Chapter 6

I was excited when we left this morning, even after discovering that my right arm wasn’t as strong or as flexible as it had been before. Father told me that I’d have to exercise it and gently force it through the complete range of motion to get the strength and flexibility back. In addition, it still hurt to draw the bow, but I could use a bow if it were necessary. We took enough food for two weeks, longer if I supplemented it with game. We’d also receive regular deliveries of bread, cheese, and fresh produce each time Mirikar and Torkelar returned to the chalk deposit.

My wives, Mother Sofala, my brother Mozumbar, and his wife were going with me. If the poppies were ready for us to harvest the sap, the others would stay until the sap was gathered. If they weren’t ready, Mother Sofala, my brother, and his wife would return home. My wives would stay with me, and I’d begin a more thorough search of the two valleys adjacent to the main valley, and then continue searching farther around this mountain.

I admit that I was a bit nervous about going deeper into the mountains after what father said about evil spirits. Still, nothing unusual had happened to me so far, or to anyone else who came to the valley. Then again, we were barely into the mountains. I didn’t know if people blamed evil spirits for what bears and mountain lions did, or if there really were evil spirits farther into the mountains. If there were, I was sure that the dogs and mules would sense them before I did and could warn me. At least I hoped they would.

When younger, my brother explored the first three rows of hills when he tended the goats. His wife and mother Sofala hadn’t been in the hills beyond the ones we owned. Neither had they been as far south as the Zingha River. Both women’s heads swiveled back and forth constantly trying to see everything at once.

We rode at a leisurely pace, in no great hurry to get to the valley. For some reason, I felt like I was returning home, even though I had just left my home this morning. It was like I had two homes and I enjoyed both. When I was at one, I missed the other. Missimo seemed to be excited, too, and was running enthusiastically into the woods around us the way he used to before he was wounded. Apparently, he was fully healed.

Mother Sofala wanted to see where we battled the bandits. We showed her where we first fought with them. Fortunately, the last of KáPakí’s rains had washed any blood from the rocks. Then we showed her where the bandits camped the night that we attacked and the slope we fought them on. I still needed to release any snares that the bandits hadn’t tripped if there were any. I noticed a large mound of recently turned soil that was covered with rocks. I assumed that Father had the men bury the bandits so as not to attract scavengers.

Next, we rode up the path to the chalk quarry and the valley beyond. The sharpened stakes still lined both sides of the road and the dry thorn bushes were still where we skewered them onto the stakes. “This was your idea?” Mother Sofala asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Perhaps you have inherited your father’s tactical sense,” she commented appraisingly. “His ideas when he served in the military helped his troops defeat an enemy with vastly superior numbers,” she said proudly. “In two separate battles, his tactics saved King Kugiar’s life. Your tactics were even more successful. First, you and Zuela successfully defeated twelve bandits and saved Kazani and Saraki. Then, six of you, including three women, defended the valley from a hundred men while receiving only one wound, two if you count Missimo,” she said, sounding just as proud of Missimo.

“We just took advantage of what the mountain and valley offered,” I replied.

She was impressed with the chalk quarry. I noticed that Mirikar and Torkelar also had a wooden door for their cave now. She was even more impressed with the valley. “Yes, the sheep could graze here year-round,” she mused aloud. “We will need to build something more substantial than a cave for the shepherds, though.”

Despite that sentiment, she was impressed with the cave, too. By now, Lukas and Vidar had completed the wooden partitions for the bedrooms and had built a wooden table to sit at to eat meals. She was even more impressed with the full smokehouse. Lukas and Vidar had finished the fireplace and hearth inside the cave and had chiseled the chimney flue in the side of the cave. As I suggested, they had covered the open side with the thin firebricks I made, as well as some they must have made.

Their wives used the bread oven every other day.

They were now building another, larger hearth and fireplace outside the cave, several feet to the side of the original cave opening. As big as it was, it could easily cook half a deer or sheep on a spit. There were four notches on each side of the hearth where the pole used to spit the carcass could be raised or lowered. I made a point of thanking them for their excellent work.

After we ate the lunch we brought with us, we rode around the valley, and I showed her the tassimin patch. “I’ve never imagined so much tassimin in one place,” she gasped, “and you already brought back more than enough for the entire town for a year. A lot of people will be thankful to you now that there is a plentiful supply,” she praised.

It was early afternoon when we reached the patch of poppies. Mother Sofala just gawked at it with her mouth agape for several heartbeats. “It’s huge,” she gasped.

We spent the rest of the afternoon using the cording we brought with us. We drove stakes into the ground every two feet at opposite sides of the poppy patch. We tied the cording to a stake at one end and ran it to a stake at the opposite end, dividing the patch into two-foot-wide rows. I managed to cut and sharpen enough branches and saplings to divide much of the one hundred-ten-foot-wide patch of poppies. Unfortunately, we only had enough cording to mark off thirty-seven rows. We’d have to reuse the cording after we finished each row.

When we finished, we set up our four pavilion-style tents and ate dinner. I made a quick trip back to the main valley and asked Vidar to get a message to Mirikar and Torkelar the next time they came up to the valley, asking them to bring all the extra cording they could. Missimo went with me while Senyo and two wolf pups stayed at our camp by the poppies. I knew that Mirikar and Torkelar brought food, lumber, and other supplies to the cave each time they came up to get another load of chalk. Mother Sofala wanted Father to know that we would begin harvesting the sap in the morning, and that it would take just over two weeks to complete. Two more wolf pups followed us back over to the east valley.

We rose early in the morning, ate bread and cheese, and started to work. My job was to stand guard while everyone else worked. Each of them pulled on a single glove and walked down one of the marked rows. Using the blades on the glove’s thumb, they made four cuts on one side of each seedpod with a single motion.

Each time they finished a row, they would get a long drink of water and then start the next available row. When they ran out of rows, they moved the cording and marked new rows. With as many seedpods as I could see from the edge of the patch, I was surprised at how quickly they finished each row. By dusk, they had finished half the patch. Now I wondered why Mother Sofala felt we needed more than two weeks.

I asked while we ate dinner and she explained that tomorrow they would gather the “poppy tears” that wept from the cuts made today. The next day they would make the cuts on the second half of the patch and collect the poppy tears the day after. When they finished the entire patch, they would start again, making the same cuts on the opposite side of each seedpod and repeating the process. Eventually, they would make cuts on all four sides of each seedpod and collect the poppy tears. Then we would return home to give the seedpods time to mature so we could collect the seeds.

It worked out just like Mother Sofala claimed it would. Every three days, Lukas or Vidar brought us more cheese, bread, meat, vegetables, and other food that my cousins Mirikar and Torkelar brought from home.

We finally finished harvesting the poppy tears. Mother Sofala had brought two ceramic urns with ceramic stoppers for us to keep the sticky clumps of dried poppy sap in. When she saw how many poppies there were, she had me ask to have four more sent to us. We filled three and a half of the urns. On the way home, a mule would carry two of the urns, one on each side, so they wouldn’t bump against each other and break. Mother Sofala also had a much smaller ceramic urn, one that was barely as big around as my fist. She said that the little urn held more than enough of the poppy tears to treat the people of Mokoko who needed it until the next poppy harvest.

The day that we finished, Lukas brought word from Father via Mirikar that the Baron’s belongings promised me by the Bajasanian King had arrived that morning. I’d completely forgotten about that.

On the ride back to the main valley, I rode by the patch of honey vine and cut off a branch with flowers. “You should put skeps over here,” Mother Sofala suggested.

“I remembered that yesterday. I got this branch to give to Lukas and Vidar, so they know what it looks like. I want their wives to cut some of the long grass and let it dry, and then weave skeps if they know how. I also want Lukas and Vidar to build a frame to keep the skeps up off the ground,” I replied.

The wives knew how to braid dried grass to make skeps and promised to have them done as soon as they could. I pointed in the direction of the honey vine patch and showed them the branch I brought back. “Aaaaahhhhh, bee bushes,” Torkelar’s wife said when she saw the flowers.

The ride home was uneventful except for the four groups of workers we passed. Ten men were at the bottom of the trail from the valley down to the floor of the river valley. They already had a three-foot-high and ten-foot-wide wall clear across the river valley pass, one that would eventually reach twenty feet high. The pass was about a hundred feet wide at that point. I noticed that the wall continued uphill far enough that men would have to struggle up the hill afoot to get around it. The wall also made use of the large boulders that had rolled into the area during the landslide that exposed the chalk.

The men mentioned work beginning on the sawmill, so we followed the path along the river instead of the usual path I took to get home.

The second work group was twenty or so men working on the road. They were widening it, removing trees and rocks, and filling in places where runoff cut across the road. Somebody had a good idea. They used six thick, hollow clay tubes in the bottom of the washed-out area for the water to flow through in the future. They buried the tubes deep enough that a loaded wagon wouldn’t crush them when it rolled across them. I recognized, and spoke with, three of the men working with them from among the men who came up here with Father to rescue me. I was impressed that they had already progressed on the road beyond the point where the two paths diverged when headed for the coast.

The third group was working at the point I suggested as the place to start the flume for the mills. Some men were digging the trench from the cliff towards the river, and others were loading two wagons with dirt from the trench.

The final group was busy at the site selected for the sawmill. Part of the group was building the rock walls for the sawmill and had them waist high. The rest of the group was digging sawpits. It looked like one sawpit was almost finished with the rock and mortar sides already completed. Three more pits were in varying stages of completion, and I saw markers outlining locations for four more pits. I guess that Father and Fezzanar decided to go ahead and build the extra sawpits, utilizing some of the extra men we just purchased.

There were even more changes when we arrived home. Pitched about two hundred feet from our house were ten pavilion style tents. They were near the intersection of the road from town and the road from the mountains. Two soldiers were watching the road as we approached. “What is your business here?” one of the guards asked us when we reached him.

“I am a wife of the Clan Patriarch who owns this land. Two of my sons and their wives ride with me,” Mother Sofala replied.

Both men stood at attention and held their right fist against their chest in salute. “I apologize, we haven’t met you yet,” one of them replied.

“Quite understandable, we’ve been gone for more than two weeks harvesting the crop you are here to guard,” she replied. They stepped aside to let us pass and we continued on to the house.

Our horses and mules made enough noise that Father came out to meet us. Mother Sofala flew into his arms, and they hugged. Being married now, I could understand how they felt after not seeing each other for more than two weeks.

“There were definitely more than a thousand plants,” Mother Sofala laughed.

“We filled three and a half urns in addition to my personal one. We could probably plant several hills with all the seeds we will end up with,” she told him.

Father told us, “The soldiers brought an answer to our question about growing extra to sell to ships that arrive here. The King agreed that we could grow as much as we wanted. Once he receives what he feels will supply our country, we are free to sell the extra to visiting captains if they agree not to sell it anywhere in his lands.”

“I had a thought that I wanted to discuss privately with you,” I said when he finished. Mother Nykeea had reached us by now and hugged Mother Sofala, too. Father gave both women a hug and then motioned for me to follow him.

“I will be gone a lot while I explore the mountains and won’t be here when the ships and caravans arrive. Iltapar is probably the best among us with numbers. I think we should have him make the purchases from the ship captains and the sales to the caravans. That way, we won’t miss a chance to make more profit just because I’m not here. That way, you and Fezzanar won’t have to deal with the caravans like you did for the one while I was gone,” I explained.

“Right now, your new business is separate from the clan businesses. If your brother runs the business for you, it becomes a clan business and most of the profits go to the clan,” Father warned.

“I already consider it a clan business,” I replied. “I use the clan’s wagons, the clan’s warehouse, and you keep the gold in the clan’s vault. Set aside one in twenty gold coins from the profit as my share. When we build my home, we’ll build a vault there to keep my share separate,” I replied.

“In addition,” I added, “this will give Iltapar a way to show that he is able to support a family. I know that he’s getting anxious, worrying that someone else will ask to marry Uzokar’s daughter, Howea.”

“The brick maker, huh?” Father chuckled. “I will warn your mothers that Iltapar is interested in her, but they probably already know. If they feel she is a good choice, I’m sure word of his interest will reach her. The new wealth you’ve brought to the clan should keep her and her parents interested in him,” he said with a conspiratorial grin.

“Oh, let Iltapar know that I sell the copper, iron, and coal to Zuela’s father Tlemcar for the same price that I buy it for. We could probably increase the price slightly for anyone else in town wanting to buy coal, but not much. The profit we make from the caravans is more than enough,” I said. He nodded his understanding.

“And we should build a small shack in the other two valleys so that we can claim them, too,” I added as an afterthought.

“I’ll have Mirikar and Torkelar take more building materials for shepherd’s huts. When you go back, have the wall builders build those right away,” Father agreed.

“Your personal wealth grew considerably with the arrival of the Baron’s property,” Father chuckled. “In addition to more than ten thousand gold coins and several expensive pieces of jewelry, he had eight wagons, twenty-two fine horses, thirty-five strong mules, and lots of other livestock that we put in with our own livestock.

“He also had seven beautiful female household slaves that graced his bedroom and four male slaves that his wife had made into eunuchs so they could pleasure her without getting her pregnant. The Bajasanian King sent another six thousand gold coins that he estimated the Baron’s land and buildings were worth. All of his fine clothing, furnishings, and other belongings are in two rooms of the big storehouse.

“Oh, and his wife and two daughters are also here as your slaves as part of his property,” he chuckled. “They’ll be back for dinner. They’re helping to load rocks into a wagon,” he added with a gleam in his eyes that I didn’t understand.

We went back outside where the four filled or partially filled urns had been unloaded and other people had taken the horses and mules away to unload and care for them. A sergeant and five soldiers were there, too. The sergeant saluted Father by touching his fist to his chest and Father returned the salute. “Sergeant Kajagu, this is my son Harazar,” Father introduced us. “I assume that you already met my first wife Sofala, my son Mozumbar, and the wives of these two sons.”

“I have, Sir,” he replied.

“You are the ingenious warrior son whose exploits I’ve heard about?” he asked me.

“More lucky than ingenious, I’m afraid,” I replied.

The sergeant laughed and pointed at Father who actually blushed. “He’s definitely your son,” he said to Father between bouts of laughter. “Your father used nearly those exact words to King Kugiar once many years ago,” he explained to us, still laughing.

“You,” Sergeant Kajagu said, pointing to one of his men. “Let Lieutenant Anzekko and the harbormaster know that we await the first ship going to the capital. We’ll have four men and a small amount of hand carried cargo to transport.”

The man saluted and hurried away to find a horse. Sergeant Kajagu saluted Father again and he and his men left.

The rest of us went inside for lunch but Father kept Mother Sofala and Mother Nykeea behind and spoke with them quietly for a moment. Both mothers were smiling when they came inside to join us for a lunch served by seven new, beautiful, slave women.

“Harazar, these seven women maintained the household for the Baron. They have had no work experience outside of the house,” Father explained, as if he was expecting me to make a decision.

“For now, their work assignment would be up to Mother Sofala and Mother Nykeea. If they want extra help in the house, that’s fine. If not, maybe they can learn to help with chores like milking, caring for the chickens, or even planting and tending one of the clan gardens that provide food for everyone.

“Once my new home is built, the decision will be up to my wives,” I replied. I could tell that Father liked my answer; he was nodding his agreement shortly after I started answering.

“I would also like to emphasize to the new women that their household duties do not and will not include sex with anyone.” Looking at the seven, I told them, “Each of you may decide for yourselves whether to accept a proposal of marriage from any man who asks you. The final decision, however, lies with Father. As the Clan Patriarch, he will decide if both you and the man interested in you are productive enough to be allowed to marry.”

I noted hopeful looks on their faces. They’d been here since yesterday, long enough to talk with the first group of slaves and know that none of them had been touched since I bought them, unless they wanted someone to touch them.

My wives wanted to see the Baron’s furniture and clothing. They oohed and aahed over the fancy clothing of the Baroness and her two daughters. I had a feeling that I might see my wives in some of those clothes in the future. They howled in laughter at the Baron’s gaudy clothing. Each of them decided that a couple pieces of his clothing could be modified for their own use. They teased me, trying to get me to try something of his on. I refused to look like a fluffy buffoon. Besides, two of me would fit into his outfits.

By dinnertime, we had a large pile of clothing we didn’t want. We’d let other clan members choose what they wanted. Once everyone had a chance to look at it, the remainder could be sold in town or reworked to make more appropriate clothing. We likewise left many pieces of furniture in the storage building, but outside of the storage room, for others to choose from if they wished. If nobody wanted it, we could sell it, too. I doubted that anyone would want the four paintings of the Baron, but someone could paint over them and use them to make a painting of their own.

Three additional beautiful women joined the servers for dinner, although they looked exhausted. “Harazar, these are the other three female slaves you received. This,” he said, pointing to the older woman who looked to be younger than either of my mothers, “is Khoreffa, the Baron’s widow.”

“I demand that you stop tormenting us by making us haul heavy rocks all day,” she barked at me angrily.

“We are used...” she started another rant, stopping quickly when I jumped up from my chair and stormed towards her.

“How dare you address me or any member of my family like that?” I rebuked her angrily. “One more outburst and you will find yourself stripped naked and tied to the tree outside to be whipped,” I threatened.

“May I speak, Sir?” one of her daughters asked timidly.

She continued when I nodded. “She’s worried about my sister Mereesia. She passed out this afternoon,” she explained nervously.

“Thank you,” I told her politely. “Had she approached me like that, I might have been more inclined to listen to her,” I said as I turned back to the mother.

“You,” I said angrily, poking her in the ribs below her throat, “remember your new position here. And I can’t believe that you mutilated four men just so that you could have sex with them and not worry about getting pregnant.”