Chapter 9

“I hadn’t thought seriously abut visiting him, but your devious plan has stuck me with it, so I had better start planning. Should I just go by myself?”

“No, You are a Chief, so you need to arrive with some degree of pomp. Can you arrange a group to accompany you; a group that will seem imposing?”

“You mean, some sort of guard of honour?”

“I haven’t heard the term, but a group of guards would do the job. But you don’t have such guards to use? Just a bunch of girls trained to use spears.”

John was affronted.

“Just a bunch of girls with spears? Tarka, my girls are just as competent as any group of men with spears. You are looking at it with a gender bias. Think of my spear-women as Warriors, man.”

“I see what you mean. Don’t see them as females, see them as warriors. The trouble is, the Farfarers will not have that view of them. They will just see them as girls with spears.”

John saw the truth of this, and thought about the masks plan...

“We need to make them look like warriors, and not like girls. Numa wants them to wear masks to hide their true faces.”

Tarka suggested, “You would need to have them dressed so that their breasts don’t stick out.”

“So, if we hide their faces, and make their clothing to hide their breasts, they could appear sexless, or like men. They would have to be careful not to speak, though.”

Tarka gave a short laugh as he thought of something. John asked him what he was thinking.

“Designs for masks: masks that look terrifying! If they look frightening, it would appear normal if they didn’t speak, just gesture. As an honour guard, they don’t really need to speak, merely act out their ceremonial duties.”

“True. I think you have interesting ideas, Tarka. Let me talk it over with Numa.”

(I didn’t want to reveal that he was a little late with that suggestion. Let him find that masks were already available, and he can let it drop without embarrassment.)

“Careful or she will want to be part of the guard!”

“I don’t want that, as I don’t trust her to keep quiet, but she will know who to choose. We will have to train them to act at the same time, as if they were all identical.”

John got up and sought out Numa. Finding her, he waited until she finished what she was doing, then asked her to come for a discussion.

Curious, she came with him to the outside the cave for a private chat. He explained his need to act as a Chief when visiting the Farfarers Chief, thus his need for an honour guard that was not recognisable as female. Numa quickly caught on.

“So you need the warriors to seem simply warriors, nothing else?”

“Yes. Tarka suggested masks over their faces – don’t brag that we already have these organised - and if the masks looked fierce there would be no need to speak during the visit. Looking tough would be enough. I thought back to something in my military training that came through: everyone acting identically, at the same time. No-one stands out, that way. It can be quite impressive, especially if it has not been seen before.”

“Just doing the same thing can look impressive?”

“Yes, let me demonstrate with you and Gomla. Give her a call.”

When Gomla joined them, John asked them to stamp their feet. When they did so, John stopped them.

“No. do it at the same time: both left feet hitting the ground together, then the right feet. Try it.”

It took a few tries, but soon they were stamping their feet together. John told them, “As you stamp, it should sound like one person instead of two.”

As they tried that out, John fetched a couple of spears, and handed them one each.

“Now, every time your right foot comes down, make the butt of your spear hit the ground at the same time as your foot. The combination of your feet and the spear should sound like one thump on the ground.”

They tested that out and soon found they could do it. The girls grinned at each other.

John told them, “Now imagine how that would appear when six of you were doing it as one, and tell me it would not be impressive.”

Their eyes lit up, but John told them, “Next, I want you to walk in unison; stamping your right foot each time, and the spear butt as well; exactly as before, but walking and spear-thumping as you do. I will give you the rhythm, called a cadence. Every time I call out RIGHT, you slam down your spear but in time with your foot.”

As they prepared themselves, he started.

“Left, RIGHT, left RIGHT,” and he went on as they tried to keep to the pattern. It was not perfect, but great for beginners. He stopped them at six paces.

“Good. Do you think you could do this in front of the others?”

He got grins, then shrugs. “Let’s try it,” Numa voiced.

John got them to face into the cave, and started, “Left, RIGHT, left, RIGHT, left, RIGHT,” and the pair marched into the cave. At six paces, John called “Halt”. They stopped, then Numa turned back to John to ask, “What does that mean, dear?”

“Sorry. I should have explained. When I call HALT, you put your left foot down as normal, but you bring your right foot to beside the left one, and stamp down with your right, ceasing your forward motion. It gives a satisfying thump to end the marching. In a trained group, the leader gives the order, but a trained group will know when point to expect the HALT command. Moving off, the order is ‘Forward, March!’, and on the word, ‘March’ you move your right foot.”

Gomla responded, “This seems like fun, darling.”

John warned her, “It starts out as fun, then becomes routine. When it does, that routine should become automatic – acting without thinking about what you are doing – so that you all march together when given the command, but you don’t get that command until you are in the correct position. In your case, that will be two columns – one on either side of me. That means you are following the girl ahead of you, but you still march in step, like one person. It will look and sound good, when you can do it without thinking.”

Gomla asked, “What are we doing this for, John?”

He explained, “I have to make a formal visit to the Chief of the Farfarers, so we have to put on a good show, and this is how we go about it.”

“Just the two of us?”

“You weren’t listening, Gomla. I said two columns. There will be three in each column, so that is six total. If we had enough well trained girls, we could even make it eight.”

The rest of the tribe had stopped what they were doing to watch and listen, and several girls asked, “Can we have a try at that, Numa?”

Numa replied, “Girls, you will all get a shot at this ‘marching’. The ones who are best at it will get to be our chief’s honour guard when he visits the Farfarers Chief.”

A couple of the girls exclaimed, “They will recognise us!”

John told them, “NO, they won’t, as you will be dressed like men and be wearing masks over your faces. You won’t even be recognised as women, but as WARRIORS!”

This got him a burst of laughter. “Warriors?”

“Yes. Do you not realise that you can be warriors, just as much as you can be anything else?

Think, girls. You are treated the same as men, so you can do anything a man can do, more or less. Be proud of yourselves; never be afraid of doing something new. Let us prove that you can be warriors, and defend our tribe just as well as a man could. You will have an extra advantage: the attackers will not think that a woman is a threat to them. By gosh, they will be so wrong!”

This got him a cheer from the tribe.

John smiled at them, and told everyone, “I am not joking. All of you have abilities that you have not had a chance to show. I want you all to think about what you would have liked to do, but never thought you would have the opportunity.

This is the time to start thinking the impossible: the ideas and plans that you always wanted to try. Why not try them out here? Think about it, ladies; think about it.”

There was a dead silence at first, then some quiet whispering. He heard, “I wanted to be a great cook, but my dad said it was not possible.” Another said, “I wanted to be a maker, but was told it was a man’s job.”

John gave them a concluding message. “In the future, girls, you can try anything; never think you can’t do something, until you have at least tried.”

Numa whispered to him, “What about the masks, John?”

He turned and whispered back, I think I heard that one of our girls wanted to be a maker. Why not ask her to see what she can do? The mask has to be easy to see out of and allow you to breathe freely, but otherwise it should hide your face and not fall off when you are marching. It should also look fierce to those viewing it from a distance. Talk to her and see what she can come up with. It might end up as a cooperative effort by several girls. The main thing is to make a workable result. I don’t care whose ideas are used. The tribe gets the credit as a whole. The tribe is a unit; I am merely the Chief of the tribe, not the ruler, merely the tribe’s guide.”

“Leave it with me, John,” murmured Numa. She knew what she was going to do, and she would do it.

The girl was delighted to be asked.

“Can I really do that, Numa? You think I can?”

“I do, but it is up to you to come up with the solutions to make it workable. Come back to me when you think you have it worked out. Leather should do the job: it has the stiffness without the weight.”

“Wow! Yes, Numa. I’ll do that!”

John was back talking to Tarka.

“I take it that no date was fixed for my visit? It is up to me, when I am ready?”

“Yes. I had no way of promising any date. Oh, I brought back a bag of oil that the Chief gave me as a present. I told him I had lost my oil while crossing a river!”

“A good tale, Tarka, even if it had no basis in reality. We are in real need of that oil.”

Tarka asked John what had been happening while he was away, and John gave him a short briefing to bring him up to date, then they went to pick up the oil bag that Tarka had stashed among the trees.

Numa was delighted when presented with the bag of oil.

“Great job, Tarka. This is excellent. As soon as our mask-making project is complete, we will get back to soap-making. I must check with Sheila about the scent for the soap, though I think it will be sufficient to stir it in just before we put the soap aside to solidify.”

Raka came across to say hello again to her brother, and after that asked to borrow John for a private discussion.

“John, is it acceptable for me to use walls in the back of the cave for drawing pictures?”

“if you want to draw such things, then fine, Raka. Are you good at art?”

“I think so. I discovered I could draw a fierce face on the masks that we are making, and they are going to use my fierce picture, so I thought of using the stone walls inside the cave, for my pictures will not be exposed to the weather.”

“Makes sense to me, Raka, but the rock is not very flat as a rule. You may have to search for an area that is relatively level, for you to draw on. It is pretty dark back there, so you’ll need a lamp. Have you thought of that?”

“We girls were already thinking about lamps, for it will be much darker in the cave in the cold season, and we will want to be further back to get away from the cold outside, so we need lights.”

“So what have you girls come up with?”

“The fuel has to be our vegetable oil, but it needs a wick to suck up the oil and burn at the end, so we have tried various ideas, but the best appears to be a reed from near the stream, cut top and bottom. It has a sort of pith in the middle that will absorb oil. The bottom has to be fixed into the oil holder, so that the top, where the flame is, will always be sticking far out of the oil. We don’t want all the oil to blaze up at once! The oil holder – the lamp – is made from clay, and has a high lip where the wick can rest and stick out. The more oil the lamp can hold, the longer the flame will burn.”

“That sounds like a well-thought-out device, Raka.”

“It took us ages, and many tries, to get to what we have now. While the others only wanted it for light at night, I wanted to be able to explore the back of the cave. Do you know that no-one has been back there? They are all scared of the dark, so they only want to go back as far as the light from outside lets them see.”

John confessed, “I have to admit that even I have not been back there. I didn’t see any need to explore the dark places. You are the first to come up with that plan, Raka.”

“So you don’t want to explore back there with me? We could be alone together for a while.”

John saw the little smile on her face, and saw what she was thinking about when they would be ‘alone’.

He exclaimed, “You little minx! For the present, let’s stick to just you, unless you are afraid to be alone back there.”

“No, the dark doesn’t bother me, especially as I will have a lamp to let me see. Unless I turn a corner, I will always be able to see my way back to the cave entrance.”

“Still, I think we had best prepare for emergencies. Take an extra container of oil, in case you lamp gets spilled, and I will loan you my fire starter kit. If the lamp goes out, perhaps with a sudden draught, you should be able to relight it as soon as you are out of the draught.”

“Thank you, John: you DO care.”

“I always care about my girls, Raka. See me about my fire starter kit before you go back into the dark.”

Later that day Numa came to him with the first example of the fierce mask, and put it on to model it for him to critique. The face looked so terrifying that John was taken aback.

“This is really good! Is this Raka’s design that she told me about?”

“Yes. Her design was much more effective than anyone else could do, so we chose it. The others are being made as we speak. We decided to do ten of them, in case we have a problem with any single one. We will be able to replace it immediately.”

“Excellent. How about the clothes question. Have you got a means of hiding your breasts under the clothing?”

“That turned out to be tricky, so we ended up with placing a thick and hard sheet of hide inside the upper part of the tunic. This compresses the girl’s breasts enough to make it seem she is not female, without it being sore for the girl.”

“Have you got these made then?”

“By tomorrow we should have that done. Rather than try to stitch the thick hide, we devised a sort of pocket between two layers of soft leather, stitched to allow space for the thick panel to be inserted from above. Our test example seemed to work well, so will have more ready tomorrow, we hope.”

John asked Numa, “You know about Raka’s plan to do some painting in the back of the cave?”

“Yes. Crazy idea, if you ask me, but if it keeps her out opf my hair, I am fine with it. That girls has too many ideas for her own good.”

“But, Numa, I want our girls, you included, to be coming up with good ideas. I don’t like always being the one to produce ideas. Look at that tunic idea that you have just described. That was a good idea, whoever came up with it. It was not me. Then the design of the oil lamp? That was a composite design between several of you, I am told. That is great stuff!”

Numa accepted the point.

“All right, our girls have come up with a few ideas. I just don’t want Raka to come up with something that might be dangerous to us all.”

“Then insist that she explains her ideas to you or me first, before she tries to make an idea work in practice. You will be the tribe’s moderator who checks it out before anything dangerous gets a chance to happen. Okay?”

“That sounds a reasonable way of monitoring Raka, my love. I’ll tell her about it, and that it is your wish that she co-operate.”

John saw he had to agree. “Very well, my sweet. Let’s go with that proposal. It is a good idea in itself!”

John hoped that Raka would not turn up in front of him, complaining about her creativity being stifled. It didn’t happen, for which he was glad.

Dealing with a number of women who all had their own ideas was not easy, John accepted, so the more he could delegate decisions, the better. He wished, though, that Numa didn’t view moire wives as arise in status for herself so something to be sought after. He would prefer she abandoned the old ideas on status as a reward system, and developed her own, based on talents and abilities. He didn’t want the two latest ‘rescues’ to be seen by Numa as more additions to the family.

He tried to adapt his current lifestyle to being the provider for his tribe, through hunting, working out physical problems such as the meat smoker, and so on. His view on soap making was that while oil could be bartered for with other tribes, the same did not apply to wood ashes. Asking for wood ash would seem extremely peculiar to other tribes, especially if you specify that it should come from hardwood. The experiments with soap-making found that ash from softwood had trouble solidifying the soap, while hardwood ash had no such difficulty. The argument about use as a fertiliser could be only a short-term excuse, for the type of wood made no difference in the fertiliser application – though many tribes would be unaware of that essential fact. It would be better if the tribe could improve on its own production of hardwood ash.

That meant having additional fires; but that had its own failings. You couldn’t maintain fires during the night if you wanted to avoid visits by violent strangers, and more fires at the cave would make the cave too hot. More fires should mean one or more locations away from the cave; but at the same time close enough to be tended during the day, and doused at night.

He would have to prospect for suitable sites for a second fire; one which would be easily contained and not too obvious to the world beyond.

That brought his mind to checking round the hillside where the cave was situated. He would need to scout round the sides of the hill for some spot that would suit the need; perhaps a cleft if the rock face, or a tiny and narrow valley where a fire would only be seen from one narrow viewpoint.

He decided on a general patrol of the hillside around the cave, to left and right, and over the top as well. He sought out Numa to let her know where he was going, to which she responded, “Very well. I shall post two warriors on guard at the cave mouth, with their spears and their masks. It will be a good test of how long a girl can were such a mask comfortably.”

He made his way up the steep track near the cave, up onto the higher ground above. There was a sort of small plateau, with higher ground further behind, but John did not want the fire to be so high: he was not making a lighthouse, his mind said. He had the impression of a light visible from a great distance.

He stuck to the plateau level, looking for a narrow defile at the edge of it. In walking forward, his foot caught in a small bush, and he had trouble preventing himself falling into a hole in the plateau’s surface.

Examining the hole, he noted it went down several feet, so his mind suggested that it might act as a fireplace and be hidden from sight. He stepped inside to examine it, and the rocks at the bottom moved, releasing a scent of woodsmoke.

Smoke in a hole? His brain twisted that fact into union with the fact that there was only one fire at present, at the cave entrance. Some of the smoke entered the cave, he was aware, but it did not persist, so must be going somewhere. This must be the somewhere! This was the final chimney that took the smoke away from the cave fire.

From that, it was clear that bit could not be the fireplace for a new fire, as the ashes would soon choke the chimney, and he didn’t want that.

Giving up on that site, he ambled over to the cliff edge, and shuffled along sideways, watching out for broken edges of slippery exposed rock. Not very much later, the cliff opened in a V shape at the edge, widening as it went down, so that the chasm at the base was the width of a man lying on his side; about six or seven feet across.

This would do the job, if it was readily accessible along the base of the cliff from the cavern to this site.

First he had to find a place where he could climb down safely. That took another ten minutes or so, as he had to go farther along to find a route for descent, and then make his way back to the chasm.

John found the brushwood and sapling growing in profusion at the base of the cliff, so he had to use his knife a lot to get through. Eventually he was at the chimney-like chasm. He started clearing small boulders away to make a decent-sized fire pit, the heaped the boulders around it to make the bit even deeper. This would help to hold the ashes together after a fire had gone out.

He was aware that if he simply worked his war round the base of the cliff, he would eventually find himself at the cave. Making a mental note of the location, he started hacking his way back to the cave, his home.

It took him around an hour to do that, due to the brushwood clearing. He made a point of shoving all the cut stuff away from the cliff, so it would dry faster and be fine for use on the new fire.

Finally, he appeared at the edge of the clearing, sweaty but triumphant. He stumbled tot he cave entrance, and halted at the sight before him.

There were two sentinels, one at each side of the cave entrance, standing firm and strong, with a fierce face-mask starting back at him. Neither said a word, surprisingly, until he recalled the plan to have the warriors saying nothing, just acting the part of fierce warriors. He didn’t even know who they were.

This was the point at which he became aware that there was no indication of breasts on the warriors. They must be wearing the new uniform with the breastplate insert.

He gave each of them a basic salute.

“Well done, my warriors. You have got the idea perfectly.”

That got him a little wave from the free hands of the girls, but otherwise they remained still.

He entered the cave, and asked for a sample of soap for himself. “I am sweaty, so I need to clean up.”

He was quickly offered soap by two girls. He took one and thanked the other girl for the offer. “One will be enough, I hope!”

He hurried down the slope to the stream, to the spot where everyone elected to wash themselves, a spot with few stones and a fair amount of sand to stand on, so more comfortable as a base while washing. The water felt very cold because he was so hot after all the energy he had expended, so he rushed into washing himself so that the cold would not penetrate so much. Working up a lather, he was impressed at how effective the new soap had become. The girls had done a grand job of it.

He started with his hair, then worked his way downwards. His mind moved into the future, wondering how they would wash in the winter when water got very much colder. It might be a good idea to collect water in a cistern within the cave. Two cisterns, he decided: one for drinking and cooking water, the other for washing people and things like cooking pots and utensils.

He was able to think about such matters while washing himself clean, so the water temperature did not intrude until he had to rinse the soap bubbles off his hair and body. The cold water caused him to shudder in an automatic reaction, and then it was gone.

He quickly stepped out of the stream and slipped on his moccasins again. His clothes were too sweaty to put on again, so he carried them back with him to the cave, where he would collect clean clothing.

He was just arriving at the cave when the soft whining noise came to his ears; the same sound as when Sheila arrived.

He looked back to the same spot, and as the sound vanished, a new body lay there. To his trained eyes, the sign of breasts told him it was a woman; naked again. What was with this naked arrival of humans?

Shoving that query aside, he hurried back down to the new arrival, forgetful of all clothing. He stupidly did not even have his crossbow with him, remembering it only when he got there.

He looked at the naked woman lying on her back. There was something familiar about her, but he did not know what. Something else caught his attention. It was a survival knife; one of those large-bladed units in a sheath, and normally with accessories included inside the sheath or in the knife handle. If his memory was correct, there should be a small compass in the butt of the handle, and possibly a fire starter kit as well.

The woman, still unconscious or asleep, turned over onto her side and brought up her legs into a curled foetal position, seemingly adopting this balled-up position to be warmer. She didn’t appear to be aware that she was naked, but her body certainly was.

Her eyes slowly opened, and she observed the look of grass in front of her eyes. Startled by this unexpected sight, she jerked her head away and tried to look around more widely. Her gaze took in a pair of moccasined feet, and a pair of bare legs extending upward.

Fearful of what she was seeing, she moved her gaze upwards and saw a continuation of the bare legs, up to a male member and ball sac. A naked man!

She involuntarily tried to scramble away from the naked man, but found the grass she lay on fairly slippery against her bare bottom and her hands and feet.

Bare bottom? Her mind asked her eyes to have a look, and that process revealed that she was as naked as she was born. She almost fainted at the discovery, but was concerned at what the man might do. She tried to think on where she was, and came up with a blank. She didn’t know where she was, or why.

Terrified, she looked up again at the male torso, and the smiling, querulous, face above.

It was a face she knew, she suddenly realised. It was her man!

“John?” she asked, to confirm recognition. His face cleared with this single word.

“Vickie? It is Vickie, isn’t it?”

“Yes, John. What are you doing here, like this – naked, outside? Are we in a park?”

“Memory problems, Vickie? We all have them, those of us who have landed up here.”

“Don’t be silly, John. My memory is fine, it is just that I am surprised, indeed shocked, at finding myself here and unclothed.”

“Memory fine, you say? Right, what is your surname, what is your address, who do you work for, for a start?”

Vickie reached up an arm in a familiar gesture, for him to pull her to her feet. She laughed at his antics. “My surname is ... um? I live at flat thingy, no. 21, or is it 22 ... it won’t come, and I work for ... I can’t recall any of that!”

“Exactly. This memory loss appears to be a side effect of whatever process brought you here. Did you bring anything with you? Everyone else did.”

“Everyone else? It is not just me?”

John found himself looking over her shoulder at the survival knife that had appeared with her. He wondered if that was all, then belatedly answered her.

“No. Another woman came through last time, but I didn’t know her, so I have no idea why she was sent, unless it was her plant knowledge.”

“So at least we are not alone, just you and I,” she mused, thinking they were entirely alone in this landscape.

“No, we are not alone...” he started to say, when n there was a shout from further up the slope. He looked, and saw Sheila on her way down towards them. Sheila called, “Numa wants to know what is going on, John!”

Vickie turned her gaze from John’s rugged face to see who was calling, and slowly has face whitened in terrible recognition.

She spoke quietly to John, but is was almost a growl of annoyance.

“Not the Bitch! What is she doing here? Of all the people to meet in the middle of nowhere, it has to be the ice queen.”

John exclaimed in puzzlement, “What?”

“That woman! She is vicious to every other woman around her; a really nasty piece of work. She has no friends, and no wonder!”

“Nasty? Vicious to other women? Sheila? Are we talking about the same person? Do you actually know her?”

“Of course I bloody know her! I have experienced her tongue time and time again; every woman around me has, as well.”

All this time, Sheila was coming closer, and John felt Vickie tensing up in preparation for a confrontation. He tried to avoid this clash of women.

“Vickie? Why not wait a few minutes, until you have met and spoken with her. A fight would not be a good start, dear.”

She relaxed her tense muscles a little, and changed her line of questioning.

“Who is this Numa person that Sheila seems to be working for?”

“Numa? My wife?” John spoke before thinking and gulped at what might be the response.

“Your wife? Your bloody wife? I thought we were heading for marriage, John, so where does this ... this female come into it?” Vickie sounded like she was about to blow her top, but Sheila arrived at this juncture, saying, “Hi! Do I know you? The face seems familiar; I can’t say the same about your body, but you have a nice figure. Has John introduced himself?” She looked to John and repeated, “John darling, have you told her who you are?”