Chapter 18

(Mid August of Year Five to End of August Year Five)

In what you're about to read, it may sound like I sort of rushed into things. I didn't. I'd had days on the road and long evenings talking with my men to plan things out. Hell, I even ran a couple of practices with them before we arrived. I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted things to go down. Keep that in mind, it's important. It is also important that I knew a couple of critical facts. First, I knew that Julie was a smart woman, willing to do what was necessary to survive. She'd lived in the original cave with the original crowd for a rather long time, and she'd managed to not get killed. Second, I knew that no matter what material or physical advantage the cave bastards might have, guns or no guns, supplies or no supplies, they were ignorant creeps. They didn't think in trained logic, they didn't weigh alternatives carefully, and they didn't engage in long term planning. Third, they were superstitious down to the bone, no matter what changes I'd taught them. Fourth and finally, I knew that they did not have the kind of patience that I did. One further point that I have mentioned to you a couple of times but bears repeating here is this, I am no hero. I value my skin very highly. With that in mind, there are a few places that you might want to cover your eyes.

Not too far from the main encampment walls there was a low rise, almost a small foot hill. This area had been heavily logged during the first two years, and was now mostly clear. The scouts and I made it to that spot and damned near silently made camp. Once we were settled in a little, several of the men began to drop some trees and form a rude U shaped set of ramparts. I climbed a good tree and settled in with the rifle, watching the main encampment.

It took the people at the main camp a couple of hours to notice my small group. I watched through my binoculars as people came and went through the main gates, and for a long time no one took any notice of us. I guess we were far enough away and were quiet enough that no one saw enough to draw any attention. When a woman finally spotted us, she took a good long look around and then walked back through the main gates.

By the time anyone came to investigate, my men had dropped a fair number of logs and had used the horses to pull them into position. The 'rampart' was initially just a few logs that were stacked at a 45 degree angle to each other, each overlapping at the end to form a rude wall about four feet high. I'd given instruction to half of the men that regardless of what other things might be going on, they were to follow the plan for the log rampart. From my spot in the tree, I could see approximately fifteen men approach our camp. About half of them were armed with some of my fine hunting bows and all of them carried our improved spears. I called down in a hushed voice to QuietlySneaky.

"No matter what, they don't leave with those bows, okay?"

"Yes, GreatOne." He nodded up at me. He knew the plan, but I was making sure.

I let them get within about thirty yards, most of a hundred feet or so and yelled out in my best godlike voice.

"I am the GreatOne! Drop your weapons and join me. Or DIE!"

The leader of the bunch, a guy I recognized as being one of the elders from the great cave group we brought in the prior year, was a guy named 'EyesAwake'. He stopped dead in his tracks at my voice, and they looked at each other for a moment.

The scouts with bows were crouched down behind the rampart wall with their bows already loosely drawn and with arrows nocked. Each man had been instructed to pick a single target and kill his man, no matter how many arrows it took, but to wait for my signal before firing. I waited a moment longer, and when I saw EyesAwake start to go for an arrow, I shot him. I picked my shot carefully, with maximum intentional impact and blew his brains all over the others near him. I shot him a second time as he fell, this time in the guts.

From that moment onwards, I knew that the fecal matter had well and truly hit the atmosphere impeller. No one within a mile could mistake the sound of a rifle firing. The men with EyesAwake came unglued. A couple of them tried to shoot at something, and they sprouted multiple arrows out of their chests and guts. The rest either dropped to the ground and began yelling for mercy, or they just ran away. The ones with bows that turned to run got shot, either by me or by the scouts.

The moment that the fight was over the scouts and I swarmed out over the logs as fast as possible and ran for the bodies. We recovered the bows as fast as we could, along with the arrows. When they were secure, I yelled at the men lying on the ground.

"YOU STUPID ASSHOLES! YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD MESS WITH ME??? I AM THE GREATONE!" I stood over them, waving my arms and looking as much like a madman as I could manage. "RUN AND TELL EVERYONE THAT I HAVE RETURNED! IF THEY WISH TO LIVE, RUN! RUN FROM THE CAMP! RUN AWAY TO THE GREAT PASTURE! RUN!"

I screamed at them even louder, if it was possible. "ANYONE WHO HELPS THE SHAMANS WILL DIE, AND WHEN YOU ARE DEAD, I WILL HAVE THE DEMONS OF THE LAND OF THE DEAD EAT YOUR GUTS FOR ALL OF TIME!"

This seemed to impress several of them, and they got up and ran like hell. A couple of men stayed on the ground. I looked around and saw that no immediate threat was coming my way.

"What do you want?" I asked them.

"Can I fight with you, GreatOne?" The smaller of the two guys asked.

"Me too, GreatOne?" Said the other.

"No, but you can go work with my scouts, boys. Get up right now, leave me your bows and run get an axe. Shoo." I said, waving them toward the camp. Then I hightailed it back to my tree. By the time I got there and had climbed up, I could see the two men being handed felling axes and being put to work on improving the rampart. That freed up a couple of scouts to come back into camp and grab bows. We'd recovered eight bows from the little raid.

The news of our fight seemed to spread like wild fire. The next thing I knew, there were people streaming out of the camp like crazy, headed for the larger pasture. Many of them ran like their asses were on fire, and women were everywhere with kids, hustling them out of danger as fast as they could. A loose knot of men formed up not far from the gate and they began to wander towards us. I estimated quickly that there were about forty of them, and many of them were armed with the bows we'd made, and almost all carried spears. No one in particular seemed to be leading them, and they stopped at the edge of bow fire range from my rude camp.

"STOP THERE!" I yelled at them.

They came to a loose stop.

"If you want to live, run away. If you want to join me, drop your weapons and lay down on the ground. If you want to fight me, stand still!"

Now, here's the funny part. I repeated that one more time, and sure as shit, most of them ran off, and a few lay down on the ground. The rest, about ten more men ... they just stood there waiting for the fight to start. So, I obliged them.

"Now!" I whispered to the scouts, and they all stood up and shot someone. Me, I shot two. Before anyone could blink, the fight was over and the scouts ran out to grab the weapons again. Within a long minute, they were back. The men who had lain down were now without weapons, and I climbed down again to look them over. I hadn't fought fair. Stinky cave assholes all goddamned know that the way you fight is you form up into two opposing dance troupes and you hoot and posture for an hour as you work up your nerve to fight. Then, when the drugs have kicked in and you're tripping balls you try and avoid getting killed when your chief yells at you to fight. I hadn't obeyed the idiot rules.

A couple of the men I knew from training sessions and I trusted them, so I had my men give them back their weapons. The rest got sent to the logging crew. The loggers broke out a couple of shovels, and got to work on digging out a ditch in front of the logs. As they worked on that, the men running the logging operation came running up with rude spears made out of saplings. These were inserted through the gaps in the logs and driven into the ground and sharpened as spikes. Over the course of the next couple of hours, the loggers continued to reinforce the wall and add to the spikes and trenching. We all worked as fast and as hard as we could. When I wasn't giving instructions, I was working right there with the men. As time passed, a few people came walking up in ones and twos. These were almost always men or women we knew from the school or they were people I had trained or taught myself. As they arrived, many times they were crying with relief to see me.

One woman came jogging up, carrying a bundle in her arms and some tools over her back. When she got close enough to see clearly, I shouted with joy. It was Twinkle, one of the first women we'd added to the camp. She charged right around the log wall and ran for me full tilt. When she got to me, she simply threw herself at me, crying. In her arms she was carrying one of the babies. It was Clover, the girl child of DeadAndBack. I hugged her fiercely, and she babbled out the whole story to me.

...

I stayed extremely busy that whole afternoon. There was no organized opposition coming our way yet, and every moment of digging and chopping and working would be invaluable. I'd long been a student of history, and one thing I learned from Grant versus Lee, from Caesar versus Pompey, from every smart general before the age of tanks was this ... defenses can be used as offense. They can destroy an enemy's ability to defeat you. I knew that and Seeks and his cronies didn't. They were cave men. I was going to use classic small force tactics to defeat them and to do it with minimum casualties. No open field combat, no running battles, just flat out unfair tactics.

By working all day long and well into the evening, we were able to extend the log fortifications well toward a fourth wall, with only a small gap as a gate, and we were able to dig a small trench in front of the side of the log picket. Inside the logged picket we had the original ten scouts, plus we'd added four men I trusted to that number and at least ten more to the logging crew. The loggers were supervised by two scouts, leaving me twelve armed combatants plus Quietly and I. Fourteen good men behind a wall with good morale can stand off a thousand morons led by a fool. I was just hoping that Seeks was a fool.

A shaman named SacredBear came out of the main gate. Now, it had been my intention to shoot each of them on sight, but I had always liked SacredBear, and I wanted to see what he was going to do. I watched through the binoculars for a while as he stood around and just looked at us. He scratched himself a little and walked slowly up not too far away from us and looked over the dead bodies. Just about then, one of the younger shamen starts yelling at him from the main wall of the compound. I looked over at the wall, and I could make out the guy's face, but not his words. SacredBear yelled back at him, and I could hear his side of the conversation. It went something like...

"What?"

"What?"

"Huh? Can't hear you?"

"What?"

He was intentionally not hearing the other shaman, so I decided to help SacredBear out. I shouldered the rifle and sighted in on the face of the shaman between the logs of the big palisade wall. He poked his head up and down a little, getting more frustrated as he yelled at SacredBear. When his patience ran out, he just leaned forward and stood up a bit too tall, where I could see his head and upper chest. So, I took two fast shots at him. The first one hit him in the neck even though I'd been aiming for the chest. However, the shot went square in the middle of his neck and he toppled backwards. The second shot just hit the logs. SacredBear watched the whole thing from where he stood, and then he carefully set down his bow and his spears. He walked a few feet away from them and yelled at us.

"GreatOne!" He said. "Is that really you?"

"Yes, it's me!" I yelled back. "SacredBear, what the HELL are you doing?"

"SeeksWisdom said you were gone forever. I want to come to your camp, GreatOne."

"Well come on over!"

"I can't, GreatOne. My family is with SeeksWisdom."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"SeeksWisdom will get angry at me soon, but I want to help you."

"You want to help me?"

"Yes, GreatOne!"

"Then tell SeeksWisdom that I want to talk to him face to face."

"You'll kill him."

"No, tell him that I will meet him with no weapons, and he can have a spear. I will not harm him."

"He's afraid of you and your magic, GreatOne."

"He should not be afraid! I will forgive him after we talk, SacredBear." I thought to myself exactly how forgiving I would be, standing over his cooling corpse, pissing into a hole in his face.

"Can I tell him that?"

"That's what I want you to do, old friend. Tell him I will forgive him and welcome him back to my family." I smiled all convincing like.