Chapter 4

This morning, the twins wanted to go with me when I went hunting. With nine people to feed, along with the dogs and wolves, we’d need one hell of a lot of rabbits. Instead, I hoped to supplement the rabbits with deer. I spotted a lower meadow west of us on the other side of the ravine yesterday while I was gathering rocks. When I investigated, I noted that the lower leaves were gone from the bushes and trees in one area, with the short grass flattened where the animals lay down. I had stayed back a short distance, so my scent wasn’t right in the midst of their hideaway.

We rode the horses, and each of us led a pack mule. Since the girls were better shots with a bow than I was, we might each get something. I still carried my spear, too, in case something big attacked us. Today, the only workout the spear got was as a walking staff.

We tethered the animals and walked the remainder of the way in silence. I was surprised when we reached the meadow. There was a good-sized herd of mountain sheep grazing in the meadow, not deer. The dominant ram was easy to spot and must have weighed five hundred pounds. Besides him, there were four adult rams, and ten adult ewes. Most of the ewes had one or two small lambs.

We moved back a short distance and determined which of the males each of us would aim for. I warned the girls about my run-in with the stag last time, advising them to hide behind a tree if one of the rams charged us.

I was surprised when they had me dip the tip of my arrowhead into some sort of potion they carried in a small ram’s horn. They explained that the potion was made from berries and paralyzed animals. The rams weighed three hundred to four hundred pounds and even the tiniest trace of the herb in their blood would paralyze them for up to half a day without hurting us if we ate the cooked meat.

It began working quickly even if we only wounded an animal. The wounded animal would stagger and fall a few moments later, even if they were just grazed by the arrowhead. The girls warned me not to get the potion on my skin or it would paralyze me for most of the day.

As soon as the noise from our bowstrings releasing reached the herd, they bolted, leaving three of the rams staggering behind them. The fourth adult ram made a move as if he would charge me. Taking no chances, I put an arrow into him, too. After I made sure the four rams were dead, not just paralyzed, the ladies worked quickly to skin and dress the four animals. I built four sturdy travois, covering each with the skin of one of the four mountain sheep, and then tying each dressed carcass to that travois.

Zuela and Bergoa were excited when they saw what we brought back and quickly jumped in to help us cut up the carcasses to hang in the smokehouse. Silje and Freja, wives of the two slave goatherds, also jumped in to help. Zuela quickly started a stew from the hearts and livers of the four sheep and the ladies appointed me to make frames for stretching and drying the sheepskins.

Late that afternoon, I added two more courses of rock to the now chest high wall intended to close off the cave. When I finished that, I took off on one of the horses to do some scouting. I scouted along the southern rim of the valley, finally finding a shaded spot atop a large boulder that offered a view far up the Zingha River valley.

From there, we could see half a day’s ride up the valley. I could also see the site where the caravan was attacked and noted a second caravan moving through the area. Several men from the caravan checked out the rotting corpses of the bandits, as well as the graves where I buried the caravan men. I hoped they bought the camels we had, even if Father sold them for less than they were worth. Those nearly five hundred camels ate a lot of forage that we needed for the sheep and dairy goats.

When I got back to the cave, I had Kazani accompany me back to the rock, showing her the view from there. She was excited to see another caravan, hoping it would take word back to her brother that she and her sister were now married, and that their father had died in the attack. She would alert us immediately if she saw riders on horseback headed this way from the south. That would let us send someone to warn Father and the town if the Baron sent troops or raiders.

It also gave me pause to wonder what I should do if they returned. Should I try to slow them down to give our clan and the people in town more time to prepare? That would allow everyone time to reach the safety of the walls and allow the men time to arm themselves and organize a defense.

I spoke with my wives after dinner about what we should do. “Zuela should be the one to warn the town,” Bergoa insisted.

“I think I’m pregnant,” Zuela explained after Bergoa insisted. “I wanted to wait another month to make sure before telling you.”

I was excited and hugged her emotionally. “I want all of you to ride into town to warn everyone if raiders show up,” I told my wives.

“We’re not leaving you here alone. Besides, my sister and I are better with a bow than you are,” Kazani insisted.

“And I’m practicing every day and getting better,” Bergoa contended. As much as I didn’t like the idea of my wives putting themselves in danger like that, I knew better than to argue with them when all four agreed. After all, I was supposed to seek the advice of my wives. The priest didn’t say that I had to like the advice.

“I don’t like it, but I will agree,” I conceded. “I will leave the two of you to watch the goats,” I told Lukas and Vidar. “One of you should watch from the vantage point. If the raiders come this way, hide in the old wolf den,” I suggested.

“Our place is beside you, defending you and the town,” Lukas insisted. “We were not warriors like some of the other men with us, but we know how to use the weapons you gave us. Since your home is our new home, we wish to help defend our new home.”

Their wives and my wives were nodding their agreement, so I agreed.

My wives rewarded me later for agreeing to let three of them stay if anything happened. The reward was enjoyable, but I still didn’t like the thought of endangering them like that.

We settled into a routine. Either Lukas or Vidar would watch the goats, although the dogs did most of the watching. The other emptied our snares and then came to help me gather rocks or work on the wall. I worked on the wall and on closing off the cave opening around the door until it was complete. The weather had been dry and warm, so after ten days, I set fire to the twigs and dry grass inside the bread oven. Then, I started a fire atop the clay base using larger branches and then split logs.

Two days later, we mortared the fired clay base in place atop the waist-high rock pedestal. The pedestal put the bread oven at a height that made it easier for the women to use. The next day, we set the rounded dome on top, sealing it to the base with mortar. After the mortar dried for a day, I started a fire inside the now-completed oven to test it and to make sure the mortar was dry. I told the women it would be ready to use tomorrow.

While I was waiting for the bread oven to dry before firing it, I made more of the special clay I used to make it and made bricks to build a hearth and a fireplace in the cave. Since the bricks were thinner than the bread oven or the base, after a week in the sun to dry, I fired them in our three fire rings. After letting them cool for a day, I stacked them just inside the cave.

Once I finished enclosing the entrance of the cave and making the bread oven, I used the bricks and started building a large fireplace and hearth inside the cave. The tassimin plants in the valley were big enough to tell me that it didn’t get cold enough here during our cold season for a heavy frost that would kill the tops of the plants. We might get some light frost, but nothing more. Many miles farther to the south and higher in the mountains, it was cold enough during the cold season to snow on the higher peaks.

Even if it didn’t get cold enough here to kill the plants, it would get cold enough to be uncomfortable, especially at night. When I finished the fireplace and hearth, I intended to chisel a chimney flue into the limestone wall of the cave, all the way back to the smokehouse. The flue would angle upwards slightly so the smoke would flow through it better. I would cover the open part of the flue by mortaring thin, flat bricks across the front of the opening. That way, the heated air from the fire would help heat that part of the cave wall, and hence, most of the length of the cave.

We also worked on the wall of the fold. Lukas and Vidar’s wives dug and then lined two shallow ditches with mortar. The first part of the two ditches allowed some of the water from our spring to flow beneath the wall; one ditch went beneath the wall on the north and one beneath where the wall to the south of the cave would eventually be. Once they were beneath the wall, the ditches turned east, paralleling, and about three feet away from the wall. Between the ditch and the wall, they planted thorn bush seeds and transplanted numerous small thorn bushes that I found regrowing where the goats had already grazed. When the women finished, they planted another row on the outside of the ditch. By next year, we would have a thick thorn bush hedge growing outside the wall or where the wall would eventually be built.

Every two feet, the lip of the mortar ditch had a small depression that let water trickle out to irrigate the bushes.

A week after we saw the caravan, Saraki rode back over to the cave in a hurry. She saw riders coming as soon as she got to the vantage point this morning. I armed myself, and Saraki and I hurried back to the vantage point where we spent the rest of the morning watching them. Since there were only five riders, I wasn’t worried about an attack on the town.

The riders reached the spot where the attack occurred and looked it over. Since the previous caravan had already dug up and then reburied part of the mass grave, they did, too. The bodies of the bandits were still lying on the ground near each other, although I imagine that predators, small animals, and insects had eaten most of the rotting flesh and scattered the bones and any remaining body parts, making the bodies impossible to identify.

After looking around for a quarter of the morning, the five men remounted their horses and headed back the way they came. “They were probably scouts sent to find out why the others didn’t return,” I told Saraki. “They might be advance scouts for more bandits or may have been sent just to find the missing men. Either way, we still need to watch.” I checked, but Mirikar and Torkelar weren’t here loading chalk. I’d have to keep checking for them so I could send a message back about the five men who were here today.

I told everyone else the same thing when I got back to the cave and then Kazani left to take lunch to her sister. There was now a rabbit fur cover hanging in the doorway of the cave so we didn’t have to keep the wooden door closed all day. Someone had stitched together rabbit pelts to make it. I was surprised that they didn’t use one of the four sheepskins, but realized they would probably use those to make cloaks for us to use in cold or rainy weather.

I managed to bring three more loads of rocks down from the rim of the valley before dark and made sure to save enough energy to please each of my wives.

After Vidar left with the goats this morning, I took Lukas to show him the patch of tassimin. I explained that we harvested the biggest plants but left the smaller ones to grow for another year or two. I wanted any plants that reached his chest cut down and taken to the cave to dry. Zuela knew to hang the plants upside down while they dried. In a few days, we could tie them in a bundle or two for our return trip.

I spent the rest of the day exploring. When I was riding around the southern end of the valley earlier looking for a vantage point to watch for bandits, I didn’t really look to see what else was up there. Other than that, I’d explored the areas where I gathered rocks, but those were fairly close to the cave.

Along the north rim of the valley, I found the honey vine Mother Sofala asked about. The flowers of honey vine attract bees, lots of bees. If you leave several empty skeps scattered around a patch of honey vine, bees will inhabit one or two of them during swarming season.

Seeds for honey vine sprout and grow easily anywhere there is fertile soil and adequate water. We already have dozens of patches scattered across our property, as do many other people from Mokoko. The problem is that only wild growing honey vine plants produce seeds, and only one wild patch in ten or so produces seeds. We have no idea why that is. None of the patches we start from seed ever produces seeds. People have tried various methods of rooting parts of the vines, much the way we root cuttings from our olive trees or our berry and grape vines.

Digging the newly rooted plant up to move it always kills the plant. Father even tried rooting vines in clay bowls filled with earth. He laid a vine that was still attached to the plant across the dirt and put a small rock on top of it, so the vine touched the soil in the pot. Even though the vine rooted, once it was cut from the original vine, it died.

That I found a patch with dozens of dried seedpods meant we could start planting honey vine in the new area we just bought. Each seedpod contained enough seeds to start a large patch. Most people just planted the whole seedpod to begin a new patch and let the vines spread naturally as they touched the ground and took root. Others angled the vines in the direction they wanted the patch to grow and set a stone on it, so it touched the soil. Regardless, the patches are usually limited to about twenty feet in diameter.

I found several other herbs that I knew my mothers and sister used, and collected them, making a mental note of where I found them for future gathering trips. The honey vine seeds excited Zuela and Bergoa as those would probably end up on our new property. While I paid for the land, and my name was in the land books, I still considered it clan land. The difference would come when Father died.

My oldest brother, Fezzanar, would become the Clan Patriarch. When that occurred, he would inherit and control the clan’s lands and belongings. He could ask any of the extended clan beyond his siblings and their families to leave. It rarely happened, and only if there were a major point of contention between them. Still, the extended clan members have already been currying favor with Fezzanar for years.

When Fezzanar becomes the Patriarch, I can withdraw my land from the clan lands. I doubt that I will unless Fezzanar did a poor job of running things. Technically, I could keep it separate even now, but that would be a slap in the face to Father and would make me look bad. My father, as were his father and grandfather before him, is known as a fair man, a good businessman, and a good planner. That’s the reason our yields and herds, and hence our clan’s wealth, continue to grow each year.

Mirikar and Torkelar returned today, and I asked them to tell Father that five men on horses looked over the site of the battle with the caravan yesterday before returning towards Port Zamfara.

The next day I went hunting, once again accompanied by Kazani and Saraki. In addition to the pack mules, we each took two extra horses this time in case we had extra meat to carry back like we did last time. We returned to the same valley where we found the mountain sheep last time. Yesterday, I found a copse of trees near the far end of the valley where deer gathered. This time, I had checked the hoof prints and scat to make sure it was deer, and not another hiding place for the mountain sheep.

We were approaching the copse of trees, using a large patch of berry bushes that grew along the spring-fed stream here to shield us from the deer. Hearing sniffs, snorts, and rustling in the berry patch, I carefully backed away from it, motioning for the girls to back away, too. We were about fifty feet away when the bear pushed through the bushes to get at berries on this side.

Since we were watching the bear, and not where we were going as we backed away, we rustled the leaves we walked through, drawing the bear’s attention. “Shit,” I hissed as I drew and released an arrow. The girls immediately mimicked my action.

The arrows enraged the bear, which reared up and roared at us. That damn thing was huge, standing at least eight feet tall on his hind legs. Before it dropped back down onto all fours, I put two more arrows into the bear, as did the girls.

The bear was pissed and charged me. While the girls took cover behind nearby trees and put two more arrows into the bear, I readied myself with my eight-foot spear. Standing in front of a sturdy tree, I rested the butt of my spear about waist high against the trunk of the tree and waited. I caught the charging bear in the throat, jumping to the side as he continued forward to impale itself on the spear. I heard the shaft of the spear snap as I hit the ground and bounced once and felt a sharp pain in the back of my left shoulder.

Rolling to my side, and wincing when my left shoulder touched the ground, I rose to my feet and pulled my sword. Aside from labored breathing, the bear wasn’t moving. I said a brief prayer of thanks for the herb we now used on the tips of our arrows that had, eventually, paralyzed the bear. I was surprised that it took so long to work, though. Given the angle the bear landed at, I stabbed the tip of my sword up into the skull from beneath the jaw, quickly ending the bear’s suffering.

When I turned to find the girls, I saw two smaller bears watching us and called out to Kazani and Saraki, pointing with my sword. The girls quickly turned their bows on the two cubs while I searched for my own bow. By the time I found it and nocked an arrow, the two cubs were down. They looked to be two years old, although each probably weighed in at two hundred or more pounds.

By now, the excitement was wearing off, and my shoulder was killing me. Still, I helped Kazani and Saraki skin and quarter the bear after putting together six travois to carry everything. Then we skinned the two smaller bears, although we had to leave one of the two smaller carcasses behind. It took five travois to carry the quartered adult bear and the three bearskins. Once everything was loaded, we headed back to the cave. Laughing inwardly, I wondered about taking even more horses and mules the next time we went hunting.

When we got back, everyone was stunned, but quickly jumped in to help with the bear meat, filling the smokehouse in the back of the cave. They also started a huge pot of stew and then gave the dogs and wolf cubs plenty to eat. Silje, Lukas’ wife, gathered the bear fat and started rendering it in the two largest cooking pots that we brought up with us this trip. Half of it would be used in our oil lamps, saving valuable olive and grapeseed oil. The other half would be used to make soap.

I had Zuela look at my shoulder and she gasped. It took her a couple of moments and the use of one of the steel knives her father made for her to dig out the monstrous sliver of wood from my shoulder. It was about as big around and as long as the first two knuckles of my pointer finger. Using her steel knife reminded me. With four wives, I needed to get more steel knives made. She made a poultice from the tassimin and brewed up a batch of the tea for me to drink. After pouring some of the cooled tea into the wound, she spread the poultice on it and wrapped my shoulder. Then she made me drink a cup of the nasty stuff.

By the time we finished with the bears, we were exhausted. A layer of bear fat covered everything, including us. It was a good thing we were making soap soon as we used nearly all of our soap to get ourselves clean. We would have to wait to clean the clothing we wore today until after we made more soap.

The women made me drink another cup of the nasty tea and put more of the poultice on my wound before we retired for the night, with the emphasis on tired.

For the next three days, I watched the goats while Lukas and Vidar gathered more rocks and used them to continue extending the circular wall. When I first started on the wall, I tied a piece of the cording I always carry with me to a stake in the mouth of the cave and scribed a circle in the dirt. I placed rocks every few feet to guide me as I built the wall. By now, we had partially finished almost three hundred feet of what we had remeasured and determined would be an eight-hundred-foot wall. We would still have to widen the base to four feet and raise the wall to eight feet, but it was a good beginning.

Since I couldn’t do anything strenuous for a couple of days, I took the staff I used during the attack on the last group of the caravan bandits and whittled the end of it until it fit the spearhead from my shattered spear. That evening, I set the spearhead in place and secured it with sinew and some sheep-hoof glue.

Each day, one of the women watched diligently from our lookout position, just in case the Baron sent more raiders. In the evenings, we whittled one end of six-foot long green branches to a sharp point, as well as shorter pieces about half a foot long.

Today, we took the sharpened spears and blocked both sides of the path leading up to the chalk, which also led to our valley. We angled them facing downhill to force any riders to ride single file, slowing them down and making them much easier targets for us with our bows. We left an opening wide enough for a single horse or loaded mule to pass. We piled the shorter pieces we had sharpened near the base of the slope rising from the river valley up to the ridge surrounding our valley. Horses could only go about five feet up the hill before their riders had to dismount and climb the steep hill on foot. Climbing the hill required them to hang onto trees and pull or push themselves uphill to the next tree they could grab.

While we were working, the caravan that passed through the other day returned, headed home. I spoke with them and learned that no messengers from the Baron had accosted them on the trip here, but I could see that they were concerned about running into his men on the way home. I noted that they bought about half of the camels we had for sale. I’d asked Father to save the ones Kazani and Saraki identified as belonging to their father. They expected their brother to arrive with a camel caravan sometime this year and asked if I’d give them to him. The caravan already heard that the twins were now married, and about their father’s death and the caravan master promised to get word to their brother.

The caravan didn’t stop while I spoke with the caravan master, and it seemed that he was trying to hurry them a little when he rejoined it. I saw that he sent a scout out far in advance of the caravan, even though I told him that we could see half a day’s ride and saw no riders yet today.

Kazani and Saraki were happy knowing that their brother would hear about their father and about their marriage.

This morning, we began dragging dry thorn bushes down the hill. We skewered the bushes onto the first row of spears on each side of the passage up to the valley, lining the passage for three hundred feet with thorn bushes. It also hid the spears, almost making it look like a row of thorn bushes had grown there. We tied dried grass around the shaft of several arrows, right below the arrowhead. Then we smeared pitch on the grass so it would burn longer. If a column of riders approached, we could start the bushes burning around them. That should panic their horses and we could shower them with arrows while they tried to control their mounts. Any riders dumped off their horse would be a slower target--if they avoided landing on one of the spears and no horse trampled them.

I made and set dozens of deadly snares along the steep hillside where the men would have to climb if they tried to make their way up the hill to the valley. There were a limited number of ways up the hill and I set multiple traps and snares along each of them. I made sure to mark a safe path uphill with cording in case I had to retreat. It was a zigzag path and anyone who didn’t zig or zag when they should risked impalement with sharp wood spikes attached to stout saplings. While I bent and tied back the saplings today, I didn’t set the triggers to release them lest a wild animal trigger them.

Late that afternoon, Zuela came rushing back from the vantage point. She saw a large group of men that she estimated at a hundred or so riding this way. The men were on horses, so they weren’t another caravan. Several moments later, after an emotional kiss from her three co-wives and me, she was on her way home to warn them. I hurried back down the hill and started setting triggers for the snares, covering them with a layer of leaves or pine needles.

Kazani and Saraki watched the men approach and finally stop for the night near where the attack on the caravan had happened. We watched them set up camp and set three sentries before they ate dinner. The portly Baron was easy to spot, dressed in gaudy purple clothing and wearing enough jewelry and gold chains to pay for the land I just bought. He looked as if he were on his way to a social function, not headed into battle.

It didn’t look like his men were soldiers because they didn’t have uniforms. The night before they would be going into battle, they were laughing and drinking heavily. Even though they didn’t look like soldiers, we still heard their loud, drunken boasts about what they intended to do tomorrow with any women they captured in town.

They had large tents that each held ten men. There were ten tents, so I assumed a hundred men, plus the Baron who had his own tent. When he went inside for the night, he had so many lamps in the tent that I could see his shadow and could see where he lay down to sleep.

Not long after the men went to sleep, two of the three sentries had fallen asleep, too. It felt like an eternity before I managed to creep close enough to the lone sentry who was awake to kill him silently. After dispatching him, the two sleeping sentries were easy. The bandits had tethered half of their horses east of their camp and half west. Their horses were tethered to a long rope on each side of camp, although the rope was wrapped around several trees along its length. Cutting the rope on the west side of camp where it looped around the trees, I retied it, taking up some of the slack.

Once I tied the last loop back together, I untied the south end of the rope and tied a big knot so the horse’s lead ropes wouldn’t slip off. When I reached the north end of the rope, I cut it loose and started walking slowly west, away from camp, between the boulders, and towards home.

I couldn’t believe that nobody heard us, although the horses followed me fairly quietly--for horses. They still nickered and a few stomped their hooves. When we were half a mile away, I found the two bitches and their collection of wolf pups and signaled for them to herd the horses as I slipped the long rope loose from the horses’ tether ropes and loosely looped the tethers around the necks of the horses.

“Home,” was the only verbal command I gave them, pointing towards home. Once the horses smelled the wolves, they took off, with the bitches and the wolf pups in close pursuit. I couldn’t believe that they did it since I hadn’t really worked with them on commands or hand signals. I’d figured that I’d have to send one of the male dogs, too.

I doubted that they would get the horses all the way home, but the loss of half their horses would slow the raiders down severely. When I returned to the raiders’ camp, Kazani, Saraki, Bergoa, Lukas, and Vidar accompanied me. Lukas and Vidar’s wives stayed just above the spears and thorn bushes with a small fire so they could set the bushes ablaze if necessary.

When I made it into the raiders’ camp, I couldn’t believe that they were still asleep. I quietly jammed several of the short spikes into the dirt outside the door of each tent. Then I used a twig to dab a tiny bit of the poison onto the sharp tip of each one. I started at the far side of their camp, working my way to the north edge. Once there, I made sure everyone was ready. I intended to shoot three or four arrows into the Baron’s tent. The others would shoot one volley into each tent until we had to run. I’d follow them to cover their escape, trying to pick off the closest men as they exited their tents--if they avoided the spikes.

I heard two grunts from the first two arrows that I put into the Baron’s tent. I thought it fitting that the Baron was among the first to die tonight. With him dead, I joined the others as we shot six arrows into eight of the ten tents before we had to retreat. Men were screaming, shouting, and cursing as they rushed, half-dressed, from their tents. The others behind me fell back to the tree line behind us and I picked off the four closest men who managed to avoid the spikes. Several men were hopping on one foot after stepping on one of the sticks, and others went sprawling. I saw at least a dozen men step on the spikes barefoot as they rushed from the tents. I shot the two biggest men left standing before taking off and found the rest of our group waiting for me near where I had released the horses.