Chapter 1

Daydreaming a little while I watched the goats eagerly clambering up the hillside, I thought back to being in the marketplace with Father two days ago. Zuela and Bergoa, the two prettiest single girls in town, had been there together, shopping with their mothers. I’d smiled at them, and both smiled shyly back at me for a moment and then looked away, blushing.

Thinking of their beautiful faces, and the gentle swellings and curves beneath their tunics caused a swelling of my own. I sighed, knowing that it would probably be another three years before Father decided I was mature enough to marry. I doubted that either of the two girls would still be single by then. Bergoa is the daughter of the town’s harbormaster. Hers is one of the more prosperous families in town, although they are by no means wealthy. Still, she will bring a better dowry to her marriage than most other women in town.

Zuela is equally beautiful. Her father is the town’s blacksmith and works hard to earn a living, but I doubt that he’ll be able to provide much of a dowry when she marries. Despite that, I admit being drawn to Zuela slightly more than to Bergoa. While both young women care about others, Zuela’s compassion extends to animals more than Bergoa’s does. For someone who is a farmer, and especially one like me who is supposedly good with animals, that’s an important quality.

I am Harazar, fourth son of Kennaar, who is Patriarch of the Dhormek Clan. My earliest memory is of watching my father and his father working together shearing our clan’s sheep. I was probably three, since my grandfather died right after my fourth birthday.

As the eldest son of the eldest son, Father became the Patriarch of our clan, and is responsible for overseeing our clan’s property, crops, and livestock. He assigns work to everyone in the extended clan. He even decides when the clan’s young men have matured enough, and their efforts add enough to the clan coffers to warrant them marrying. They need to be mature and responsible enough that their work provides the income necessary to support their own family so that the rest of the clan doesn’t end up having to support them.

Most young men marry between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. Even outside the clan, if a young man doesn’t earn enough to support a wife and her potential children, he usually needs to wait to marry until he does because women don’t want to end up married to a man who can’t feed his family.

Like all boys, young men, and men, I had dreams. One of those dreams involved a beautiful, caring wife. To accomplish that dream, I had to prove myself, something I kept in mind and tried to achieve every day.

When I turned four, Father taught me to use a sling, instructing me to practice every day. I did and became quite accurate with it. When I was seven, and before letting me tend the sheep, my father and uncles trained me how to use the staff to protect myself from the predatory animals in the nearby hills. When I turned eight, I took my place amongst the young boys herding the sheep. My Uncle Mazrobar went with us for the first two weeks to make sure I knew what to do. On my third day as a shepherd, I heard him shouting that wolves were attacking the sheep. I ran towards him and was short enough that the wolves probably didn’t see me until the last of the sheep bolted past me.

I caught the first wolf in the side of the head with the end of my staff right before he could catch a lamb. A second wolf veered off and came at me. At the last possible moment, I planted the butt of the staff against the instep of my foot, dropping the tip to catch the charging wolf in the chest, caving in his chest. His momentum vaulted him over my head as he yelped and howled in pain. He landed with a thud and remained silent and motionless.

While the second wolf was still airborne, I swung the staff again, knocking a third wolf down by breaking his leg. The two remaining wolves ran away, and I used my sling to finish off the wolf with the broken leg. My uncle killed a fourth wolf, and we proudly carried our wolf pelts home that night.

Since I proved myself capable of defending both the sheep and myself, and seemed to have a way with animals, Father put me in charge of tending the goats when I was only fourteen. My first month with the goats, two of my cousins were with me since we usually had three older boys watch the goats. The second month, only one cousin accompanied me. Starting the third month, I was on my own, albeit with my dogs.

Normally, young men between sixteen and nineteen years old tend the goats, the last task assigned to them before they are deemed responsible enough to take a wife. Where sheep prefer a flat meadow to graze in, and have to be led to it, goats love climbing all over the hillsides as they forage and are quite adept at finding their own food. My main tasks are keeping them from straying too far and watching for predators. I must admit, my four feral herding dogs do most of the work.

I saw the first feral dog while tending sheep at age ten. It took me a week to convince him to trust me and to come close enough that I could feed him a piece of dried meat from my hand. After eating right from my hand for ten straight days, he cautiously followed me home.

Each of the next three years, he brought another feral dog to me to adopt. Unlike town dogs that yap whenever someone they don’t know approaches and then cower behind their owner, these dogs learned to fend for themselves in the wild. They rarely bark unless yipping a warning at a goat they feel is straying too high or too far away. When there is real danger around, they bark to alert me. Then, they growl and snarl at the source of danger instead of continuing to bark.

Our clan property begins two miles east of the small seaport of Mokoko. The actual town sits atop a natural uprising of rock near where the Tattatoo River empties into the Western Sea. A thirty-foot high wall of mortar and stone atop the rock uprising helps protect the town from pirates and raiders, and even an invading army once. The town wall facing the sea won’t stop pirates or raiders from landing, but it does enclose the docks on the other three sides, protecting the town and preventing anyone from going inland without passing through town.

The walls allow defenders to rain spears, arrows, and stones down on an enemy. Inside the town walls, there is still enough open space for considerable growth. Currently, numerous vegetable gardens belonging to families living in town cover much of that land. The families pay a small fee to rent the land from the town each year.

The town’s north wall runs parallel to the southern edge of the Tattatoo River’s floodplain and protects the town from the river’s annual flood. The five-foot high flood wall runs inland for five miles from the town wall, protecting land south of the floodplain. It finally ends when it reaches the hills at the eastern edge of the coastal plain.

The annual floodwaters only reach the wall one year in five. When they do, the water rarely rises more than a few inches up the wall. In the entire history of Mokoko, the water has never risen more than a foot up the flood wall. Still, in the years that the water reaches the wall, it prevents the flooding of much or all the coastal plain east and south of town. It also keeps the dangerous freshwater crocodiles confined to the river’s floodplain year-round, protecting people and livestock alike.

When I leave home each morning, I carry a skin of water and a pouch filled with cheese, bread, dried meat, and fresh and dried fruit for my lunch. I have a second pouch that holds several smooth stones for my sling. In addition, I carry my shepherd’s staff. Unlike staffs used with the sheep, my staff is straight. I’m more likely to use it as a weapon than to pull a goat out of trouble. If I need to do that, I have a short length of rope I can use.

Since I began tending the goats, I’ve only seen an occasional coyote or wolf until two weeks ago when I faced a mountain lion. The four dogs surrounded the big cat, distracting him as he watched for their attack. I hit him in the head with a stone from my sling, eliciting an angry yowl and a glare that threatened bodily harm if he got past the dogs. My second shot hit him in the shoulder, causing him to limp and slowing him down seriously.

I’m sure he would have retreated at that point had the dogs let him. However, they’re smart enough not to rush in against an injured predator, and simply maintained their perimeter to keep the cat from escaping. When the third stone caught him in the head, he stumbled and fell. Missimo, the biggest of the four dogs, pounced and broke the cat’s neck, ending the standoff.

After praising and petting the dogs, I sent them back to round up and watch the goats. I skinned the cat, saving the tendons, head, and paws. The brain would be used to tan the pelt. The teeth and claws would become trophies. A man (or rarely a woman) who kills a dangerous predator (bear, mountain lion, wolf, etc.) may wear one tooth and one claw on a chain or a leather thong around their neck to represent each predator killed. Few men actually earn the right to wear tooth and claw, and far fewer to wear multiple teeth and claws. I already had three from the wolves I killed when I was eight, and another from a wolf I killed last year.

The man’s wife or wives are each allowed a necklace with one tooth OR one claw for each predator he kills. If a man kills a second predator, the wife has to match the tooth or claw with the same. She can’t wear a tooth from one and a claw from another. Tooth and claw indicated that she killed a predator. I wear mine proudly. When I was done stripping the cat’s carcass of anything useful, I dragged it closer to the goats and let the dogs gnaw on it.

We ran into the mountain lion because we were beyond the hills and into the first of the lower range of mountains looking for forage for the goats. Our herd of goats has increased dramatically during the last two years, and I needed to find more grazing areas. Since sheep are so lazy, I leave the flat, easy to reach meadows and the low hills for them. Besides, the younger boys watching the sheep would be hard-pressed to defend against a predator like a mountain lion. Our regular herding dogs only reached my knees and couldn’t take on a mountain lion. Even the coyotes are a little bigger than our usual herding dogs.

The hills to the east of town begin rising beyond the five-mile-wide green ribbon of the coastal plain, growing in stature the farther east you go. There are five rows of grassy hills from two hundred to eight hundred feet high. Beyond the fifth row of hills are the lower ranges of the taller and steeper Anzala Mountains. Most years, the peaks of the Anzala Mountains farther to the south and southeast are snowcapped during the wet season. I’ve never seen snow on the peaks directly east of town, but Father says he’s seen a light dusting of snow on the tallest peaks twice. However, it only lasted two or three days.

The annual wet season marks the beginning of our year. The season starts when LáFaní, the god of wind, directs the wind to blow off the Western Sea. That allows his brother KáPakí, the god of rain, to bless us with a month of heavy rain that slakes the thirst of their sister NíKilí, the goddess of the earth.

KáPakí’s gift of heavy rains causes the Tattatoo River to begin its annual flood. The rain also causes the nearby Zingha River to rise. Five miles to the south, the Zingha parallels the Tattatoo River through the coastal plain, the hills, and the lowest rows of the mountains. Except in the wettest years, the Zingha doesn’t rise more than ten feet during the rainy season and never rises above the edges of the river’s channel in the lower Zingha River Valley.

The upper Zingha River Valley is a much older floodplain about a mile wide and high enough above the floodplain of the lower Zingha River Valley that it no longer floods. However, during the heaviest of the monsoonal rain, the heavy rainfall covers parts of the Upper Zingha River Valley with up to an inch of water which then runs towards the river, first in little rivulets and then streams.

Unlike the Tattatoo River, the Zingha doesn’t deposit silt along its narrow floodplain. In addition, the water of the Zingha River is much colder than that of the Tattatoo River. The Tattatoo River flows through the Tattatabba Desert east of the Anzala Mountains before it reaches us.

The headwaters of the Zingha River are high in the Anzala Mountains, some two hundred miles southeast of us. It wends its way northward through deep, rocky gorges carved through the mountains over the centuries. When the river turns west, the gorge gradually widens into the upper and lower Zingha River Valleys. Even when the river is at its highest level, the upper valley provides a safe passageway through the mountains almost to the Tattatabba Desert east of the Anzala Mountains. A single mountain pass east of the valley provides the only safe passage through the mountains to the desert unless you travel three days to the south.

When KáPakí’s heavy rains begin, the Tattatoo River begins rising, usually about five feet higher than normal, although it carries no silt at first. The river originates in the highlands north of the Tattatabba Desert, hundreds of miles east of the Anzala Mountains, and runs south and west until it reaches the base of the mountains. Then it runs south, parallel to the mountains until reaching the river gorge that runs almost directly west through the mountains.

The river’s course through the mountains is a deep and steep chasm and gorge. Only when it nears the east end of the hills does the rushing river widen. The current slows, creating the five-mile-wide fertile floodplain we depend on for many of our crops.

The silt washes into the Tattatoo River when KáPakí’s monsoonal rains reach the often-swampy jungle lowlands of Vimnia, north of the Tattatabba Desert and east of the Anzala Mountains. That’s when the river rises even more, usually cresting about ten feet above normal, submerging much of our floodplain with the silt-laden water. After a month, the river recedes to the central channel, and it takes most of another month before the ground of the floodplain is firm enough for draft animals to walk on it so we can plow it and that it doesn’t cling to the blades of our plows.

Then, for three months, KáPakí rests and the abundant rainfall ceases. Our second season, planting season, begins once the mules and oxen are able to walk on the drying floodplain without sinking in too deeply. Crops we can plant without plowing, such as some vegetables, we plant by hand before the animals can plow. Older children plant those crops once the ground is firm enough for them to walk on without sinking in too deeply. Under the supervision of adults who watch and direct them from nearby, children ages six to ten use drills to make holes and then plant seeds in them.

Men from the village lay out wooden planks to make walkways from the flood wall to near the river’s edge where they erect temporary wooden watchtowers along the river. They staff the watchtowers each day, warning the working children if they spot any of the deadly river crocodiles coming ashore nearby. If a guard is lucky enough to kill a crocodile, he uses the thick hide to cover a shield or to make body armor. His family eats some of the meat from the tail and legs and sells the rest in the marketplace. Father has both a shield and body armor from his time in the army long before I was born.

The second season also marks the time when LáFaní sends the warm winds that blow from the east, off the desert. The desert winds are gentle during this season. The naturally warm temperature, abundant moisture in the ground, plentiful sunshine, and extra warmth from the desert winds help the seeds to germinate and the plants to grow quickly.

All year, even during the wet season, the weather here is warm enough for plants to continue growing. The competing winds from the desert and ocean keep the temperature here warmer year-round than in other parts of the country.

The third season, growing season, follows planting season. LáFaní sends gentle winds off the desert, occasionally relenting long enough to allow KáPakí to send clouds from the ocean to deliver rain to their sister NíKilí.

The soil in the floodplain retains enough moisture that most crops grown there don’t need irrigation. However, some of the vegetables planted farthest from the river require irrigation. The fact that they are easy to irrigate using ditches to divert water from the river is the reason we choose to plant those crops farthest from the river. Grains are difficult to irrigate that way and we grow them as close to the river as possible where the soil below the surface remains moist.

Our clan’s orchards and vineyards cover two of the hills east of the coastal plain and require irrigation much of the year. We own one entire hill covered with olive trees, and a second hill has grapes covering the lower slopes and fig trees on the upper slopes. Using the hills for orchards and vineyards leaves the flat coastal plain for growing other crops and for grazing our livestock.

Harvest season is cooler and follows the growing season. LáFaní’s now cooler desert winds are much stronger, rushing down through the Tattatoo River valley. Many days there are clouds and rain just a few miles north or south of us, but the skies above us remain clear.

During this season, we reap grains, harvest and dry fruits and vegetables, harvest root crops that we store in cellars, harvest grapes that we dry or make into wine, and olives that we crush for their oil. Many vegetables continue growing and producing until next year’s flood washes them away. A month before harvest season, we plant a second crop on the coastal plain. That planting is for crops that don’t continue producing all year, crops like corn and wheat that only produce once and then die back.

Both adults and older children in our clan are busy year-round. When they aren’t planting, tending crops, harvesting, tending livestock, or doing the myriad of other tasks necessary for everything to run smoothly, they work on terracing the extra hill we own. For three years, we’ve been terracing and planting a third hill, one we received in a settlement for the death of my grandfather. That hill is the tallest of the three we own.

A wealthy merchant was showing off his new, high-spirited horse before he learned how to control it properly. The horse spooked when a woman in town shook out a piece of clothing she had washed so she could lay it out on the grass to dry. The horse reared and one of its front hooves struck my grandfather in the head, knocking him unconscious. He died later that day.

The town’s Magistrate ruled that the horse should not have been around people until the merchant knew how to control it. The only thing the merchant was willing to surrender in payment was a hill that had not yet been terraced or planted. Even though the hill was worth more than the debt, he chose to give us the hill as payment.

The north face of the hill is too rocky to plant, but we quarry stone there. We have terraced most of the rest of the hill over the last three years. Two years ago, a merchant arrived with a new grain called rice. We grew a one-acre plot of rice, sowing fifty pounds of seed like the merchant suggested. We harvested more than three thousand pounds of rice from that single acre. We planted one acre again last year with the same result. Anticipating the result, Father had the terraces on the lower slopes of the hill prepared this year so we could plant them with rice.

My older cousins plowed the soil in the terraced areas right before the wet season. After a week of rain, members of the clan transplanted the rice seedlings we had started before the rains began. Last year, our clan completed both a well and an ox-powered water wheel to lift water from the well to the top of that hill. After the rains stop, a series of rock and mortar troughs guide that water to the terraces.

Watching everyone quarrying and hauling rocks, as well as building the terraces, made me glad my assignment was to tend the primary herd of goats. Four of my younger cousins have the task of herding the sheep. They lead them out each day to graze, take them to a stream or well at midday to water them, and then watch over the sheep as they lay beneath shade trees during the afternoon. They start back in time to have the sheep home before dinner.

Today, we followed the same trail through and then beyond the hills into the lowest range of mountains, the trail where we’d previously met the mountain lion. This part of the trail was heavily overgrown, having seen little use for years, and the goats were happily eating the overgrowth. Today was our second day away from home.

Knowing how far I intended to travel, I had warned everyone that I planned to stay out for a week to ten days and intended to travel for a couple of days before stopping.

Last night I slept in the large goatskin tent I brought. KáPakí’s annual gift of heavy rains was almost over. We need the rain for our crops to thrive, but I’m still miserable when it’s raining heavily. Since the rains should stop soon, I gambled this trip and only brought my lightweight sheepskin cloak. For the last few weeks, I’ve used the heavy sheepskin cloak that still has wool on one side to keep me warm and dry. The last several days, the warm cloak has been too warm, hence my choice of the light cloak without the wool.

I always enjoy watching the goats when we’re in the hills, as they love to climb and gambol. Sometimes it seems as if they’re having a contest to see which of them can make the most adventurous or outrageous climb. To their credit, as well as to the credit of everyone who watched the goats before me and helped train them, they always come back to me when I start playing my five-note Pan flute. I don’t claim to be musically talented, but the goats follow the music, regardless of the quality of said music.

This morning the goats were climbing along the lower part of the steep eastern slope of a ravine. The mountain’s peak looked to be about two thousand feet high. The slopes here were far steeper and rockier than the slopes of the hills we planted. Yesterday was the second time we passed beyond the hills between the coastal plain and ventured into the mountains in search of new pastures. Today, I noted that the goats were climbing through an area where a small landslide had recently occurred, probably during the recent rains. It probably happened about two weeks ago when we had four straight days and nights of a monsoonal downpour.

I saw a section of the slide where a chalk deposit had been exposed and went to investigate. I also noticed that several larger rocks, some nearly as tall as I was, had come loose from the area around the landslide and had rolled to where the ground leveled out. The rocks nearly blocked this side of the upper Zingha River valley, leaving barely enough room between them for a cart to squeeze through.

I found nodules of flint among the chalk and excitedly dug out several medium-sized nodules and four large nodules while the goats and dogs continued their climb up the side of the ravine.

The slide had created a way to reach the top of the steep ridge in an area that had probably been nearly inaccessible before. The new path was still steep enough to make climbing the slope difficult. When I finally reached the top of the ridge above the slide area, I was amazed. The new route led into a valley the sheep would love. Unfortunately, for the sheep, the four hundred-foot climb up to the valley was still too steep and too difficult for them. The goats, however, seemed to relish the climb.

The valley was over a mile wide and two miles long. Before dark that day, I explored part of the west side of the valley and found three springs, each feeding the single stream running through the center of the valley. The stream disappeared underground into a rocky area near the south end of the valley. Prints along the edge of the stream attested to recent visits by sure-footed antelope, deer, mountain goats, big horned mountain sheep, wolves, and mountain lions.

I noted several small copses of five to ten trees scattered randomly throughout the valley, along with numerous solitary trees. Most of the trees were oak, but a few were chestnut. The stream had a nearly continuous growth of poplar, willow, and alder trees along the banks. Except for areas beneath the trees, the grass and weeds in the valley looked like a lush, unbroken, green carpet up to my waist. Only the trees and tall thorn bushes stood above the undergrowth.

Halfway down the west side of the valley, one of the springs I found surfaced about ten feet from the mouth of a large limestone cave. Missimo entered and spent a short time marking the cave as his territory. When he exited without finding anything living in the cave, I made a crude torch and explored the interior. Once I determined that it would make a good shelter, I began gathering thorn bushes to stack around the mouth of the cave.

Using my staff, I jabbed at the base of the thorn bushes, breaking the stem from the roots. When I had two bushes loosened, I dragged them over to the cave with gloved hands, repeating the task for the rest of the morning and all afternoon. When the sun finally reached the western rim of the valley, I whistled to the dogs and they started rounding up the goats. I got my flute out and started playing it so the goats could home in on the familiar sound.

Before it became too dark to see, I climbed up on the rocks above the cave’s entrance and scanned the valley to make sure all the goats had made it safely into the makeshift thorn bush pen. I had gathered enough thorn bushes that the pen was about a hundred feet in diameter. The goats were a bit crowded, but I planned to expand it tomorrow. When I was satisfied that the last of the goats were inside, I closed the opening in the thorn bush hedge and started three small fires inside the three fire rings I had made. I cleared the grass inside the fire rings and lined them with rocks I had gathered from the hillside near the cave. I kept the fires small, even though the goats quickly eliminated the remaining grass inside the thorn bush fence. Fortunately, goats eschew thorn bushes once they reach about three feet tall, one of the few plants they won’t eat.

Leaving the dogs to watch the goats, I went back outside the thorn bushes and set out snares, hoping to catch several rabbits tonight. I caught enough last night that the dogs and I each got three. I cooked mine; the dogs weren’t so fussy.

After setting my snares, I ate a dinner of dried meat and dried fruit, added wood to the three fires, and found a likely rock to sit on. Having never knapped flint before, although I’d seen it done, I chose to practice on the smallest nodule. Having seen it done and accomplishing it myself are two different things! Learning to knap was an aggravating process and I screwed up the three smaller pieces, learning from experience what size flint chips I got when I tapped on an edge, or applied varying amounts of pressure at different angles. After destroying the three smallest nodules, and with nothing to show for my effort but a pile of flint chips, I finally gave up for the night and went to sleep.

In the morning, I let the dogs out to run for a few moments before turning the goats loose. I wanted the dogs to scout the area and make sure no predators were lurking nearby. Once I let the goats loose, I checked my snares, collecting any rabbits that I caught. All twenty snares were full so the dogs would eat well once I skinned the rabbits. I kept the extra rabbits for dinner and for drying some of the meat.

While occasionally checking on the goats, I spent most of the day gathering more thorn bushes to enlarge the protected area and make the walls of my temporary enclosure taller and thicker. Having the dogs makes it unnecessary for me to watch the goats closely all day. The dogs are better at discovering and chasing away predators than I am, and the goats know better than to challenge one of the dogs when he barks a warning that they’re climbing too high or wandering too far away.

The clouds that began accumulating last night thinned out and the sky was clear by sundown. After setting out my snares again, I spent the evening drying thin strips of rabbit meat while trying, still unsuccessfully, to knap flint.

When I checked my snares the next morning, I had twenty more rabbits. Shit, I was going to have a huge bundle of rabbit furs to carry home. I knew from the amount of rabbit scat on the ground, as well as the number of runs and tunnels through the long grass and brush that there had to be thousands of rabbits in the valley.

Once I skinned the rabbits, I began gathering and stacking rocks to make a rock enclosure to protect the goats at night. I had no expectations that I would finish such an enclosure this week, this month, or even this year. Usually, with only one person building the wall, it takes years to finish because they spend a limited amount of time in a single location each year and move on to a different location once the goats have grazed the entire area.