by Inmon, Shawn
A small river wound its way lazily through a valley filled with green trees that seemed to roll on forever. The golden light of the unexpected sunshine bouncing off the clouds added an ethereal element that made the whole picture feel almost supernatural.
This is what this same scene might have looked like a million years ago. The Earth is healing itself from whatever damage we inflicted on it.
Beautiful as the view was, they did not linger. Sunshine notwithstanding, it would be dark soon enough.
They walked down the hill, making sure to angle themselves and use their walking sticks to slow down. The hill was steep enough that if they weren’t careful, they could find themselves hurtling down at an unstoppable speed.
Monda-ak, who had been occupying himself with small forays into the surrounding forest stayed near Alex’s side. He bumped his head into Alex’s hip, then stopped.
“Hold up,” Alex called in the universal language. “He sees or smells something.”
The men stopped, gathered into a knot and listened.
Monda-ak stood stiffly alert, tail out, ears up. He turned his head slowly, smelling the air. He took one, two, three, tentative steps forward, then paused again. He was completely still for two beats then barked. It started low in his cavernous chest, then exploded. He pointed his nose up at a tree just off the trail.
What I wouldn’t give for my flashlight.
All nine men squinted into the gathering dusk. Then they saw it. A cat so huge that Alex wondered if it was a lion, not a cougar. Even that wasn’t adequate. It hunkered on a branch like a cat might sit on a windowsill.
Having alerted Alex, Monda-ak stopped barking, but still growled deep in his chest—a resonant, menacing sound.
The big cat didn’t seem bothered in the least that it had been spotted. It jumped easily down from the tree, landing silently. It stared at them with wide, golden eyes for a long moment.
The men had produced their weapons but held them at their sides. They showed no interest in taking the conflict to the cat. They waited to see if it would come at them.
Rutan-ta stared them down like the predator she was, but eventually dropped her head slightly and moved away. It moved sideways, so it never exposed itself. Eventually, it dropped out of sight ahead of them.
Gone, but definitely not forgotten.
Yosta-ak turned to the group. “Just making sure we knew she was here. They rarely attack people. There are so many easier animals to kill that can’t fight back. Come. Let’s hurry on.”
They increased their pace but were still forced to complete the hill in almost pitch darkness.
Near the bottom, they found the promised cave. It was nothing like the caves of Winten-ah, which were light and open to the air. This cave was dark and dank, with bones scattered on the ground and it smelled like rotting meat.
They were thankful for it.
It was out of the rain, they could build a fire, and they only had a single entrance to defend.
Alex volunteered to take the first watch. He hadn’t slept at all the night before and hoped that after his watch he could grab a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.
While Alex stood guard, the others gathered wood. The surrounding area would have nearly qualified as a rainforest, though, so dry wood was sparse. They managed to get a fire going, but it sputtered and barely burned. It gave off almost no heat.
Alex and the others ate again from their backpacks.
When they had started, Alex had no idea how far they were going, but guessed it was likely two or three days. He had been wrong.
On the seventh morning after they left Winten-ah, he ate the last bit of pemmican from his bag and scraped around to find the last of his berries and nuts. He had been conserving his food for days, but even that had not been enough.
Yosta-ak gathered them around their latest accommodations—a rock overhang that kept them dry but not much else.
“Today, we will arrive at Stipa-ah. That means we are only a day’s walk from Denta-ah. They are friends and they are the nearest tribe to Denta-ah. We will be able to learn what they know, and they will resupply us.”
That’s good. I was about to compete with Monda-ak for some of his prey, and I think he’s a much better hunter than I am.
Alex shouldered his pack, which was much lighter than when they had set out and they were off and walking at the same steady pace before the sun was up.
All villages or tribes in Kragdon-ah needed to be built with certain advantages in order to survive. It was difficult for a tribe to establish a home in the middle of an open prairie, for instance. Winten-ah was in an almost perfect location, with the cliff walls and surrounding forest to protect them.
Stipa-ah had another such location. They had built their community on a small island in the middle of a lake. The island was too small to sustain them, but its position in the lake made it easy to defend. Very few humans or animals were interested in swimming out to attack them.
At the same time, the Stipa-ah needed to get off their island to hunt and gather. They had spent years building up a rock pathway from the shore to their community. The rock path was only wide enough for one person to walk at a time, again giving them an easy-to-defend access.
The group pushed on, but the path they followed was level—a relief after the hills and valleys they had climbed in the previous week.
At mid-day, Yosta-ak stopped and pointed. “Smoke from their fires. We are close. We can dry our clothes and revive ourselves.”
Alex looked in the direction Yosta-ak had pointed.
“They must have big fires there. That’s a lot of smoke.”
After half a mile more, they hiked around a bend and the lake spread out in front of them.
The smoke was not from hearth fires. The village was burning.
The group of nine stepped off the path and blended into the surrounding woods.
Stipa-ah consisted of a series of low-slung buildings and lean-tos. At least half of them were still smoldering.
Alex stepped forward a bit to look for activity—any sign of life.
There was none.
Doken-ak spoke for the first time in several days.
“I’ll go first.”
“I’m with you,” Alex said.
The two men and Monda-ak approached the village slowly. Doken-ak let each footfall rest a moment before taking the next, constantly watching for any sign of movement.
Aside from the sounds of the fire, the village was quiet. There were no sounds of the wounded crying for help. No animals bleating. Just the fire, crackling.
From the edge of the lake, it was clear that it was the buildings on the perimeter of the village that were most badly damaged.
Doken-ak and Alex crossed the stone footpath to the island unmolested.
Doken-ak pointed to the ground where the footpath met the island. It was dark and stained with blood, but there were no bodies.
They hurried to the first of the buildings—a lean-to that looked like it had housed animals. It was deserted. They did a quick sweep of the surrounding buildings and found the same.
It looked like the Stipa-ah had set their own buildings ablaze and walked away.
Alex pointed to the roofs of the buildings. It was obvious the fire had started there and spread. In fact, all the roofs had collapsed down into the buildings.
Further into the village, the buildings—simple dwellings for sleeping and food storage were undamaged, but empty.
In the very heart of the village was an open square.
The bodies of dozens of Stipa-ah were piled in the middle of the square.
Chapter Twenty
Denta-ah
A cursory search of the rest of the island showed that the bodies piled in the square were the only remaining sign of the Stipa-ah.
Alex hurried back to the pathway and whistled sharply twice. The remaining members of the party emerged from the woods and hurried across to the village.
“Come,” Alex said,
gesturing to Yosta-ak. He led them to the village square, where Doken-ak was pulling bodies from the heap and laying them out side by side.
Yosta-ak approached the body of one of the men and pointed. “Henda-ak. He was the chief of the Stipa-ah.”
Alex went about the grisly business of counting the bodies. Finally, he said, “Forty-two. Is that the whole tribe, or were there more?”
“There were many more. There were at least two hundred living here.”
“Would they give up?” Alex asked. “If things looked hopeless?” Alex wanted to ask if they would surrender, but there was no word for that in either Winten-ah or the universal language of Kragdon-ah.
“Give up?” Yosta-ak said? “Let themselves be taken? I can’t imagine such a thing.”
“But the village is empty. They must be somewhere.”
Yosta-ak looked at the sun. “It will be dark before too many more hours. We do not want to arrive at Denta-ah in the dark. Let us stay here tonight. There are many buildings which are undamaged. We can sleep in them, then start early in the morning. Maybe some of the Stipa-ah will come back. Until then, we can do the right thing with the bodies of the dead.”
That meant digging a long pit on the edge of the island and carrying the bodies there, then filling it in. It was hard, dirty work, even though the soil was easy to turn. It was long past dark when the last of the Stipa-ah had been buried.
Yosta-ak stood over the mass grave and chanted, but it was in his own language, so Alex could not understand.
All nine men were bone-tired from their labors and the emotional toll it took. They found a bunkhouse toward the middle of the village that was undisturbed.
Another unusual thing about Stipa-ah was that although its people had apparently abandoned it, they had left much of value behind. Their weapons were gone, but there were still stores of food that showed they had been prepared for the winter to come.
Before they bedded down for the night, the group filled their bags with food, then settled in to sleep. Their work of the afternoon had stolen their appetites for the moment.
Sleep also eluded most of them, including Alex. Laying in the beds of those who had either died or deserted their home made for an uncomfortable night.
They were all awake and moving around long before first light.
Alex and Monda-ak brought up the rear as they walked single-file across the pathway off the island. A heavy rain began to fall and the wood of the buildings, which had still been smoldering, were finally put out. Alex pulled the hood of his overshirt over his head.
Dawn came, but the skies stayed a steel gray that the sun could not break through. Being this close to Denta-ah, they did not take any breaks. After the mystery of Stipa-ah, they were more anxious than ever to get there.
After several hours of hiking through steady rain, Yosta-ak signaled to the small group to leave the main trail and follow a small game trail to the right. Almost immediately, the trail climbed in elevation. After a short hike, however, it opened onto a small clearing on the side of the hill.
From there, the whole of Denta-ah spread out below them.
Denta-ah had another near-perfect location. It was built inside a dead-end canyon with high, rugged hills on three sides. That funneled all attackers into a single pressure point.
“See what they have done,” Yosta-ak said, pointing down at the village.
Where the opening into the village was, a tremendous blockade had been built. It was made from thick trees which had been stripped of their bark and sunk deep into the ground. The end of the trees that pointed toward the sky were sharpened into a point. There was no space between the trees, making for a formidable obstacle. In three locations, there were small buildings that Alex identified as guardhouses.
Alex squinted across the distance and could make out what looked like a gate that was slightly ajar.
I can’t imagine what kind of manpower it would take to build a structure like that. I’m sure there’s a platform running behind it that men can stand and fire from.
“HAS IT ALWAYS BEEN like this?” Alex asked Yosta-ak.
“No. They had obstacles. Fallen trees piled high, mounds of dirt, a few guard stations, but nothing like that.”
Still, it doesn’t prove anything. They’ve improved their defenses against the world. That’s a good idea in a world where gigantic bears and dire wolves roam.
The men stood in the clearing, watching the activity in the town far below.
Technology’s not all bad. If I had my field binoculars, I might know what’s going on down there.
From their distant viewpoint, all that could be seen was a steady stream of people flooding in and out of the gate.
Yosta-ak turned to the three Winten-ah members. “I know that this new defense does not prove anything. I just wanted you to see it before we got too close.”
Alex looked at Sekun-ak and Doken-ak and saw that they weren’t going to say anything.
Maybe Ganku-eh should have sent tribe members who actually spoke. Or, maybe that’s why she sent me.
“What now?” Alex said.
Yosta-ak looked down at Alex. “Now, we approach them as friends and ask to be admitted as such.”
Alex didn’t like the idea of walking up to a fortress just to say hello, but it wasn’t his party. He was just an invited guest.
The group hiked down the hill and got back on the original path. Ten minutes later, they stepped into the clearing that led to Denta-ah. From that perspective, they could see a forest of stumps off to their right.
Guess we can see where the wood for this project came from. The forest would have offered protection, too, but not as stout as what they’ve built here.
As they approached the barricade, they saw a few men and women off to the left. Their backs were bent as they busily turned soil. Alex counted a dozen of them, with two men standing over them like guards.
Those guards had an odd-shaped weapon that didn’t look like anything Alex had seen on Kragdon-ah. They were too distant for him to be able to make out what they were.
As the group approached the barrier, the gate slowly swung closed. The people who were outside did not seem distressed to be locked out but continued with whatever task they were focusing on.
Undeterred, Yosta-ak and the others walked to within twenty yards. Up close, they could see how tall the massive fence was. Alex estimated it was at least thirty-five feet.
“Greetings,” Yosta-ak called in the universal language.
There was no response.
“Greetings,” he said again. “We wish to meet with Frema-ak.”
After another long silence, a man poked his head over the top of the wall. “What is your business?”
“We wish to meet with Frema-ah,” Yosta-ak repeated.
“What is your business?” the man atop the wall also repeated.
This could go on all day.
“There are rumors that a tribe is breaking the covenant and is using stama. We would like to talk with him about it.”
I guess that will lay our cards on the table.
Alex stared at the man’s face who stared down at them. He did not seem perturbed at the mention of a broken covenant. In fact, he did not seem perturbed by anything. Instead, he smirked.
“Frema-ah is ill. He cannot meet with anyone.”
“We are sorry to hear that. Who is the chief in his place?”
“I am,” the man on the fence said, the smirk never leaving his face.
Yosta-ak touched two fingers to his forehead, apparently acknowledging the truth of that statement.
“Very well. I am Yosta-ak of the Treda-ah.” He gestured at Doken-ak and Sekun-ak. “These are from Winten-ah. We have walked for many days to meet with you. Will you allow us entrance?”
The man’s head disappeared behind the wall. As it did, a line of twenty men appeared on the top of the wall. They all held crossbows.
Alex turned to Doken-ak and quietly said, “Have you ever seen
one of those before?”
“Kel,” Doken-ak said, equally quietly. No.
The smirking man reappeared in his position above the gate. Beside him, a much smaller man’s head appeared, struggling to see over the pointed tips of the logs. He stared down at the group of nine men. His eyes swept over them and settled on Alex.
The small man appeared to step up onto something so he could see better. He pointed a finger at Alex, then spoke to the man beside him, gesturing at the others in the group with a sweep of his hand.
The tall man said, “You are in Denta-ah. You are not welcome here. We consider your presence an act of war.”
Alex reached out and touched Doken-ak and Sekun-ak on their shoulders.
“We need to leave. Now.”
Alex glanced to his left and saw that the two guards who were overseeing the work crew had left their position and were striding toward them. Now that they were closer, Alex could see what he had missed before—they were also carrying crossbows.
Alex gave Monda-ak a hand signal, telling him to stay beside him.
“As an act of war, we are within our rights to execute you as war criminals.” In a calm, low voice, he said, “Now.”
All twenty of the men loosed their crossbows simultaneously.
Chapter Twenty-One
Enslaved
Short bolts flew like a hailstorm of death.
When the order to fire was given, the Winten-ah trio had been at the back of the group. Thanks to Alex’s warning, they had turned to move away and had a few feet of separation when the arrows slammed down.
That saved two lives.
Yosta-ak and his five guards never had a chance to lay a hand on their weapons. They were cut down instantly, each with several of the bolts sticking out of them.
Alex turned to run, knowing he was so badly outnumbered that his only chance at survival was speed.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Sekun-ak was with him, although trailing by a few yards.
Doken-ak.
He and Sekun-ak turned at the same moment and ran back toward their attackers.