by Inmon, Shawn
Noken-ak did not realize Alex was asking a rhetorical question.
“I could.”
“I believe you could,” Alex said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Give me four hundred more men just like you and we will win this war.”
“There is only one Noken-ak.”
“Much to our detriment,” Alex said, laughing.
It took three days until Alex and Noken-ak had created a working model they were pleased with.
“Now, we need to test it,” Alex said. “Sekun-ak, will you do the honors?”
“It is an honor indeed,” Sekun-ak said, grabbing his bow. “There has never been a shield like this in Winten-ah.”
“I’ll set up the shield against a tree, then let’s have you stand back about ten paces and fire an arrow at full strength. That will give us an idea of where we stand and what improvements we need to make.”
Sekun-ak and Noken-ak exchanged a curious glance.
“I must have misunderstood what the purpose of the shield is,” Noken-ak finally said.
“Really? Come on, this is no time to kid around.”
“Is the purpose of the shield to protect the trees of the forest?”
“Of course not. But we’re not going to put someone behind an untested shield and have someone fire point blank at it. That would be insane.”
“It would be insane to create a tool and then not use that tool properly to test it.”
“Wait,” Alex said. “Are you seriously saying you want to hold the shield and have Sekun-ak fire at you from ten paces?”
Again, the two exchanged a glance.
“Of course.”
Alex opened his mouth to protest, but the two giant men ran from the armory like schoolchildren let out at recess.
Noken-ak picked up the shield as though it was made of balsa and strode to the middle of the open field.
It was well past the winter solstice, and the day was frigid. As Noken-ak and Sekun-ak walked to the middle of the field with Alex chasing after them, the children of the tribe sniffed out that something was going on.
Within moments, dozens of children had scrambled down from the warmth of the caves and were excitedly dancing around Noken-ak. The shield that he carried was bigger than all of them.
Noken-ak shooed them back, slipped his arm through the leather bindings, and held it out in front of him.
Sekun-ak marked off ten paces, drew his bow and notched an arrow.
“Wait!” Alex shouted. “I’ll be lost without Noken-ak. We cannot risk harming him.”
The children all booed Alex, who was trying to take away the most exciting thing they’d seen since the first snowstorm.
Sekun-ak shrugged him off and pulled back on his bowstring. There was really no need to aim carefully at such a distance, but he did anyway.
Alex, realizing there was nothing he could do to stop them, didn’t know whether to look away or watch how his creation fared. He chose to do both, closing one eye and looking carefully with the other.
Sekun-ak released the arrow in a single, fluid motion. The shaft flew straight and true and the head of the arrow buried itself in the leather outer layer of the shield. The impact was enough to stagger even Noken-ak back a step.
Alex ran to him to see if he had been pierced by the arrow.
He had not.
Noken-ak’s face split in a triumphant smile and he patted Alex on the head like a child.
“I had faith in what we made. You should have more faith in us too.”
Sekun-ak simply nodded and said, “I thought it was going to go through. You should be proud that you created something that stopped my arrow.”
“You thought it was going to go through, but you shot him anyway?”
“We needed to know, didn’t we? Now we do.”
Ganku-eh and Banda-ak stepped down from the caves.
“What is this?” Ganku-eh asked.
Alex pointed to Noken-ak and said, “We are going to need special tools to combat the stama they are using. Noken-ak and I have been working on making this shield to keep us safe.”
Ganku-eh gestured at Noken-ak. “Bring it here.”
Like a puppy brought to heel, the massive man carried the bow to the chieftain and handed her the shield.
She slipped an arm through it and held it in front of her in a practiced manner that told Alex immediately that she was no beginner.
“What is this made of? It is not as heavy as it seems it should be.”
“I call it a composite shield. It has twisted straw, heavy cloth, and leather on a wooden frame. The whole is greater than the parts. The light weight will allow our warriors to carry the shields long distances.”
She ran her fingers over the leather, the arrow buried in the front, and poked at the tightly bound straw at the back, and declared, “There is no stama here.”
Alex felt a surge of elation. He hadn’t known there was going to be a stama test, but he had passed it, nonetheless.
Genka-ah handed the shield back to Noken-ak. “Show me.”
“Oh,” Alex said. “We already tested it. Sekun-ak shot him. It stopped the arrow. We don’t need to test it again.”
Genka-ah shut Alex up with a look. She was not to be disobeyed. Quietly, she said, “Show me.”
Noken-ak slipped the shield back on and stood to face Sekun-ak.
This time, Sekun-ak only took seven steps away before he turned to face the shield. Alex thought he might have pulled the string with a little more zest this time.
Is he trying to kill him?
Sekun-ak released the arrow and it zinged into the shield right next to the first. Again, Noken-ak took a half step back at the impact. Again, he still stood.
“Very good,” Ganku-eh said and turned back to the caves.
Banda-ak waited until she had disappeared up the path, then held his hand out to Sekun-ak.
“Give me that bow. Let me try.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Fight
Alex was the Henry Ford of Winten-ah. He introduced the assembly line. He wondered at first if Ganku-eh might think it was stama and forbid it, but she discussed it with him and saw that it was just a more efficient way to prepare.
Of course, air travel was more efficient than walking as well, and Ganku-eh would not have taken well to the idea of climbing inside a winged metal cylinder. It’s all a matter of degree.
Alex employed the classic idea of each person only having one job and gaining expertise at it. To that end, three men and women were dispatched to the forest each day, responsible for bringing back the proper wood to build the shield frame. More gathered the long, tough grasses, which were handed off to another team to twist together. And so on, and so on.
Winten-ah wasn’t exactly cranking out a Model-T every day, but they were making a fair number of shields.
The first of the recruited troops arrived a few weeks later. There were several dozen men and women, all of whom were hunters or warriors in their own tribe. They all looked like typical Kragdon-ah stock—tall, handsome or beautiful, and athletic.
The exception was one bull-necked man built more like Noken-ak than a typical tribesman. He wasn’t as tall, but he still towered over Alex, and his biceps were the size of Alex’s thigh.
Sekun-ak brought them together in the big field to address them. He and Alex had talked about it and decided it would be better if he spoke first.
“We appreciate the long journey it’s taken to get here. We have a sacred task ahead of us. Leading us on that task is Manta-ak.”
Sekun-ak stepped aside and revealed Alex behind him. A few questioning looks crossed the faces of the gathered warriors, but the biggest man laughed at the sight of Alex.
“We are going to be going up against an enemy who has us outnumbered, who is already using stama and will be using it against us. We are going to need to train together so we can fight as one single unit. It’s our only chance to prevail.”
The warriors glanced from
one to another. This was obviously not what they had expected or committed to.
The bull-necked man stepped forward, so he was only a few feet from Alex. “I agreed to come and fight. I do not need training. Show me who I need to kill, and I will kill them.”
Alex wasn’t completely unprepared for this situation.
“What’s your name?”
“I am Tinta-ak,” the big man said in a voice so deep it sounded like it came from the bottom of a barrel.
Alex took a step forward to lay a hand on Tinta-ak’s shoulder in the traditional greeting. Tinta-ak lowered his head and an expression so fierce came over him that Alex changed his mind.
“I appreciate that you are a great warrior.” Alex swept his arm across the field to indicate all two dozen of the warriors. “I’m sure you’re all great warriors. That’s why you are here. However, if we do not train properly, we will fight bravely and die.”
“Show me,” Tinta-ak said.
Alex took one step back. “Show you what?”
“Show me what your training can do. Fight me.”
The warriors behind Tinta-ak laughed. The idea of the giant man grappling with Alex was so ludicrous as to not be worth considering.
“All right,” Alex said, simply. He looked at the warriors. “Make a circle. Let’s say the first person to throw the other outside the circle wins.”
“What if I just snap your neck? Can I throw your body out of the circle then?”
Alex twisted his head left, then right, popping his neck. “You bet. If you kill me, I’ve definitely lost the fight.”
Tinta-ak looked surprised that Alex agreed to fight him. He scratched at his nose as if there was something he might be missing.
Meanwhile, the warriors, augmented by additional people from Winten-ah, formed a large circle. Winters were quiet and there was so little entertainment. Soon, every person in the tribe joined the circle. Alex’s assembly line shut down. Children jumped and laughed, mock-fighting. A sudden holiday from a depressing winter.
Alex started stretching, which was much more a twenty-first century habit than it was in Kragdon-ah. The visiting warriors pointed and laughed.
One said, “It’s like he’s preparing his own body for burial.” Much laughter ensued.
The two men met in the middle of the human ring. Alex was six foot two and weighed 180 pounds. Tinta-ak was seven foot one and weighed 300 pounds—all muscle.
Sekun-ak went to the middle of the ring and laid his hand on Alex’s shoulder. Quietly, he said, “He will likely kill you. You don’t have to do this. They will listen to you because of what you know. Not because you are a great fighter.”
“I do have to do this. Some might listen, but they won’t respect me if I don’t.”
Sekun-ak glanced over his shoulder at Tinta-ak, who was clenching and unclenching his fists.
“I don’t think he likes you.”
“You didn’t like me either, and now you are my brother.”
Sekun-ak could not argue with either sentiment, so he placed two fingers to his forehead and stepped back to the edge of the crowd. There would be no referee and no rules.
Alex gave Monda-ak a hand signal to go with Sekun-ak and he obeyed. The last thing Alex wanted was for his most protective friend to jump into the middle of the fight.
Tinta-ak was in no mood to waste time. He lunged, his long arms reaching for Alex’s head. Alex sidestepped the obvious move, dancing lightly on his toes.
Tinta-ak grunted his frustration, dropped his hands, and stepped casually toward Alex, who held his ground. When he was within arm’s length, Tinta-ak swung his massive sledgehammer fist at Alex’s face.
More accurately, he swung at where Alex’s face had been a split-second earlier. Alex had danced away again, still moving, keeping his weight evenly distributed.
Tinta-ak had had enough. With a mighty roar, he spread his arms out and rushed toward Alex. There was no time to dance away. Instead, Alex turned slightly sideways and grabbed Tinta-ak’s right wrist. He pulled that toward him while bending at the knee. The big man’s bulk crashed into Alex, but he was ready for it. He pulled Tinta-ak’s wrist down and lifted with his shoulder.
Tinta-ak’s momentum carried him completely up and over Alex. He landed on his back with such a resounding crash that people later said they could feel the ground move. He lay stunned for several seconds. Alex could have pressed his attack but continued to just bounce lightly from his left foot to his right, waiting for Tinta-ak to continue.
Looks of shock and surprise passed through the visiting warriors as they whispered among themselves. The Winten-ah were less surprised, having been around Alex for years.
Tinta-ak sucked air back into his lungs then rolled onto his knees and sprang back to his feet. He was surprisingly nimble for such a beast of a man. Nimble, but untrained.
Tinta-ak moved forward more cautiously, jabbing at Alex with his left hand, setting him up for his right. He jabbed once, twice, thrice, then swung his right fist. If it had connected, it would have likely killed Alex.
It did not connect.
Instead, Alex ducked left and again grabbed the giant’s wrist with his right hand. This time, instead of pulling it toward him, he snapped his left hand onto Tinta-ak right elbow, trying for an arm bar. Tinta-ak used his far-superior leverage and simply lifted his arm out of it while delivering a blow with his right hand that made Alex see stars.
Okay, that’s not gonna work.
Still, Alex felt he had the measure of the man now. Huge, muscled, and athletic. But people had almost certainly feared that size since childhood, so he had never learned to fight.
Time to end this before he tears my head off with a wild swing.
Alex feinted to his left, then struck with a leopard fist just below Tinta-ak’s right elbow, hitting the pressure point perfectly.
The giant man’s right arm dropped uselessly to his side. He looked at it almost comically, commanding it to rise up and strike Alex. He rotated his shoulder willing his arm to move, but that only caused it to flop like a beached fish.
The crowd surrounding them said, “Ooooooh,” in unison. They had never seen magic like this.
Fury spread across Tinta-ak’s face. He bunched up his left fist and swung wildly. Alex dodged the blow easily, then struck Tinta-ak’s left arm in the same spot as he had the first, again using a leopard fist—folding his first two fingers in and striking with his knuckles.
Tinta-ak’s left arm now dangled as helplessly as the first.
I could do the same to his legs, cutting him down to nothing like the Black Knight in a Monty Python movie, but I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to humiliate him. I’ll need him.
Tinta-ak still had weapons at his disposal—his two legs, his shoulders, even his thick head—but he had no idea how to use any of them. For the first time, the big man looked frightened. He was at Alex’s mercy, and he knew it. He did not beg, but simply raised his chin and waited for whatever blow would come.
Alex put all his weight on his left leg and gave a simple front kick with his right. He hit Tinta-ak square in the chest. With effectively no arms to find his balance, he stumbled backwards, trying to get his feet under him. It was a losing battle and he fell for a long time—not unlike the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk.
He fell directly toward the crowd of warriors he had come with. They could have caught him, held him up, sent him back into the fight. They did not. They sidestepped him like a matador in the bull ring.
Tinta-ak finally landed on his back, five feet outside of the ring.
He looked up at the cloudy sky, trying to puzzle out what had happened—how his lifetime streak of undefeated fights had come to an end at the hands of such a puny opponent.
Alex, who had been on the receiving end of only a single glancing blow, hurried over to Tinta-ak. He put an arm under him and helped him sit up. The giant’s massive arms still hung limply at his side and he looked from one to the other as if they ha
d betrayed him.
“Don’t worry, I’ll fix this for you.” Alex lifted Tinta-ak’s right arm and began to massage it in a circular, downward motion from his bicep to below the elbow.
My two hands don’t reach all the way around his bicep. What a specimen. If he’s trained, he will be a force to be reckoned with.
After Alex massaged the right arm for a few minutes, blood flowed through it and Tinta-ak was able to move his fingers, then rotate his fist. He looked at Alex, who he had tried to kill earlier, with an expression of devotion. He turned his left shoulder toward Alex, who repeated the process on the second arm.
“It’s only temporary,” Alex said quietly to Tinta-ak. “You might be weaker for a few hours, but I think a weaker Tinta-ak is stronger than most other men.”
Tinta-ak managed to reach two fingers up to his forehead in acknowledgement of that truth.
Alex sprang to his feet and reached a hand out, lifting Tinta-ak to his feet as well.
Alex turned to the assembled crowd and said, “Winten-ah, please return to the warmth of the caves and return to work on building our shields. We are depending on you.”
The crowd broke up into small groups and returned to the caves or to the armory to work, murmuring among themselves as they did.
Alex returned his attention to the visiting warriors.
“Now, as I was saying, we are going to be outnumbered and they will have weapons we do not have. We will need to fight as a single unit if we are to win. As we saw, size and strength does not always equal victory.”
The man standing next to Tinta-ak laughed a little and poked the bigger man in the ribs. When he looked at Tinta-ak’s face, he took two steps away from him.
The other men lifted two fingers to their forehead.
They were believers.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Basic Training
“What you did to Tinta-ak. Can you teach me that?”
Sekun-ak and Alex were walking back toward the armory to see how production of the shields was progressing.
Alex looked at him with a glint in his eye. “You said he was going to kill me.”