Chapter 52

I met with the men first. To put it bluntly, they were the most important.

Our biggest issue with the men was the fact that most came from different villages. While they were all River People, and most were fishermen, a lot of them were suspicious of each other; particularly the men who’d been captured and used as slaves. It meant getting them all to come together as a single group was hard. In fact, I had to meet each major group of men separately first before moving on to the next stage; meeting together.

The easiest group to deal with was the band that Burton had united during his spell in the south causing problems for Winslow and his thugs, and helping the locals fight back. In addition to the twelve young men that he’d taken under his tutelage, arming them and teaching them to fight, his group included ten other adult males. The bulk of them were older by the local standard of aging, spread between their late thirties and early forties, but they were still active members in the community that Burton had forged.

I met this group after the uptime people had left. Burton had fetched them from the cave along with the group of villagers that we’d rescued from the local thugs that Winslow had been employing as troops. That community was now living at the upper base in the apartments that had once been home to the people that had left today.

Burton joined me in the discussion. I reiterated my offer to take them north with me if they so desired, but I also presented them with another offer. I explained that Burton would be staying here for the next year or more setting up a new settlement and that he would welcome them as members of his group. The suggestion actually piqued their interest.

These people weren’t stupid. They’d spent about six weeks in Burton’s company. They’d seen him deal with Winslow’s men, both those he’d brought through the Gateway and those he’d recruited here. They’d seen what Burton had to offer in the way of leadership, in skills as a hunter, and in the innovations in weaponry that was clearly possible if they chose to continue their relationship with the man. These people were also aware of what I was capable of doing. Their young hunters had participated in the raid and while they hadn’t been instrumental in the actual combat, they’d experienced the thrill of it while supporting our operations and they’d seen the results of it. Many of the young men had helped bury the dead. It had left an imprint on their minds.

It still took a lot of talking. I intended the southern settlement to develop in ways similar to the north. More importantly, following our customs and speaking our language would be a necessity, for them to be part of the Bear Tribe. That was a contentious point. To most of them they were River People first and foremost and the thought of being another tribe scared them. Fortunately, I’d sent Ozmat and Holgar with Burton originally, tasking them to help integrate anyone they encountered into our tribe. They’d laid the ground work. At the meeting I included Ozmat in the discussions and I included Gogra, hoping his presence would help allay any fears or uncertainty.

It worked.

There was one point besides the language issue that held up discussions that morning. That issue was women. While the band Burton had pulled together was a nice mix of men, women, and children, only four of the women in the group were mated to any of the men. The rest were widows. To make matters worse, some of the children had no parents. The women had taken care of the children both out of instinct and because Burton had fallen back on my mantra. He’d pulled the whole, everyone works and everyone eats stance. It had worked while everyone was dependent on each other for survival, but now that the men were thinking about moving on, the women and the children who had no male protector was beginning to worry. I suggested that some of the men take one of the women in the camp as a mate. One man did admit that he was tempted, but he was afraid of the bad luck. I just shook my head in disbelief and then sighed.

That was a problem that I knew I was going to have regardless of which group of men I spoke to and I knew it. Personally I was hoping that the men would take on a couple of wives, thus helping me reduce the number of women I needed to take back to my settlement. However that hope started to fade the moment the hunter voiced his concern that he was worried about the bad luck.

“We need to do something about this bad luck problem,” I voiced aloud after Burton’s group had called it a day so they could go off and think about our proposal. “If we don’t do something quickly, then Burton’s going to have a hell of a lot of bed companions.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?” Burton spat out in surprise and horror. “How come I’m going to have to sleep with them? What about you?”

“Oh, Jake’s going to be busy as well,” Kim chuckled in reply, speaking up before I could. “Just look at what he’s inherited from Winslow. Of the thirty-five people staying behind, twelve of them are men. Most of those men are like Bob the Quartermaster or Terry. They all have at least one local girl friend if not more. While that reduces the number of ex-slaves we need to find mates for, it still leaves twenty-three uptime women without partners. We do know that none of the local men will want them, and I seriously doubt that any of the women would like a local male as a husband. I like Sygor, but I wouldn’t want to live with him. That means that if Jake brings those twenty-three women back to the settlement to live, either he or one of the other uptime men will be sleeping with them, unless there is a lesbian or two in there that we don’t know about. You’d have to ask Carmen about that.”

“So what Kim is saying, is that if I’m providing food, shelter, and sexual services to twenty-three up time women,” I informed Burton bluntly, although I did it with a smile on my face, “you’ll be doing the same down here. Hopefully, Helen won’t mind.”

“Oh, shit,” Burton declared shaking his head, “she’s going to kill me.”

It was the same story that afternoon when I spoke to the group of men we’d liberated from the fishing village. They liked the idea of joining our community now that they’d seen our weapons, horses, and what we could do, but they were hung up on the language issue, and the taking of one of the ex-slave women as a mate.

“I don’t get it!” I told the leader of the six men in an outburst of frustration. “Why won’t you take one of the young women who weren’t mated when they were taken by the bad men? Surely they aren’t cursed.”

The man’s name was Talet. He was twenty-five years old and the oldest of the men that had been held at the fishing village. He was medium tall, fit enough considering the ordeal he’d been through during the last six months, and he seemed intelligent enough. He certainly knew what he wanted and what he did not. For whatever the reason might be the man didn’t want to take any of the ex-slave women as a mate. I just had to press him on the issue.

“They are tainted as well,” the man declared solemnly. “They were taken by evil men and the evil remains with them. No man will take such a woman as a mate. It is just too unlucky. Evil could befall the man,”

I wasn’t impressed by the suggestion. I frowned at Talet, displaying openly my displeasure. It didn’t faze him. With a sigh I tried a different tack.

“Is there any ceremony that your shaman’s use to perform that could remove the bad luck?” I asked in desperation.

“None,” the man confessed without giving it any thought. “Bad luck cannot be sent away.”

“So tell me then, who will tend your hearth and share your furs if none of these women can be mated to you?” I demanded to know forcefully.

“We will find mates elsewhere,” Talet replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “It may take time and much effort on our part, but eventually we will find a new mate who carries no bad luck.”

“So what will you do in the meantime?” I pressed. “Who will cook for you and make you clothing to wear? Who will see to gathering food for the winter? Tell me what you will do?”

“We will stay with your man Burton,” Talet replied promptly, although clearly with much thought. “It will be as he has told us since you freed us. Everyone will work and everyone will eat. We men will fish and the women of Burton’s hearth will feed us. Is this not so?”

It was and I admitted it. Sometimes I just hated how smart I could get. Boy was Burton in for a big surprise.

I spoke to Gogra that night about the problem hoping he might be able to assist me. Regrettably the old man was a product of his upbringing. It didn’t mean he didn’t understand my frustration, but he couldn’t offer me a solution. To his mindset, the men of the River People were just being smart. No man, fisherman or hunter wanted to bring bad luck down upon his head.

“What about me?” I asked pointedly. “I’ve mated more widows than there are mated women in our tribe. I haven’t suffered for it.”

Gogra sat in silence for a moment or two, musing over my statement. After several seconds he replied.

“You are different Jake,” Gogra sighed. “You are both a chief and a shaman. There is great power in you and it keeps the bad luck away. Even this fight with the bad men goes in your favour because of the power in you. The Earth Mother protects you and the spirits walk with you. Everyone knows this. You are not a man.”

I was dumbfounded by this declaration. I had never tried to take on a god mantle with my people. I’ve clearly made mistakes and I’ve admitted to them when they’ve happened. I just couldn’t believe what Gogra was telling me.

“You know I am a man,” I told Gogra in protest. “I’ve bled. You know this.”

“I know you are a man, Jake,” Gogra sighed softly in reply, “but what I know does not matter. What matters to our tribe is that you are chief and shaman and more importantly our protector. What matters is that the Earth Mother gives you the power to teach men to hunt with new weapons, to ride a horse when others could not and to tame a wild animal making it obey you. What matters is that the power of the Bear Spirit fills your body giving you strength to fight bad men. Only these things matter; and to others, they prove that you are not a man.”

I couldn’t say anything in reply to this statement. I hadn’t ever thought about it before. I certainly hadn’t experienced it to the best of my knowledge. I’d seen what I’d have considered a touch of hero worship from the younger men, particularly the boys that I’d elevated to the status of men, like Gort and Wutar, but never had I ever suspected that I could be more. I sighed and wished that Wodon was with us. Perhaps he could help me understand this. For now I had to leave it be.

“Tell me something, Gogra,” I finally enquired after a few minutes of silent contemplation. “If I am not a man and have all this power, could I not purify the women that were touched by bad luck, and take it away?”

Gogra paused for a second or two to think about this question, pulling at his lip as he thought about it. Eventually he spoke up.

“Perhaps,” the older man declared solemnly, “although I do not know for certain. I am not a shaman so I can not say. Perhaps Wodon would know, but he isn’t here. However, I know this to be true. Uttar took Koda as his mate after she’d lain with you and bore you a son. He is still well, and though he does not hunt often, when he does, he always returns with a kill. It is possible that the evil does go away once a woman has borne you a child.”

For the second time in a very short while I looked at Gogra with a stunned look upon my face, not believing what he had told me. The problem was the man was totally serious. I just shook my head and sighed. I’d been hoping for a way to make the men in the area accept the women as eligible mates. If what Gogra had just said was true, I had a hell of a lot of work to do. Boy, did I need a beer!

Kim laughed that evening at supper when I told her what Gogra had implied. So did almost everyone who’d come down with me. Even Carmen snickered when I stated that the only way to make the women eligible to be mates once again was to bed them and to impregnate them. I’d hoped at the very least, Kim would have been indignant about the idea. She just laughed a little more when I chided her for that.

“You can’t blame us for laughing at you,” Kim rebuked me, though smiling as she did. “You are the person that caused twenty-one containers to appear out of nowhere. Even the locals know about it. Those two young women who live with Bob know enough English to understand that you did something that Bob considers impossible. They took what they knew and they passed it on to their friends, who in turn passed it onto their friends. By now almost everyone who was an ex-slave knows that you are a powerful shaman. It’s probably why most of the men are willing to listen to your plan. There are good points to it and there are bad and unfortunately for you, you’re going to have to live with it.”

I just sighed and wished for that beer again. Unfortunately there weren’t any left. My people had been thirsty and Winslow hadn’t had many left.

I knew Kim was right. I did have to live with it. There were things that I needed to tend to before I headed north and sulking about what people were thinking about me wasn’t going to get those jobs done. I knew it and so did my people.

My next job was actually that night. I had a funeral to preside over.

I’d come to a conclusion the other day when I’d gone and visited our dead. While keeping the remains on ice and flying them home when we finally packed up and left here was a workable option, it wasn’t something that I really wanted to do. While my men and women had made it through the attack on the base relatively safe and sound physically, losing three friends had impacted on them. Oh, my people were coping, they were stoic and most of them had faced the death of a friend or loved one before, so these deaths didn’t keep my people from moving on, but still the deaths had marked them. They were the first deaths my tribe had sustained in the time that I’d led it and everyone knew it. I just couldn’t let the matter lie. Besides, the people who knew the dead youths the best were here. They deserved the opportunity to say good-bye.

My intent was to cremate the young men so we could take their ashes home. My people thought it was a good idea. From there things sort of spiralled out of control, although for the good and not the bad.

The thing was, I’d planned a simple ceremony. I figured to keep the occasion private. Other people got involved and by the time I showed up to lead the bodies to where the pyres stood, the private ceremony had become an act of public mourning. It was surprising to say the least. I understood it later. Every ex-slave, male and female attended the service. They’d come to say thanks to the men who’d given their lives for their freedom, and to pray to the spirits to guide them on their trip to the afterlife. They’d also come for themselves, to grieve for what they had lost because of Winslow and his goons.

The procession went from the makeshift morgue to the top of the hill in solemn silence. Each body was carried on a wooden litter by those young men and women who’d grown up with the deceased and who knew them best. The procession moved slowly with me leading it, and an honour guard flanking each litter. The only sound heard during the whole march up the hill was the sound of bagpipes.

Terry, the skipper of the ‘Blooming Heather’ was a piper. He stood at the top of the rise while we slowly made our way up to him and to where the pyres stood, and he played a mournful tune. The sound actually tugged at my heart, and filled my eyes with tears, as memories of other deaths welled up to remind me of other days and other battles, and the friends that I had lost. It was a very powerful moment.

I didn’t talk much at the ceremony. I ordered the remains of our fallen to be placed upon the pyres that had been erected. They were massive affairs. The truth was that it takes a lot to burn a body. Hopefully we’d done our job right.

“Children of the Bear Tribe,” I intoned loudly once the bodies were laid out and everything was in readiness, “and friends who have come to share our sorrow, I welcome you. This night we send three hunters on their way. They were young, but they served our tribe well and now they lie cradled in the bosom of the Earth Mother. They were born of the River, but they took on the spirit of the Bear. Each did his task in life well and should know that we are grateful for it. I ask that you pray for them. Their spirits leave us now, and they are bound towards the afterlife. The spirits of the River and the Bear will guide them, but your prayers will strengthen them and protect them. Be at peace, my people, and say your farewells.”

At that I picked up three torches that had been placed by my feet and I lit them in a small fire that someone had kindled and lit before I’d started my speech. I handed one to Tonko who stepped forward to accept it, and one to Durt, who was up and out of bed. I took the third. Together we lit the pyres.

Thankfully someone had doused the bodies with some kind of accelerant. I found out later that it had been courtesy of Penny and Bob the Quartermaster. When the flickering flames of the torches touched the pyres, the pyres went up in a whoosh.

It was a strange sight standing there watching the pyres burn. For a long while there was only silence, except for the crackling and spitting of burning wood. Then Terry puffed up his pipes again and he started to play. It was a very moving moment.

The pipes had an immediate effect on everyone. It was as if the pipes reached down into people’s souls and they pulled out all the pain and sorrow they felt, forcing it to be released. Within seconds of the first few notes people began to cry. Some cried silently and some began to sob aloud. It was painful, yet it was very cathartic.

The tears went on for a time. Eventually as the grief was washed away people turned to one another for comfort and relief. Women embraced women and men embraced men and as the need for reassurance grew, I found myself at the very centre of it all.

I was the leader and the people turned to me. I met each of them with open arms. I hugged Gort to me for several moments allowing him to cry in my arms, and then I pulled Bogdi and Geeta in with us so we four could share our embrace. I then clasped arms with Gogra and Tonko locking eyes for a moment and sharing a silent thought before I moved on to another. Sygor came to me and slapped me on the shoulder. I smiled at him and we spoke for a moment. Not much was really said, but we shared and that was all that was important. Eventually I pulled Ruba to me and I kissed her. I kissed Kim and Penny as well, plus Ohba. While there would be no orgy tonight, there would be a lot of love and comfort.

By then people started drifting away, returning to their quarters for the night, leaving only my people behind to see our fallen off.

The fact was that the ceremony wouldn’t be over until the pyres had burnt themselves out. They most likely would burn throughout the night and then smoulder well into the next day. It was a very long process. My people and I ended up staying there the whole night. It was a solemn time. Some people curled up in furs, emotionally exhausted, and went to sleep. Many more stayed up the whole night, softly conversing about the three young men who’d died, or about those that they themselves had lost. For the most part I was left alone.

The intent was that once the ashes were cooled they would be gathered. Ohba had volunteered for this job. She’d found an urn in the wreckage of Winslow’s headquarters; some piece of art that hadn’t been destroyed when we’d stormed the place, and that would serve the job of containing the ashes. Her intent was to put the ashes in the urn so we could carry them home. That was fine with me. My role was to see that the ashes were gathered, and any bones remaining were pulverized so they could fit in the urn. It was also to give some of the ashes to the River spirit. In this case my intentions were to scatter the ashes at sea.

Regrettably I didn’t get to do that job, at least not that day. Trouble showed up on our doorstep, and when it did, people came looking for me.

“Jake, we’ve got trouble down the hill and we need you,” Kim shouted at me as she hurried in my direction, about mid-morning the next day.

I was seated at a small fire drinking tea and reflecting on the ceremony that had taken place the night before, waiting for the ashes to cool. I had simply been staring off into space. Kim’s words brought me back to earth.

“What’s going on?” I quickly asked as I leapt to my feet, tossing aside my cup of tea as I did. “What’s the problem?”

“Forest People,” Kim declared forcefully. “Tonko put together a hunting party today. He decided that taking a group of River men out and introducing them to the use of a bow would be a good idea. He recruited Sygor, Bogdi, and Gort to help him out. They headed west a few hours ago in search of some game. Unfortunately they found more than that. Gort just showed back up a few minutes ago, huffing and puffing. He reported that they’d just made a kill when a large hunting party of Forest People descended upon them. Tonko tried to keep the peace, but he didn’t speak their language and the Forest People didn’t respond when spoken to in the River dialect. When he saw that any hope of communication and understanding was failing, Tonko organized a retreat, hoping that breaking off conflict and leaving the Forest People the kill, would stave off any further problems. Unfortunately, it looks like the Forest People are looking for trouble. They didn’t break off contact. They followed Tonko and the others back here.”

Kim didn’t need to say anymore. I was already dressed and ready to go by the time she was finished speaking. All I had to throw on was my webbing. I already had my carbine in hand and I was ready to go.

We took an ATV down the hill. I learned during the trip that Tonko had set up a defensive line just beyond the fishing village. By now most of our troops were there with him armed with a mixture of bow weapons and firearms. Unfortunately while we had the numeric and more importantly the military superiority, the Forest People didn’t care. They were all about attitude and for the moment, they didn’t care.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded to know, shouting loudly as I pushed my way through the front rank of my people so I could face off with the leader of the Forest People. Naturally I used what little of their language that I knew. It took them by surprise.

I was surprised as well. The leader of the hunting party was Makor. He glowered at me for a moment or two, as if sizing me up, and then he spat back a reply.

“Leave here, dog,” Makor ordered vehemently, sneering at me as he did, “and take your women with you. These are our lands.”

That was the only thing the man got to say. I didn’t hesitate. Makor was armed with a spear. He was holding it in one hand, thrusting it about in the air as if to accentuate his words, but that was all he was doing with it. It was just a prop to him, and at that moment it wasn’t much help to him. I doubted that he expected me to react, particularly since I’d arrived armed only with a blade in my hand.

I’d left my carbine with Kim. Seeing the number of our troops at the ready, and knowing the personality of the Forest People, I decided brute force was called for instead of just walking in and shooting every one. If it didn’t work, so be it. My people would take everyone else down. My concern was Makor.

I stepped towards Makor as quickly as I could, moving to close the distance between us. That startled Makor and the men behind him and it gave me an extra moment to act. It wasn’t much. Makor shifted his stance, taking a step backwards, as he moved to bring his spear down and into play. I feinted one way and as the spear shifted in that direction, I slipped by it, blocking it with my free hand and taking hold of it as I struck.

Once inside Makor’s defensive space, I brought the heft of the blade I was holding in my right hand up and I smashed it into the bridge of the man’s nose. That sent him staggering back. As he did, he let go of his spear.