Chapter 17: The Great Move

(Spring of Year Five)

Maybe I should have paid more attention to Julie's concerns. Whatever the case may be, it turned out the way it went. I felt at the time that her 'divine' origins should have been plenty of authority to secure the northern camp. We held a departure ceremony at the great platform. I used all the tricks including the amplified voice, shining magical lights, tiki torches, all of it. At the end of the ceremony, I brought Julie up on the stage as I held the LED illuminated smilodon skull up.

"All Hail the Mighty PrettyButBitchy!" I chanted.

"Hail! Hail! Hail!" They chanted.

"Take the throne, PrettyButBitchy!" I motioned her to the throne chair.

She grinned a small grin that said something like 'I'm gonna get you later, jerk.' Then she sat down on the throne as I held the magic skull up over her head.

"PrettyButBitchy shall lead you while I am gone!"

"She shall lead us!"

"She speaks for me!"

"She speaks for the GreatOne!"

I set the skull down on her head, and it lit up with the magic lights from the LEDs. The crowd went 'oooh!'. Then I wrapped her in the magic fur cape, and they all went 'oooh' again. And then I had her fire the rifle up in the air a couple of times, and they all seemed duly impressed. We had a decent laugh about all of it back at the house as I was doing my final packing.

For the move, DeadAndBack would be the new camp captain when we arrived at the new place, and would speak for me there when we returned to the old camp. With us would come the majority of the bow trained scouts, both men and women. I'd decided to take many of the craftsmen, but only the best ones. Their best apprentices would remain at the old camp to help Julie take care of any issues that might arise. I dismantled the power generator from the second windmill, and took the guts with us. I also took along several tile molds and the wood lathe and smaller multi-mill. We'd have everything we needed to set up a full-blown mini-camp at the new home.

Along with the scouts and craftsmen, we took their families and several of the shamen. To support Julie I left SeeksWisdom and several of his crowd of leaders and the old tribal chiefs. She'd have more than enough moral authority to keep the majority in check during my absence. The final group that came with us were the best of the axmen. I haven't written much about these guys, but the good ones could drop a medium sized tree in minutes flat. They were damned impressive.

I took both Ashes and Shining and the boys with me. Julie's concerns had made a small impact on me at least, so I decided to take my original cave brides and the boys. Julie kept the girls in the old camp because they were so young and I wanted some facilities to exist for them when we brought them. The move would happen in the earliest parts of spring, while it was still very cold, and I knew the boys would stand up to it better than the girls.

...

The big day finally arrived at the end of February. While winter was still on us hard, we'd had more than a week of warmer weather, and I decided to risk being snowed in at one of the camps and make a big push off. We set off from the larger enclosure with ten wagons, the original supply dump mounted up on wheels, and most people on foot. We took sixty of the 'tame' aurochs, some of the chickens in larger cages, and all of the horses. All in all, nearly two hundred of us set off. We made good time to the first outpost, even though it was damned cold. We made a good twelve miles a day for those first days, but that was only because a lot of people could ride in the wagons and because the aurochs were in excellent health. Our progress would be slower than that pretty much from then on. When we arrived at the first outpost, we dropped off some excess food and other supplies for the men and picked up some furs and small trade items.

After just one night in the outpost, we set off in the early morning. I'm going to spend a little time here talking about getting these bastards moving each morning. Once I've talked about this a little, just keep it in mind. They wake up when they feel like it, they go to sleep when they feel like it, and in between they pretty much just wander around aimlessly doing their daily routine. What does a Cro-Magnon's daily routine consist of? Mostly waking up, eating some disgusting filth, crapping too close to where he ate, then scratching himself and telling lies to other scratching, lice and flea infested morons, and then eating some more. In between these fascinating episodes of genius, they MIGHT do some root gathering or some hunting. Maybe.

Getting a couple hundred of these geniuses moving each morning was a fire drill of the first magnitude. Some time before the first light of dawn, the chickens would start to crow. That would lead to one of the scouts blowing a horn. Following the horn, I'd wake up and begin shouting orders to get packed and moving until I was hoarse and pissed. The stinky bastards would pack up slowly and begin wandering off. Now, the actual wandering along part worked well, but every time we broke camp, they'd leave stuff behind and I'd have to run a crew of men to grab cooking pots, skillets, tents, furs, robes, clothes, bedrolls, food, and sometimes even spouses. It was amazing.

How do you discipline them? I couldn't bring myself to just shoot the worst ones. It might have been more effective though. The worst punishment I could deal with was leaving one or two of them at the outposts. Mostly, all I could really do was yell at them, and that wasn't too effective. So, as we travel, please imagine a trail that a dead drunk blind moron could follow left behind us composed of every possible item. Every once in a while the punishment would be to make the moron who left his bed roll behind run and go get it while we traveled. It's not like they could lose our trail.

...

The other thing to keep in mind about our travel is that we travelled roughly from just after dawn until dusk each day. In the beginning this was about twelve hours a day, and as time passed would extend to closer to fifteen hours a day. As we travelled, the scouts and I would direct the axmen to clear a trail of an excess tree here and there. As we moved south, this work would be less common. Once the melt set in, the wagons got mired in mud a lot more often. A good steady walking pace was three miles an hour. In the early days with the smaller group, we would get in a steady ten hours of walking. But regardless of how we walked, the pace was set by the aurochs. They walked at about two miles an hour. Because of this, it was important to have the lunch meal be as simple and fast as possible. Using pemmican and water was my preference, and it tended to work.

So, all in all, we averaged just about twenty miles a day on a really good day and far closer to eight miles a day on an average day. On bad days, we would spend the entire day getting the wagons across a single river or out of the mud and progress a measly mile or two from sunup to sundown. Those days were damned frustrating.

...

What follows from here and in the next sections are my trail notes and a little bit of a journal. Where it seems useful I've expanded my notes a little.

...

March 3^rd to 5^th — On the trail to the first outpost. The pace is fast because of the state of the trail, but it takes us hours each day to pack and unpack. I am very frustrated on the second day by the number of jerks that just walk off leaving their stuff behind. Remind me again why I can't just shoot them?

March 6^th, first outpost — forty miles. I leave ten morons and their wives behind. These are the worst of the worst, and I replace them with the scouts from the outpost. At least the scouts are self-reliant. We dropped off close to two tons of additional supplies for distribution to the other hunting spots and to the local families. Even so, it's less than half a load from just one wagon.

March 7^th, in the great valley between outposts. The scouts bring in ten elk. The elk were skinny and winter tough, but it's fresh meat and we will be glad of it for at least a week as we can avoid the pemmican.

March 12^th, second outpost — ninety some miles. There was a lot of work involved to cross the valley river and we were slow getting back on pace. I had to personally supervise making sure that every wagon was lashed down and secured as we crossed. The auroch broke through the river ice in several locations, but we'd picked a good spot to ford and we didn't lose anyone or any animals. We've averaged about nine miles a day, and the pace is picking up a little bit. We dropped off a couple more families at the second outpost, but most of the folks are beginning to learn a little trail discipline. It's a pain in my butt to follow behind and see the pots and pottery we worked so hard to make left behind.

March 13^th to 20^th, third outpost — 180 miles. The pace picked up significantly this week, even though there was a lot of mud. A lot of mud. The wagons handled the mud well, and my design of the wider iron tires seems to have been a good one. Pretty soon we'll be out on the big plains, and the mud might well be more of a problem than it has been so far. Setting off this early is a big trade-off.

March 21^st, third outpost. We took a day to repack and clean up. The mud was everywhere, and using black plastic sacks in the sun we heated water for showers. People appreciated an extra day off and I used the time to make small repairs on the wagons.

March 22^nd through 30^th, travel to fourth outpost — 210 miles. Pace was very slow. We've run into lots of mud and a few mechanical breakdowns on the trail. One wagon broke a tongue and we had to replace it from spares. I'm concerned that my schedule is aggressive and that I won't have enough time at the new site to get the work done that I want. We've been travelling for almost a month, and I am feeling the distance from the main camp. I worry about the babies and Julie at night.

April 1^st through 10^th, travelling through the fifth and sixth outposts. — Over three hundred miles. For several days we have averaged close to fifteen miles a day. That's the good news. The bad news was having to rope the wagons down a mile long defile that leads from the great plain we've been on down into the river valley we will be following for a long way. The choice of following the river solves all the water problems for a long time to come, but the hill behind us was a great pain to get down. I'm glad we won't be bringing many wagons back up it ever. Travel beside the river goes quickly.

April 11^th. — One of the wagons was attacked by a pair of cave lions. They fell behind the train because of a sick auroch, and a pair of lions attacked. We arrived in time to kill the lions but not in time to save a woman and her child. They left the safety of the wagon and tried to run. I continue to boggle at the stupidity involved. I know I shouldn't. Total loss was the entire family and two aurochs. We re-rigged the wagon and pressed on. Sometimes I despair of ever teaching these people some basic common sense.

April 12^th through 17^th — seventh and eighth outposts. Closing in on four hundred miles under our trail. The travel down the river trail goes very quickly and we want for nothing. I'm extremely pleased with the progress, even counting in the numerous small crossings we've had to make. Sending out scouts to forge the trails over the last couple of years was a great deal of work, but it has paid off well.

April 19^th — Outpost nine. The outpost has been overrun by the local savages. We found it occupied by strangers, and they had eaten the scouts. There were at least fifty of the bastards present.

We traveled down river that day, the 19^th from the early morning. My band of smelly bastards had become well trained on the trail, and we were on the road quickly that morning. As usual, I had two scouts out in front. This morning it was FartsALot and one of the men from the great cave tribe. They rode a couple of miles ahead and picked the best route for the wagons. When they saw the fire from the ninth encampment, they rode up to a ridge to look down on it. The rude palisade walls were open in a couple of spots and the camp looked to be a mess from even that distance. The scout from the great cave stayed on the ridge watching while Farts rode back to meet me. I detached a group of twenty bow carrying scouts and took DeadAndBack and Farts back to the ridge with me on horseback. As I examined the camp from my binoculars, I could see that the people in the outpost were not our people, and even the most basic hygiene wasn't being observed. It looked like our men were dead or gone and the women had been taken.

We signaled the wagon train to stop and make camp. When we knew that they were stopped at a safe distance, the scouts and I set up a rough camp on the ridge. The distance from the ridge to the outpost was most of five hundred yards, a very long shot for me. Regardless, I set up a simple bipod and sighted in on the men below. After a time, I was able to distinguish a man wearing a human skull on his head as a hat, so I shot him. The men in the camp looked around confused, and I shot a couple more. After I'd shot about seven of them, the rest grabbed their spears and came boiling out of the outpost gate. We rode down on them, leading the bowmen on foot. When we got to about fifty yards distance, I shot a couple more.

They charged us at the urging of some guy from the back. I couldn't see him clearly until we had thinned the ranks some. It was the first real test of the fighting ability of my scouts and I admit to being very worried. I shouldn't have been. These bastards had been fighting small tribal skirmishes for thousands of years. They were more than happy to kill everyone. The bows were devastating to the charging spear men. In the time it took them to cross the intervening ground, the scouts shot at least ten more men, and I shot the leader. When the invaders saw this, their morale broke and they turned tail.

Normally, for the stupid cave bastards, when your enemy turns tail you start the celebration. I'd spent a lot of time trying to break that habit and get them to shoot the bad guys even when they ran away. The training paid off. My archers massacred them, and I popped a few as well. It was brutal. Of the approximately fifty or so men in the invading party, we accounted for forty four bodies. We shot the rest when we got to the encampment. It was pretty brutal work, shooting them at point blank range, but I didn't want any of them left alive.

The women of the original outpost greeted us as heroes, and the women and kids of the invaders were way too freaked out by the sudden change of events to make a fuss of any kind. Farts and a couple of the scouts rode back to the wagons and by late that night we were all in camp. We spent the next day there, and only had to kill two of the older women who were trying to subvert our control. The rest went down the road of 'The GreatOne' easily enough after that. What was new to me about this group was the savagery with which they had treated our men when they took over the camp. This band was pretty clearly cannibalistic, and it made me sick to think that they actively preyed on other humans for food. When I asked about it, it turned out that there were three or four other bands of human-hunting tribesmen near-abouts.

The next day, April 21^st we sent DeadAndBack and the wagons on ahead with several of the scouts as protection. The rest of the scouts and I raided the camps of the cannibals. The work was bloody and terrible. I freely admit to taking them by surprise and basically murdering the men from a distance. When the third group retreated into the recesses of a cave complex, I threw explosives in after them. They came wandering out looking deafened and shocked, and we shot them down one by one. In the end, we killed at least a hundred and ten adult and teenage men. Them women and kids we brought with us on the trail to walk behind the wagons. I pride myself on thinking that we wiped out a cluster of cannibalism, but I knew that the real social power always resided with the women. I couldn't bring myself to shoot women and kids, so I was counting on being able to civilize them.

April 23^rd through 24^th — Arrival at outpost ten. — Over four hundred and thirty miles. We arrived at outpost ten and left the invader women with the men of the camp. We also dropped off a fair number of added supplies that we had replaced by hunting. Both percheron females are heavy with foals, and I've decided to slow the train until they drop their foals. The foals are far too precious to risk, and our progress just isn't that important. We spent two days resting from our travels and repacking and cleaning. From this point onwards we will be facing unknown trails, and lots more work may have to be done to make the trail safe for the wagons. The scouts at outpost ten are nearly back to being feral, but their information on the surrounding territory is useful and it matches the maps I have. So far, the maps have been perfectly accurate. We will stay here for a few days and rest up a little. We lit the outpost signal fire and I could see the answering fire from outpost nine through the binoculars. I am counting on the main encampment seeing our relayed signal fire in only a few hours. The horses have both foaled over the last couple of weeks, and the foals are healthy. We will set out on the trail again tomorrow, but the pace we set will be slower.