by Kevin Ashman
Sky eventually finished and sat back. There was nothing more she could do. If Tan rejected the idea, it was over. The silence was unbearable, as Tan chewed the cud, staring long and hard at the outspoken and headstrong girl.
‘I have made a decision, Sky of Raven’s hearth,’ he said formally.
Sky looked eagerly at Tan, eyes gleaming and heart racing in anticipation.
‘You will be Golau’s woman,’ he said.
There was an awkward silence as the words registered. Sky’s brow knitted and the smile dropped.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘my ideas…’
‘I have listened,’ he interrupted. ‘You have tangled me like a goat in a thorn bush and I have fallen into your plan like the eel into the net.’
‘But Golau is…’ she struggled for words exasperated by the implications.
‘Golau is a good hunter and I have seen the way he looks at you.’
‘But I don’t care. I mean, I do care, but… I mean…,’ she fell silent, lost for words.
Tan filled the void.
‘You have too many thoughts, Sky of Raven’s hearth, ‘and they need directing by a man.’
‘I will not take him as a husband,’ stated Sky suddenly defiant, ‘I will take the knife first and find my own path to the Sun-god!’ she threw her head back proudly.
Tan smiled a toothless smile and his formal demeanour softened.
‘You won’t take the knife, Sky,’ he said softly, ‘you will make a hearth with Golau and you will be a mother to Little-bear. Has not Raven’s hearth suffered enough?’
Sky realized that she was now the one being manipulated. Little-bear worshiped her and her own death would hurt no one in the clan except her family. The chief had out flanked her and she knew this was an argument she could not win.
‘I will do as you say, Tan Long-tooth,’ she said finally.
‘Then it is settled,’ he said, ‘we will carry out the ceremony at the gathering this summer.’
‘There is one more thing, Tan,’ she said her mind racing.
His smile dropped.
‘You test my patience, girl,’ he said.
‘We will try out my new way when the snows have melted,’ she said quickly.
Tan scowled.
‘And if I say no?’
‘Then Golau’s hearth will always be cold, if I am there or not.’
Tan again hid a smile.
‘Ok, girl,’ he said eventually, ‘you have beaten an old man into submission. You can try your new way, but hear this; no hunter will take part in this foolishness. You will use only the women, children and the old. In the spring, you will play your game, Golau will get his woman and this foolishness will end.’
Sky was in turmoil; she needed the strength of the men to make it work
‘But….’
‘No more words, Sky,’ barked Tan, ‘I have spoken’
Sky stood and left Tan’s hearth. The final manipulation had gone the way of the old man. She realized he was very clever. That was why he was the chief.
Tan watched her go. Her idea was exactly as Keera had explained to him many nights ago and he had planned the direction the conversation went. She was a headstrong girl, and she would make Golau a fine wife. Her new way was strange, with many problems and some merit, but with Sky in charge, it might just work.
Over the next few days, Sky snatched unseen glances at Golau. She saw him with new eyes. No longer was he a just a friend of her mother, he was now a potential mate and it changed everything. Tan had agreed not to tell of their arrangement and Sky had kept her silence as well. A lot could happen over the next few months and there was much to do.
Chapter 13
Golau walked along the tree line, checking his snares. He had been away from the clan for two days, walking over the nearby mountains to find scarce prey at the edge of the snow covered forest. The virgin snow lay heavy on the ground and he had two white hares hanging from his belt for his efforts. He approached the next snare and bent to cut out the body of the fox; it was a very productive morning, he thought.
He stopped dead in his tracks, his body perfectly still, and looked up slowly, subconsciously aware that he was being watched. His eyes scanned the forest, the hair on his neck standing on end as he searched for the unseen predator. He lifted his eyes higher up into the branches, scanning side to side until eventually, his slow examination focused on one point in the shadows. It was different to the others; darker, thicker, something was on it, perhaps a cat. He hefted his spear and walked slowly forward, his eyes never leaving his target. Suddenly, the shape swung down from a tree and landed lightly on two feet. It was small, agile, and definitely human.
Golau thought quickly, was this the fiend who had taken Bran’s head? Could this be the Soul-eater that had led to the Shaman’s prophesy in the summer camp the previous year, and had been the cause of many sleepless nights since? Was this creature the cause of his fear?
Golau made a decision. Child or not it did not deserve to live. He would take its own head back to the clan, and with a roar, he charged forward to launch his spear at the crouching figure.
The small creature easily dodged the spear and turned to melt into the shadows. Golau followed quickly, picking up his spear as he passed. At first, the fleeing child stayed easily out of spear range and Golau could not afford the time to string his bow, but gradually, he closed the distance and panting heavily, chased the child out of the tree line and across a frozen river. Without any trees to spoil his aim, he stopped, aimed his spear and as he transferred his body weight onto the front foot at the point of launch, he realized his mistake.
With a sickening crunch, his front foot tore through the ice sheet causing him to fall, his body crashing to the frozen surface and shattering the ice covered river. The lower half of his body was dragged into the freezing current below the ice and he struggled desperately to pull himself out by his elbows. The small figure stopped on the ice and walked back toward Golau who was now submerged up to his armpits.
The stranger was obviously male and bound in tight strips of dirty, smoke blackened animal skins with a larger wrap of animal skin around his waist. A thick woolly cape hung from his shoulders and his head was covered with a hat of Fox-fur. Up close, it was obvious that this was no child, but a short man who stared down at Golau. Thin splinters of bone pierced both cheeks, passing in and out several times before being joined together below the chin with a beaded necklace. His face and head was covered with random tattoos covering the entire surface and earrings made of human teeth hung from each ear. The chilling apparition crouched to get closer to Golau and gently smoothed his hair.
‘Sholar,’ he snarled, his spittle spraying on Golau’s face. Golau stared back, rapidly losing feeling in his lower body, and struggling to hold himself above the ice.
The creature stood up and laughed. His breath was fetid and the teeth had been filed into sharp points in his mouth. Reaching under his cape, he pulled out a large stone axe and laughed again into Golau’s face. He drew his hand slowly across his own throat, in the universally recognised sign of impending death, and laughed again as he raised the club to smash Golau’s skull.
Golau made an instant decision, and taking a deep breath, let go of his icy handhold. The freezing current dragged his body below the ice covered river, and he was swept ferociously downstream, his fists beating futilely against the cold transparent ceiling in a vain attempt to break through. The creature screamed his annoyance and watched the hunter’s silhouette disappear under the opaque ice sheet, smashing his axe against the ice in frustration.
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Most of the clan were dispersed throughout the valley when the devastating attack came. Dozens of the small crazed figures, swathed in black, swarmed down the scree slope, screaming their war cries, as they wielded axe and club with devastating effect. The onslaught was so quick and unexpected that everyone was taken by surprise and the hunters that ran to the defence of the clan were
quickly and cruelly cut down by the aggressors, their kneecaps cleverly smashed with bone club before their faces were caved in. No men left in the open were spared, but though women and children were clubbed to the ground, they were not killed.
Tan and the remnants of the clan managed to retreat to the safety of the cave where the surviving hunters could easily defend the narrow entrance. The screams of women and children alike, echoed deafeningly around the cave as the horrific creatures threw wave after wave at the defenders, keen to get to the families inside, but the forest of long hunting spears wielded by the frantic shouting defenders kept them at bay as they tried to get through the tiny entrance.
Gradually, the attacks eased, but for two days they stayed at the bottom of the slope, constantly trying different methods to get in. A large fire was placed at the entrance in an attempt to smoke out the clan, but the natural vents inside meant the thick smoke was dispersed before it became a danger.
There was a lull in the fighting and Sky sent Alid up with a water skin for the defenders. Neifion and Ceffyl stood guard exhausted, but unwilling to take their attention off the entrance for even a moment. Alid waited for the return of the empty skin, his dirty face streaked with the tracks of sweat and tears.
Ceffyl’s tired eyes never left the entrance as he gulped the water. He had been at the entrance for two days without rest and the exhaustion was deep seated on his face. His spear was red from the blood of the attackers, and a dozen bodies crowded the cave entrance, their bodies already beginning to bloat as the gases built up within. Three other hunters were alive and sleeping to one side, two more were wounded and the two that had died of their wounds in the night were wrapped in skins at the back of the cave.
Sky was busy amongst all the clan talking, nursing and simply encouraging all the survivors, making sure they ate and drank and that the surviving children were comforted. The older men sat just behind Ceffyl and Neifion with a bow each and their spears lying to their front, though in reality, if the breach was made, they would probably only get one arrow off before they were overrun.
As suddenly as they started two days earlier, the drums stopped. Everyone looked up, if anything, it was even more terrifying.
‘What’s happening?’ Sky asked.
No-one had the answer, but scared hands refreshed grips on spear hafts. All eyes stared at the entrance, as a strange language called out, reverberating around the valley.
‘Sholar!’
The hunters looked at each other nervously
‘Sholar!’ the voice repeated
Other strange voices laughed at the mutually understood joke and all the available men in the cave crowded around the entrance expecting another attack.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Alid gripping Sky’s tunic tightly.
‘I think they are calling us,’ said Sky, ‘don’t worry, Alid, be brave.’
‘Stay here,’ said Gafr, ‘I will see.’
Gafr went forward and carefully crawled around the bend into the entrance tunnel, grimacing at the smell as he crawled over the bodies and squinting against the light at the entrance. Seeing no attackers, he continued slowly forward to the crest of the slope and looked down at the horrific scene below.
Dozens of the attackers were spread out on the valley floor sitting around campfires. On the lower edge of the slope to the front of the cave stood, a lone warrior, his bald head adorned with a human skull as a headdress and a strange yet familiar greying cape hanging from his shoulders. At his feet lay a dead hare, and to his side, head bowed, a young captured clan girl kneeled, with her hands tied behind her back. The warrior looked up as Gafr emerged onto the ledge and bellowed a laugh.
‘Ha, Sholar,’ he shouted up at Gafr.
The rest of the tribe looked up from their fires and laughed along with their leader. Sky and Ceffyl joined Gafr on the ledge, transfixed at the events unfolding below.
The scene was silent now and the chief looked up at the group on the ledge, his smile revealing his blackened teeth, sharpened into tiny vicious dagger points. He banged his chest with his clenched fist
‘Baal,’ he said, ‘Baal.’ He turned around and waved his hand over his warriors
‘Baal,’ he repeated, before picking up the dead hare, holding it up toward the ledge.
‘Sholar,’ he shouted and looked up at the hunters on the ledge, repeating the action and words several times. He lifted the hare to his mouth with two hands and mimicked eating the body.
‘Sholar,’ he shouted again and looked around at the others now bunched behind him joining in the obvious joke.
‘I think he means meat,’ whispered Alid.
The crowd below fell silent as the warrior threw away the hare, his smile gone and his narrowing yellow eyes never leaving the group. He stepped forward and grabbed the tethered child by her hair, yanking it back to reveal the terrified tear stained face of the captive. Deathly silence filled the valley.
‘Joolan!’ cried Tan frantically, recognizing his granddaughter. Keera threw her arms around the chief to stop him falling in his shock.
The kneeling girl whimpered in recognition.
‘Grandfather,’ she called, her petrified eyes pleading silently for help. The captor slowly looked up at the group again. It seemed that everyone held their breath.
Slowly and malevolently, he drew a skinning knife deeply across the struggling girl’s throat, her eyes bulging wide and her screams turning to gurgles as the jugular was severed and the blood poured into her open throat. Sawing at her neck, he decapitated his victim, and held Joolan’s head up high by her hair, allowing the blood to pour over his own head and face. The deafening silence was shattered by the blood curdling screams of the Baal. Finally he committed the final horror and lowered the severed neck to his face, gnawing at the still twitching spinal cord with his sharpened predatory teeth.
‘Sholar!’ he shouted for the last time, pointing his knife at the group above.
Bursting through the small party of the hunters on the ledge, a frenzied snarling woman careered down the small slope toward the blood soaked chief of the Baal.
With an evil smirk, he dropped the decapitated head to the ground, easily avoided the screaming woman’s outstretched clawed hands, and gathered her into his embrace, her headlong rush halting dramatically as he eased his knife through her animal skin tunic and into her broken heart.
After what seemed an eternity, Naiaj slipped down the Baal’s body to collapse at his feet. He kicked her body away from him, and the last moment of her life was used up, reaching out her arm to gently touch the hair on the severed head of her daughter.
The hollow thuds of the bone drums restarted as the leader of the Baal started laughing again, blood and flesh hanging from his jaws, blood dripping over his strange grey cape.
Tan collapsed, traumatised at the death of his daughter and granddaughter. They carried his body inside and set up their defensive position, expecting an imminent attack, all absolutely clear what their fate was going to be.
Alid sat at the back of the cave unseen in the darkest shadows, his arms around his knees, rocking back and fore whispering quietly to himself through his tears.
‘Sholar,’ he whispered ‘Sholar, Sholar…’
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Chapter 14
Pictures were swimming behind Golau’s eyes making no sense. His fingers and toes screamed in pain, and his head ached as if cloven in two by an axe, his subconscious fighting to reach the surface. A low sound droned in the background, a monotonous hum that changed neither in volume or pitch. Strange faces swarmed in and out of his vision and stranger voices chanted unintelligible words as he hovered between life and death. His lips were forced apart and a disgusting liquid forced down his throat causing him to gag. Golau choked and woke up from near death, into a new nightmare.
He was wrapped in a heavy animal skin and unable to move his arms or legs. He was in a dark cavern, alongside a fire, the heat almost burning his face. His eyes became accusto
med to the light and he saw the silhouette of several women sitting around the flames, their pendulous breasts hanging to their waist.
The strange women were emitting strange sounds from deep in their throats, and as the deep tones echoed around the cavern, he moaned with fear and fell back into nothingness.
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Golau didn’t know how long he laid unconscious, only that the next time he woke, he was under a loose fur and the chanting had stopped. He became aware of a restriction on his leg and realized that it was bound tightly with strips of hide wrapped around two straight pieces of wood, put in place to reset an obviously broken bone. One of the ever present females uttered an unintelligible call and a large hairy male emerged out of the darkness. He stooped to grab Golau’s shoulders and lifted him to a sitting position, and as he winced at the shooting pains in his leg, Golau took in the surreal sight around the fire.
As the warmth brought feeling back to his body, the incident on the river came back to his mind. The freezing current had dragged him downstream under the ice, and he recalled being smashed against a submerged rock, but after that, his memory was patchy. He vaguely recalled a huge hair covered arm reaching down through glacial melt water, and patches of a freezing journey interspersed with moments of unconsciousness as he was carried swiftly through the forest. Golau realized that he was not in any immediate danger; these people had saved his life.
The circle of watchers, examined him closely, as he extended his arms toward the fire. The one he recalled as giving him the foul drink held out her hand causing him to jump. He looked down and saw a small piece of small meat between her large fingers. Gently, he took the meat, and following her mime of eating, slowly placed the raw meat in his mouth. More morsels followed along with an animal skin of water and gradually he warmed up, feeling the life returning to his limbs. He looked across at the silent large male.