Chapter 28

Life got interesting shortly after my party took off to go hunting, and the two young women returned to their people in the compound. I’d paced about for a bit, waiting for something to happen. I’d figured that once the two young women got inside the compound and they’d told their story to this Womack character that he’d be back up on the roof of the command post container shouting down at me. Hopefully from there, we’d strike up a dialogue. I didn’t expect him to throw open the gate to the compound right away, but I did figure that I’d be able to keep him talking until Sygor and the others returned with their kills. My hope was that if we gave them food that they would trust us enough to let me help them. Nola had said that in addition to Womack, Otta, and herself that there was an injured youth in the compound and a pregnant woman. At the very least I could offer them some medical assistance. My first aid skills weren’t too shabby, even if I say so myself.

The funny thing was that what happened next didn’t come from the compound. It came from behind me.

As I paced about, holding my carbine at the ready I noted movement coming towards me from the direction of the ridge and the rocks where I had spied out the compound, before. I brought the carbine up and I quickly peered through the scope.

What I spotted was a man running towards me. He was still a good thousand feet off so he wasn’t an immediate threat. He was naked except for a buckskin loincloth. He was armed with a short thrusting spear that he was holding across his body as he ran. The man was tall and muscular in appearance, and he had tattoos running down his right arm. His long, black hair trailed behind him as he ran. He had a thin beard dangling from his chin and the expression on his face was cold and determined. Behind him I spotted another pair of men, similar in appearance and also armed with spears, trailing the first man by a hundred feet. Behind those men, even further back, was a youth. From the look of it, he was leading a string of bound prisoners on a tether. That string was a mix of men women and children, and they all looked the worse for wear. Seeing them really pissed me off.

I needed to make a choice and to make one quickly. I called out to the man to halt in the tongue spoken by the Plains People. It didn’t slow the man down even for a fraction of a heartbeat. I tried again using the dialect spoken by the Hilltop People hoping that these people, whom I suspected of being the Tree People, spoke something similar to what the Hilltop People spoke. If they did the guy charging towards me didn’t even blink in response to my insistence that he stop. By that point the man was roughly five hundred feet from me and was still bearing down on me like a steam engine. I was so tempted to shoot him and be done with it, but a desire to resolve the matter without killing someone proved to be a stronger urge than the other option. With that thought in mind, I quickly slipped my carbine into the front seat of the ATV and then I moved away from it. As I did, I took up a defensive stance. If buddy-boy charging me didn’t slacken his pace and come to a halt before getting to me; well then, he’d be in for a big surprise.

The guy didn’t slow down. In the last fifty feet or so, the man turned his spear towards me like he was going to impale me on it. He started crying out in a wild, drawn out wail that showed me his intentions. Just as he closed on me, he gritted his teeth and smiled.

I simply smiled back at him ... and moved.

I stepped to the side and into my attacker. As his spear started going past me, I grabbed it and then turned, pulling the spear with me. I let the man’s momentum do the work with a little help from my hip. He hadn’t been expecting me to do anything but end up on the tip of his spear, and he wasn’t ready for me. He went up and over as I hip checked him and I pulled the weapon out of his hands. The poor bastard ended up on his back a dozen feet from me, gasping for breath.

My actions startled the two who’d been trailing the big guy. They slowed their approach as I spun about and stepped a few more feet away from the ATV and off to the side so I could watch the man I’d just disarmed and the other two who had been about to attack me.

The big guy recovered quickly. He rolled off his back and he jumped to his feet. He started jabbering to the other two men in a shotgun manner, spitting out words that sort of sounded like the Hilltop language, but different. It was rougher on the ears and more guttural. I tried telling the guy to calm down and we could talk, using the Hilltop tongue, but that didn’t work. The next thing I knew, I was being rushed from both sides at once. It was an obvious ploy and it didn’t work.

These guys liked to scream and shout while attacking. Perhaps it gave them encouragement when attacking a bear or some other kind of animal, but to me it just telegraphed what their intentions were. The man I had disarmed was the closest threat so I dealt with him first. He charged at me from the right while his two buddies charged me from the left. I simply spun out of his path of attack at the last second. As he barrelled by me, I twirled the spear that I’d taken from him in my hands like a quarterstaff and I brought down and across his back as he powered by. The blow staggered the man sending him stumbling towards his two companions. His companions weren’t ready for that. One did jump out of the way, but the other didn’t. The second man ended up impaling the guy I’d just struck. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

I didn’t just stand there waiting to see what happened next, though. The man who’d jumped aside avoiding his leader’s flailing stumbling body had continued to press his attack up to the moment he heard his leader cry out in pain. That cry had brought him up short, and it had distracted him for long enough for me to strike, which was exactly what I did.

While I had hoped to avoid killing anyone I wasn’t so stupid to stick to a plan that was proving fruitless in its implementation. I’d tried talking to these idiots and regardless of the linguistic barrier their attitude told me that they weren’t interested in chatting with me. While the first man’s attention was drawn to the death cry of his leader, I batted his spear aside with the one I was holding, and then with my extended reach, I brought the tip of the broad leaf shaped spearhead across his torso, slicing the man open.

It wasn’t a deep wound, but across the stomach it didn’t need to be. I’d moved in quickly and stepped away quickly as well, just in case the man jumped back and he brought his spear around to defend himself. That never happened. My attack had taken the man completely by surprise, and the blood spewing from the gaping wound left him too startled to react. Realizing this, I moved in for the kill.

When I’d slashed the man and pulled back, I’d side stepped him as well, shifting to his off hand side expecting him to react by bring his weapon up and lunging in the direction that I’d been standing in a moment before. When he didn’t, I just thrust my spear into his exposed side and then I pulled it out and stepped away. The man cried out in pain for a second or two, and then he fell silent as his legs buckled beneath him and he crumpled to the ground, dead.

By this point the third man amongst the trio that had attacked me had extricated his spear out of his leader’s body and he was standing there looking both confused and pale. He was younger in appearance than the two other men and it was clear that he hadn’t been prepared for the shit he’d just stepped into. When I started pacing towards him, looking for an opening with my spear levelled in his direction, the man took a step back.

“Drop your weapon and live,” I growled at the man, trying the Plains People’s language on him.

The man actually understood me. His eyes flickered with understanding. Still he didn’t do what I wanted. Instead he started to back away from me and towards the group that stood at a distance behind him. As he moved away, he kept the tip of his spear pointed towards me.

“Don’t,” I told the man sternly, sticking to the Plains People’s language. “Stay where you are and speak to me.”

The guy didn’t listen. He simply continued to back away from me. Sighing I let him go. Instead of pursuing him I stepped over to the ATV. Once there I tossed the spear aside and I picked up my carbine once again, brining it up and chambering a round as I did, knowing full well that in a second I would be using it against the idiot in front of me.

The guy got brave the moment I threw my spear aside and grabbed for my carbine. At that point there was about forty feet between us. I don’t know if he was just plain stupid or he couldn’t associate the carbine with being a weapon. To me, if I’d been a plain, ordinary caveman and not from the future and another dimension, I would have at least been suspicious about why I would give up a perfectly good spear for a weird looking stick. This guy didn’t. He just decided that I was now unarmed and that he could kill me.

“Don’t,” I told the guy one more time as he hovered on the edge of charging me. I had him in the crosshairs of my scope and I had him painted with my laser rangefinder. The idiot didn’t listen.

He screamed, leapt forward, and died. I put a round dead centre in his chest, and then I stepped aside switching targets and aiming at the youth that had been leading the prisoners by a tether. The kid had been urging his elders on from the sidelines like a good fan. Now he was quivering in his loincloth. I think he might have peed himself as he watched his buddy crumple to the ground, thirty-five feet away from me. From his perspective, his buddy had been struck down by thunder.

“It’s your turn next,” I told the kid, slowly pacing off the distance between him and me and the people he was leading. “Put down your spear and drop your knife. If you don’t, you die!”

The youth proved to be just as stupid as the men who’d attacked me. He dropped the tether line he’d been holding in his free hand and he stepped towards the lead prisoner in the group he was leading. He came up with his spear and he pressed the flint tip of the weapon to the neck of the lead prisoner. The prisoner was a man who looked battered and bruised who had a rope tied to his neck and who had his hands bound behind his back. He looked terrified when the youth approached him with his weapon.

“You stop,” the youth yelled back at me, “or I kill man. Then I will kill more.”

I didn’t even think twice. He was well inside the effective range of my carbine. I took aim, squeezed the trigger and dropped the kid. This time I blew the top of the kid’s head off. It was definitely a messy sight. It was as simple as that.

The prisoners screamed in response to getting splattered with the kid’s blood and brains. I will admit it was a little over dramatic. But it did make a point, just in case there were others in the crowd who I hadn’t picked out as bad guys yet, or who might decide that I was a threat to them and that the best way to eliminate a threat was to kill me just as I’d done to the kid. I personally hoped that wouldn’t be the case. I really hadn’t wanted to kill these guys, but unfortunately, they intended to die regardless of what I kept telling them. Now my hope was that by freeing these people, I would make a few friends.

I didn’t even get to open my mouth to tell them not to worry about me and that I was simply going to walk over to the group and cut them free. Before I knew it, Nola was running past me as fast as her legs could carry her. She was heading towards the prisoners, crying out as she went. I just stood back and let her go.

Nola threw herself at the man that the youth had threatened. He was taller than Nola, and much older. He was a mess, but from where I was standing he didn’t look to be grievously injured. Once Nola had hugged the man, she stepped away just long enough to pull a stone blade out of a pouch she was wearing at her belt. In seconds she’d cut the man’s hands free and then with a little effort she’d cut the tether that had been tied about his neck. Once she’d done that, Nola moved on to do the same to those lined up behind him.

The man stood for a moment and looked at me. He didn’t say anything and I made no move towards him. There was at least four hundred feet between us. After a moment the man turned to pick up the spear dropped by the youth when I’d killed him. The man picked it up, tentatively, while keeping one eye on me at all times. I let him do it.

In no time Nola had freed all the prisoners. Besides the man, there were four children who looked to be between the ages of seven and ten. Three were girls and one was a boy. There were three youths as well who appeared to me no older than fourteen, of which two were male and one female. Finally there was one young man who looked to be in his late teens and two women who looked to be in their early twenties. In total there were eleven people.

“I’d like to talk to you, Nola,” I called out to the young woman as she led the group towards the compound. The group kept their distance from me. They skirted the lip of ridge, moving as quickly as they could towards the safety of the enclosure without actually breaking into a run. Most of them actually tried to avoid looking at me.

Nola just ignored me. She quickened her pace. Eventually she led the group to the compound and through the door. Once inside, the door slammed shut. For the time being, that was that. In response I sighed and just shook my head. I got up and started walking around once again. I didn’t pace too far. Once I hit the lip of the ridge, I came upon a surprise.

To my disbelief, there was a second party of what I assumed to be Tree People. They were down below the edge of the ridge and towards the river that flowed out of the plateau and into the plains beyond. They were gathered together under the outcroppings that I’d used for cover the first time I’d snuck up on the compound. What surprised me the most, was that the party was made up of women and children. I counted four women, and three children who looked to be no older than five. All of them looked terrified.

I stood and looked at them for a moment. The women were dressed in loincloths like the men, and they wore a strap of leather tied about their breasts. The children were naked. They looked to be as clean and as healthy as the prisoners had been. My thought at first was that they were another group of Plains People that Nola had ignored because they had come from another village; but then my eyes picked up signs that told me differently. I noted that at least two of the women were armed with a knife tucked in a sheath by their slender waists. I also noted that one of the women had tattooing on her right shoulder. It wasn’t as artistic or on the same scale as what the man who’d led the attack on me had worn, but it was there and to me it told me that these women were definitely not part of the Plains People. With a tired sigh, I waved to them to approach me.

It took a bit to get one of them to step closer. I called to them in each language I knew and I even tried English. When I got no reply whatsoever I just waved them in the universal manner symbolizing to come. When the one woman did approach me, I tried once more all the languages I knew. Still she didn’t understand. Finally I gave up on them. I turned and walked back to the ATV and I sat myself down to wait, hoping that the others would return very soon.

To my surprise, within ten minutes of sitting down, the four women appeared on the flat ground near me. They’d come up from where they’d been hiding pulling heavily laden travois behind them. They stopped a dozen feet off to one side. Then the woman who’d come forward before tried to talk to me. She stepped forward and she started grunting and jabbering in her language. It was definitely a harsher tongue than I was used to. Whatever she was trying to say to me, didn’t make any sense at all. In exasperation the woman pointed to each of the men. Then once she had my attention she knelt down and grabbed up a fistful of grass. This she sprinkled on the leader of the dead men. At that I got the message; or at least I thought I had. I figured out that the women wanted to bury their dead. I pointed to the woman and indicated that they could. That started a whole new pantomime that eventually told me that I had to bury the men. I just sighed at that and shook my head, telling the woman no. To my surprise, it set the women off wailing.

They all dropped to the ground and they started to cry and once they started to cry so did the children. With the wailing came hair pulling and the rendering of clothing. In seconds the whole situation devolved leaving me wondering what the fuck was going on. That’s when Sygor and the others returned. At that point, the matter got worse.

The arriving vehicles threw the women and children into a panic, and they ran away. My companions took one look at the fleeing, now half naked or completely naked women, then saw the dead bodies lying about where I was sitting, and wanted to know what was going on. I did my best to explain everything, even though at that point all I wanted to do was to pack up and leave.

“Perhaps we should bury the men,” Gort suggested tentatively, once I’d done talking and once I’d finished venting about how stupid I was to have even hung around once we’d realized that no one from Quantum was living in the bloody compound. It was clear that the youth was trying to sound like the voice of reason. It still irritated me, but he was certainly correct in his thinking.

“Fine,” I told them all, spitting out the words when the others gave me a look that suggested they agreed with Gort, “but that’s it. I’ll dig graves for the men and while I’m doing it, you people will get to work on making supper. You can give one of the kills to the people in the compound, but that’s it. Tomorrow morning we’re going home.”

Nobody contradicted me. I grabbed a shovel and I walked over to the spot next to where the first man lay. I started digging with a shovel that we’d brought along with the rest of our gear in one of the vehicles. From the very start I was cursing and swearing. I had worn moccasins, and digging with moccasins was a real pain in the foot! Boy, did I wish I had my combat boots on! In the end, Bogdi and Tonko joined me and helped out.

Sygor and the others had returned with two large deer for our dinner. Sygor carried one kill over to the gate in the compound wall and left it there. Tonko cooked up the other. He made a stew with some of the stuff that our women had packed for us. What meat didn’t get put into the stew pot got cooked up that night; roasted over the open fire. It was edible. Tonko wasn’t the worst field cook amongst my hunters, but he certainly wasn’t the best. It didn’t help that our meal turned out to be a very sombre occasion. I was in a foul mood and too pissed at life in general to curb my behaviour in the presence of the others. It didn’t help much that the others were in an equally foul mood. None of them had been happy coming back and finding out that I’d had to kill four men and that they had attacked me while on my own. I’m certain that all four of my companions were dreading the thought of returning to the valley and sharing that story. To make matters worse they hadn’t enjoyed having to bury the bodies of my attackers to shut the wailing of the women up. It made for a miserable evening for all.

That night we stood watch as usual. Before crawling into my bedroll, I noted that the kill that we’d left the people in the compound was gone. I also noted that the women and children who’d wailed and cried, and who’d run away had come back. I spotted them peering over the lip of the ridge.

“Give them part of the cooked meat,” I grumbled to Sygor who was pulling the first watch. “It might keep them at bay if we feed them. We can only hope.”

Sygor did just that. He pulled a haunch of meat away from the fire, pulling it away with the help of a piece of rawhide that we’d used like an oven mitt. By that point the fire had burnt down to coals and the meat wasn’t that hot; still an ounce of prevention and all that other stuff. He carried it over to the lip of ridge and laid it down for the women to collect. By the time he was back to where he would stand guard, the meat was gone.

Nothing changed by the time morning came along. The compound was still sealed up as tight as a drum and the only person visible from where our camp was set up was the man Nola had set free first. He was standing watch over the area from atop the command post roof. As for the women and children that I still assumed to be Tree People, they were camped out only a short distance away from us. Some time during the night, and well after I’d fallen asleep, they’d moved up over the lip to stretch out and sleep nearer to us and what protection we could offer them from whatever creatures roamed the night around these parts. Fortunately for all of us, no visitors showed up, four legged or otherwise.

“Pack up and get ready to go,” I told my people crisply once I’d come back from watering some grass. “I’m going to try and talk to these people again, and if I don’t get a response, we’re out of here.”

I left Sygor in charge of getting everything packed up. He did ask about the other people and what I intended to do about them. I told him to go over and to talk to them. If they showed any interest in following us, we’d tie their travois behind the vehicles and drag them along with us. It would slow us down a bit, but it would be the best we could do if they intended to keep their possessions. Sygor said he would try.

I walked within thirty feet of the compound and I called up at the man who was standing there looking down at me. I told him once more that all we wanted to do was talk and that we weren’t their enemy. The man just looked at me and he made no reply. I sighed in exasperation and then decided that enough was enough. I stepped back and called up to the man one last time. I told him that the compound had been made by bad men who killed people regardless of whether they were People of the Plains or otherwise, and that I feared that they would return. I suggested that he leave the area once we were gone, and not come back. I told him that we were doing just that, and I let him know that we lived far away to the south, beyond the mountain range. I told him he would be welcome in my village if he came as would anyone who came with him. I waited for a response, but as expected I didn’t get one. I turned about and headed back to our vehicles, ready to head home. To my surprise, I found I had company.