Chapter 5
I parted the grass carefully to get a better view of the fort or farm or whatever they were building.
'It looks permanent.' I thought.
One of the big people was standing guard about ten or twelve feet away, wearing his helmet and leaning against his spear, which was tipped with that hard new metal they use. I imagined that his sword would be made of the same precious stuff but it was stuck into his belt and I could only see the hilt, the rest being hidden by his cloak. His shield, propped against a nearby rock, was the round wooden sort covered with layers of hide. The kind used by most of his people. I did not think he really expected any trouble, although they don't usually see us - even when they seek us and we are not trying to hide. Whenever we have really sought concealment they have seen nothing at all. I believe they have some kind of tale about us being swallowed up by the ground.
This one was enormous. He must have stood at least five foot four or five. There was another guard nearly as tall, standing further away on the hill and one taking charge of things. This third one had put his helmet down, along with his shield and spear, in the long, wiry grass. He was directing the men doing the building. They were just piling the stones on top of each other and sticking them together with muddy looking stuff. It was a lot quicker than sorting out exactly which stone to lay and sloping the walls inwards but they had to keep stopping to mix some more of the mud. Moreover, I wasn't sure how safe it was. I mean, what if rain washed it out or a storm blew it out? I wouldn't want to be in the building then!
The one in charge kept pausing to look around. I had the impression that he was concerned about something quite different from the construction, but what it was I couldn't for the life of me guess.
I had no wish to tangle with the big people, but it seemed there was no help for it. I knew of at least two villages on the mainland where they had killed all the people - and now they were spreading onto the islands. There seemed no end to their greed for land. Maybe elsewhere there was room for us to keep out of their way, but not on the islands. I signalled to the others to come forward with their bows. There were just the nine of them I could see and there were seven of us - eight of us including me. I fitted an arrow to my bow, drew it back carefully and waited.
I gave the sign. Arrows flicked silently across the grassy hollow. The one in charge dropped suddenly: before an arrow hit him I'm sure. I fired three arrows in all, but the others in my group only had to let loose two before all the remaining big people were dead. When all was still, we crept out and gathered up our arrows. Of the leader there was no sign. If he'd been hit I couldn't see him. There was no time to wait around looking: we just left quickly, covering our tracks.
Back at the village the others were grimly jubilant but I wasn't. I thought they'd be after us. In their place I would be now. Not that I'd choose to do different, mind, I just don't have the same optimism that the others seem to have.
One of the old women came out. "Your father's dead!" she said. "You'll have to make the great marriage, as he did."
I reflected. I didn't have much choice. My father had been ill for some time and he was a good age too - perhaps even forty. Now the people would look to me. The great marriage was a wedding to the land, represented by one of the priest-girls and would make me king and war chief as well as bridegroom. I didn't have much illusion about how the war would end but I'd no choice about that either.
"First the funeral duties to my father and then the great marriage", I said at length.
I lay with my hands clasped behind my head and stared at the roof without seeing it in the dim light. The fire had burned low and was little more than a collection of red embers and a single, flickering log in the centre of the room. I could see that the patch of sky visible through the smoke-hole in the centre of the roof was already beginning to turn from the black of night to the first early grey of dawn. The bed beneath me was of young heather with a wool blanket thrown over. The blanket was thick enough and the heather young enough that I couldn't feel it sticking through and there was just enough heat left in the embers for me to be comfortably warm as I lay without covers, though I was fully dressed. My few personal possessions were in the shadows of this room with me but I was thinking about the future and my destiny and the destiny of my people.
I heard the footsteps of two older people in the passageway outside the house and the sound of the skin at the doorway being drawn aside to admit someone, but I did not move until an old woman leaned over me and said, simply, "It is time."
I got up and followed her outside, the second old woman following us.
The sun was just rising above the horizon when the fire was lit. I watched flames curl at the base of the cone and then rush upwards with a shower of sparks as first the dry twigs and then the bigger boughs caught light. By the glow of the fire I could see the faces of some who had come to the chief-making. We were a pitifully small number. There were just the two villages remaining on this island and the village on the high island. I tried to concentrate on the job in hand.
What is there to tell? A priestess invoked the blessing of the goddess on the ceremony, then I had to catch and kill a deer before the sun set that day. Perhaps catching a deer was once a test of real importance when the tribe depended upon their chief to lead them in the hunt for food, but we kept animals ourselves now and, if we did need to supplement that food, we hunted in a group.
Still, a ceremony is a ceremony, so I tracked the symbolic deer, went downwind of it, sneaked close to it, using an uncured hide as a precaution to cover my scent and shot it with the bow I also carried.
The most difficult part was carrying the animal back to the village when I'd killed it. The day was not so very hot, but it was warm enough that I sweated with the exertion of carrying my burden, my throat was dry, my back ached and my muscles turned to jelly before I returned.
The priestess set the deer to roast after they had taken its blood and sprinkled the homes, the animals and the fields with their blessing. Then they painted me with the symbols of the goddess and tattooed the snake around my wrist and forearm.
By the time they had finished the sun was setting. The fire was stoked up again and the priestess faced me. She said, "I now place this symbol of the rulership on the hand of Bend as he goes to complete the great marriage," and she put my father's ring onto my finger. It was his and I thought it had been buried with him.
Then the priestess surprised me again by taking an amulet from her own neck and raising her arms to the last traces of the setting sun. "Visible symbol of the goddess which sets in the west," she said, "charge this jewel, handed down from one to the other, so that it may become a symbol of our people."
She fastened it about my neck, saying, "One thing only remains to complete the great marriage. Go to your house. A priestess-virgin awaits the moment when you fill her with the life of our people. Go, and the goddess be with you."
I allowed the two older women to lead me back to the entrance of the village and underground along the passage to my own house. I let them hold aside the hide and entered.
"The goddess be with you", one of them said, and the hide fell back into place behind me.
Inside the fire had been built up and its flickering light showed that the bed was occupied. The woman, or rather the girl, was twelve or thirteen summers old at most and was wearing nothing on her dark skinned body. On her budding breasts had been drawn the symbols of the goddess. Her dark hair framed the dark face and her hands were by her side. It was to her credit that she was not covering herself in any way but awaiting the coming of her lover in the great marriage with as much composure as she could manage.
I unfastened the belt of the woollen, one-piece jerkin I was wearing and let it fall onto the floor then I stripped off the jerkin itself and let that fall alongside it. I could see the girl watching me and felt mildly embarrassed as I took off the linen loincloth.
She gazed at my manhood for a moment, then sa
id, "I am ready, my king. Together we serve the great mistress." She paused and then added, her voice a little husky, perhaps with fear, "I am ready for you and may the Goddess be with us."
The fire had burned almost out and daylight streamed through the fire-hole before I rose and went out to meet the rest of the tribe, who were still waiting for me. I looked at the expectant faces and said, "It is completed as the goddess wills." The priestess smiled a little in relief and the tension eased.
"Before we talk of the big people and what to do about them, tell me something," I asked her.
She nodded.
"The ring and the talisman. Where did my father get them?"
"From his father. He inherited them."
I tried again. "But where did they come from?"
"Legend tells that they were brought from far to the south. They were brought by your father's fathers, many generations ago."
I pondered a moment. "Do the legends say whether they were won in battle or ... or how the bearer came by them?"
"They were sent in safe keeping. Or so the stories run," she said. "I know nothing beyond the stories."
I sighed, though I do not know why. "Now we must decide what to do about the big people", I said.
The priestess nodded.
We could count only twenty-two men between ten and thirty-five. Women who were not nursing and not too old joined the men defending ... Defending what? I don't know. I had nothing against the big people. I would simply stay out of their way but I know it's no good. There are too many of them and they're too hungry for land. They're too hungry for OUR land and in the past they've killed those who stood up to them. I think they're afraid of us because they don't often see us and they sometimes walk right past our villages without seeing them either. It may be a combination of them not being all that observant and our not being all that numerous but, whatever it is, when they get the chance they kill us all. Their stories are of folk who mean malice and misfortune. I think perhaps the priestesses are right; it is our existence we're defending.
Anyway, thirty-seven people, not all of them real fighters, were not enough to meet the big ones in open battle and I couldn't manage more than that. In council with the priestesses I decided that all those too old or too young to fight should go to the village on the high island. I made up my own mind to abandon the two villages on the main island, but in such a manner that the big people would think they had won and got rid of us for good. I didn't think they'd follow us to the high island. I also made up my mind not to tell anyone, including the priestesses, that I had decided to abandon the main island. This decision was unfortunate when you consider what happened.
I thought the location of one of our villages was more or less known, so we'd use that one. If we attacked the settlement at Holm and left a clear trail for the big people to follow, they would have no choice but to come after us. We could ambush them on the way and make them pay dear for the village I had already decided to give up. They wouldn't know that; they'd think it was a hard won victory. I wanted them to think that a few survivors were running to one of the small islands northwards of the main island.
Those who were not fighting went to the high island as planned and some of the boats were brought back and were hidden a little down the coast. To make abandonment seem more real, dummies made of straw and heather placed inside them. The rest of the boats were concealed conveniently, ready for a hasty departure to the high island. Next some of the tribe hid themselves with bows at the temple of the sun at Brodgar. The stones stand in a circle on gently rising moorland, so there's plenty of cover in amongst the heather. A temple is not really the place for an ambush, but my people use it, though it was there before us, the big ones are afraid of it and don't understand it and it makes a good landmark to make for.
Our attack on their settlement was almost better and more effective than I had hoped. Several of our tribe went into the settlement after dark with straw and heather wrapped around branches and started fires in boats and buildings, then we used our arrows on those who were lit up by the moonlight or the glow from fires. I don't suppose we even hit, let alone killed many, but there was no shortage of confusion. We left a pretty clear trail but, to make sure there was no mistake, we set fire to a farmhouse. We also attacked a shepherd, scattered his sheep and killed his dog.
To give them time to catch up with us we lit a roaring campfire and rested. We'd brought a bit of peat with us and we threw that into the embers along with some greenery, to make sure there was enough smoke for them to see - I didn't want them to miss the fire!
In spite of all the help we gave them, it was still the afternoon of the next day before they caught up with us enough for me to see them, and then we almost lost them. They really are lacking in tracking skills and seem stupid in battle too. We would beat them easily if they weren't so numerous. We led them steadily towards the ambush I had planned at the Ring of Brodgar, and arrived there about a hour and a half or so before sunset. I stopped the tribe briefly to pay our respects to the Goddess - to the big people it must have looked as if we were giving thanks for a victory - then I led the attackers out of the other side. The big people saw us going and thought it was safe. They marched straight into the ambush waiting for them. I didn't realise how many there were. I knew they were numerous, but there must have been around a hundred men, all fighters with armour and so on. Even though my people were well hidden and gave a good account of themselves there were only two survivors and my little force was depleted.
We waited until nightfall to go back for the dead and took them under cover of darkness. We carried them to the village and laid them in the empty houses, lighting fires they wouldn't feel. We left some cattle in the byre and put the rest out near the village. I would have lit a fire but it began to rain and the wind got up a bit. The big people camped inside the temple, mounting guards behind the standing stones. It was a miserable night for camping with a thin drizzle soaking everything through and a chilly wind. I thought of the comfortable houses with only the dead in them more than once, but I stuck to my plans.
Morning came and through the infrequent breaks in the cloud it didn't look at all promising. There was a stormy redness, squally rain from time to time and the wind had risen more.
The big people found our village and fell on it with a venom that made a body think they had spent an uncomfortable night. They lost a few more to our arrows before they stormed underground. They cleaned the place out! They brought out everything right down to the heather bedding and the dead bodies. As they piled up the bodies we attacked again and then those chosen to lay a false scent let themselves be seen with the boats - but not so close that the big people could recognise the straw dummies. By now there was a near gale and I rather doubted the wisdom of trying to sail to one of the low islands to the north, even the nearer ones. Still it was too late to change plans.
The rest of our tribe - and only sixteen of them remained - went to the place where we had hidden the boats for the crossing to the high island. The wind was really up now, if anything, even fiercer and I thought that we perhaps should lie low until it dropped. The small group had survived our battles were terrified of remaining within the vengeful reach of the big ones and wanted to cross to the high island. They were sure our boats would survive a short journey across sheltered water and, against my better judgement, I gave in to their pleading.
I am sorry to say that I was right and they were wrong. The boats were no more than hides stretched over frames of thin branches. They soon broke up in those seas and those winds and most of my people are not swimmers. The wind screamed at the water and I only stayed afloat because I had a paddle to hold on to. It screamed at the heather and the rocks as I dragged myself, dripping, from the water to shelter under the overhang of a boulder.
I was wet through and the overhang presented me with little enough cover from the wind. While it wasn't really cold the force of the gale made it seem so and I was wet in the extreme. The rain w
as driven horizontal and it even tasted salty, there was so much spray in it.
Miserable as my condition seemed, I was exhausted and I must have dozed for a while. When I woke, which might just as easily have been a fleeting moment or two or a much longer period, the wind had shifted a little and my boulder was not protecting me as much. I crawled to the lee side of it and found not only less wind but more of an overhang and two sheep sheltering. I crawled in behind the sheep and felt a bit warmer as we snuggled up together. Beyond the rock the wind was more than a gale. It tore small bushes up by the roots and flattened the grass; it drove rain and sand before it like a solid wall and a regular little stream ran down the side of the rock. With better shelter and a little warmth I was more comfortable. I scraped a little hollow in the sandy ground for my hip and fell into a fitful sleep.
I woke once with thirst which I quenched from the water streaming down by the rock and again as the sky lightened. I thought the storm had eased a little, but the wind still howled like a boar in agony, trying to raise the dead from their graves. I thought I would stay in the shelter a bit longer, and must have fallen asleep again.
When the elements had calmed still further and the wind dropped to something like a mere gale, I crawled out from the shelter and began to walk somewhat stiffly along the shore of the high island. I knew there was a village close to the beach on the sheltered side, I had even been there a time or two. I hoped I could find it now.
The waves were still angrier than I had ever seen them, white topped, grey and rasping viciously on the shore. I wondered that I had survived them and thought that few would have done likewise. I walked on. Walked is an inadequate word, suggestive of a stroll on a sunny day. The wind had dropped only slightly and the rain was still a torrent. I struggled, stumbled, fought, staggered, lurched, limped in a near stupor.
At length I came to the village. I almost missed it but for the smoke from only one house and the lowing of some cattle down in the byre.
I was so glad to get underground and away from the storm that I didn't notice at first how empty it was. I just went into the first house and there she was, keeping a fire burning high, the girl who had been my mate in the great marriage.
"Come under the blanket and warm up," she said practically, "You must be frozen as well as drenched."
I stripped off my sodden clothes and climbed into the bed with her. She may have sounded practical when she invited me to warm myself, but she was other things too. Afterwards I slept in the dark warmth.
I was woken by the smell of cooking - a stew and some cakes of bread - and realised I was starving. I was part way through the meal before it struck me how quiet the village was. With five or more nursing mothers and several young children it should not have been so silent and still.
"Where are the others?" I asked her.
"Gone." she answered, not, I thought, very helpfully. "I knew you would come here so I waited in the village."
"Gone where?" I wanted to know.
"They saw the fires you started in the big people's settlement. They saw it burn and celebrated your victory. Then they thought it was safe to return."
"But I didn't send for them. What they saw was just a distraction."
"They were distracted," she said with a flat simplicity.
I wondered whether they got back to land before the storm and whether they had survived the elements if they had made it over the water. I was not at all sure of the little ones and the oldest ones.
"When did they leave?" I asked.
"Just before the storm," she said. "I doubt if they landed before the worst of it."
My heart sank. There was little chance that they would have survived. She was practical about it.
"I am young. With luck I can bear several children." she said, "The storm has hurt the homes of the big people more than it has hurt us because they build above ground. We can start afresh here."
I thought about this for a while. Perhaps she was right.
When my hunger was assuaged I went to the entrance of the village. The wind had dropped, but it still gusted. There was sand partly blocking the way and I had to scrape it aside. I knelt there, mostly shielded from the wind looking across the grey and stormy waters, thinking. I could not recall a storm like this nor had I heard my father or anyone else speak of such a wind. There was no going out today even if I had any but the most pressing of reasons - and I no longer seemed to have any reason at all. I turned, rose and walked back underground. She was waiting for me.
"Do we need anything from outside?" I asked her.
"No. We have fuel for several days' fire and food enough for as long or longer."
"Then we'll shelter until the storm ends," I decided.
"I'll build the fire up," she said by way of answer. Outside the weather was still foul - inside we were sheltered and dry.
It was nearly two days later that the wind dropped and the clouds let the sun through. I had no hope that any of my people would have survived the storm but, all the same, I felt I must look. I walked along the seashore - and this time I did walk - but saw nothing. I could see the main island near and clear and I found the wreckage of a boat, probably mine. However, most of the other rubbish thrown up by the waves seemed to be natural. I did not see any sign of any other person, big or little.
When I had gone past the boulder where I had sheltered that first night, I turned back. There wasn't much point in going further.
Something niggled at my mind and I think I felt that all was not right, though I had seen nothing wrong. I smelt the smoke of our fire before I saw the village. I knew instantly that we had a visitor and I saw from the size of the footprint in the sand I had scraped away that it was one of the big people. I heard the sound of the hard stuff they make their weapons from. The noise came from underground. So he was still there. I couldn't see any others, so there was probably just the one, but he couldn't be allowed to go back and tell others of his discovery.
I could hear someone coming towards the entrance, so I stood to one side. He stopped in the entranceway blinking, stooped over because he was so tall. I didn't give him time to get used to the light again or to recover himself, I chopped down and then stabbed upwards. I cut off his sword hand at the elbow with the first blow and I felt the sword strike home with the second. Then a clump of damp sand hit my face.
A second one emerged with a spear as I brushed the sand from my face and eyes, stabbing wildly at him as I did so. He caught me with his spear and the head broke off, allowing me to reach him with an upward stab of my sword. The two of them staggered away, bleeding and dying. I collapsed on the sand. I did not think they were going to make it to the main island. In fact I saw one of them drop about a hundred yards away.
"Lian!" I called, but she did not answer. "Lian! I've been hit, come and help me." I called again, but she did not come or even answer. From inside came a smell of burning.