to follow him to the back of the cavern where the rainwater had been trained to flow into a stone bath, and he sat in the bath and bathed. When he was finished, he gestured that Wiglaff should bathe, and the young shaman did so.
They toweled themselves dry, dressed in their normal clothing and went back to their places on the floor of the cavern. They then carefully closed all the cages, and Ugard drew the tie-strings that closed his two pouches. Ugard extinguished the fires and stacked up the iron works that they had used in their rituals.
Ugard then extended himself on the hard floor on his back and fell into a sound sleep. Wiglaff did the same. The two shamans had concentrated so hard on their ritual that they were beyond humanly exhausted, and they slept until dawn. The next morning the two shamans awakened simultaneously. The torrential rain had stopped, and sunshine flooded the cavern. The four ritual birds had flown away, and their perches stood empty. While the shamans tended to their morning ministrations, Winna came to the mouth of the cavern and wanted to talk, so the two shamans sat on the floor and asked her to join them.
“The rain has stopped. The ground is still hard. We’ll have no cover so that we can attack the enemy unseen. What are we to do?” She was frustrated and seemed desperate.
“Winna, before the harvest ritual I had a waking dream that was most unnerving. I saw our village smoldering after it had been burned to the ground. I saw corpses littered all around, including your corpse. I knew at once that unless I took extraordinary measures, we’d all be killed or enslaved just as the enemy intended. So instead of proceeding along lines that we had taken the last time the enemy approached us, I decided to initiate a general deluge just in case my alternative ritual failed, and then I retired with Wiglaff to this cavern to work another kind of magic that neither he nor I can discuss with anyone for fear that they might be contaminated with the evil that we invoked.”
“But my warriors were ready to fight the enemy, and we might have won the same way we did before.” She was insulted because Ugard did not think she was capable of handling the battle.
“Perhaps, but probably not. I’ve learned to trust my visions, and this one was so compelling I could not ignore it. Wiglaff didn’t know what I saw, and I had no time to tell him then about my vision. He did see another kind of vision that turned my vision on its head and directed the effects against the enemy, both in the field and in their city center in Rome. From that shared vision, I conclude that we’ll have no trouble with an invading army anytime soon. Send out your scouts to confirm this, and remain ready in case the vision we caused was false.”
She sounded genuinely ambivalent when she said, “I feel both relieved and disappointed. My forces were fully ready and I feared for their lives. I’m relieved that we may not have to do battle with a formidable enemy force, even in the pouring rain. I am, however, disappointed that after all our training we didn’t have the opportunity to demonstrate what we could do.”
“Such, Winna, is the harvest of those who must secure our village. If we need the warriors, we’ll have to use their talents, but we’d prefer to keep them alive and well because the majority of life is not devoted to war and destruction, at least for all of us peace-loving villagers.”
“But peace for warriors is the opportunity to prepare for war.”
“Yes, Winna, it is, and you should now take the opportunity to prepare while you have plenty of time to do so before our next great need.”
Winna left the cavern to verify that the enemy force wasn’t going to attack the villages again. She sent two of her warriors to relieve the watchers who were now observing the enemy and to tell them that they should return as fast as they could to the village. On the morning after the next, the two scouts returned to report that the enemy army had returned to their garrison encampment without fighting anyone. Ulma the spy was cast out of the encampment and told to fend for herself because her services were no longer required. The scouts had found Ulma wandering and confused. They discovered from her that the empire was in turmoil because the great leader had died of a horrible disease that was now ravaging the large city where its leadership dwelled and spreading throughout the empire.
Ulma said that she did not know where to turn because the enemy army had been given orders to stand down indefinitely on account of the plague. She had heard rumors that soldiers had a
lready caught the dread disease and many had died of it. The disease had very unpleasant effects because the victim felt as if his body was on fire and he bled from every orifice uncontrollably, and his eyes bled too. The only consolation was that the disease killed within twenty-four hours. Ulma had been with soldiers who had the disease, so she said she probably carried the plague with her and would die. When the two scouts left her, Ulma pleaded with them to take her with them, but they refused and told her that if she ventured north with the disease, they would kill her to avoid her contaminating others.
Winna isolated her two scouts and kept others away from them until she thought it was safe for them to move freely among the villagers. She sent them back to monitor the spread of the plague, and she put her other warriors on alert to watch for the signs of an outbreak. She told Ugard and Wiglaff what she had learned about the plague. Neither of the shamans was surprised by what she said. They told Winna that no one but she should come visit them in the cavern until the plague had burnt through all the villages. Ugard told the warrior woman to take Onna and the children far to the north as they had planned. They promised Onna they would send for her and the children when it was safe to return.
“The plague,” Ugard told Wiglaff, “is worse than an enemy army because no one can see it until it has gripped him so firmly that he can’t escape.”
So the plague raged everywhere at once, killing half the population of the empire and two-thirds of the soldiers in the army. Winna’s scouts were affected, but the four who caught the contagion isolated themselves and died rather than getting close enough to give the disease to their fellow women warriors. A report that Ulma had carried the disease to five separate villages in her attempt to travel north could not be verified, but one of Winna’s scouts saw the treacherous spy in her final agony on the trunk road while everyone else avoided her because it was clear that she carried the plague.
The WIglaff Tales (The Wiglaff Chronicles Book 1) Page 8
