◆◆◆

On The Water

It wasn’t just the chariot that distinguished a clan, but command of the river as well. Dag didn’t want them to become Egypt, mired in superstition and dependent on slave labor, but he couldn’t ignore lessons from such a large and long-lasting empire. Chariots for the land, and boats for the water, and ever-expanding grain fields, these seemed to be legacies of the old empire that he could hold on to.

So, even more canoes were constructed until they had a fleet of six. Two fished the river to add to their food stores, two made constant shipping possible between outposts, and the last two, he rigged for exploration.

Having the people needed to run everything while sparing some to explore further upriver was the biggest issue. Dag had been taking in a small but steady stream of new immigrants. He always started them in the tar pits. Those few who lasted three months of rotations, he allowed to become members of the clan. Not many actually made it the full time.

He really couldn’t blame them. After a lifetime spent as hunters and fishermen, to spend all day hauling muck up out of the tar pits to feed the nearly insatiable need for the stuff back in the village, and at each of its outposts, the work must have seemed like hell. Still, a few could keep their eyes on the prize and stick it out, and it was the addition of these men that finally freed up enough people for Dag to fill two boats of explorers.

He was even more short on leadership types. So, eventually, he just decided to lead the exploration team himself. He left the now four-year-old John ‘in charge’, with Lavern to handle the day-to-day things, and his original crew of archers to back up her decisions. The boys were finally coming into their own, and while not leaders in their own right, they had enough standing in the clan to make her decisions stick.

With him, he took two archers and six shield men. It wasn’t a large force, but really all that the canoes could carry and still have room for the mountain of supplies and trade goods that Dag brought along. He hoped that with a little more distance inland, he would run across clans that he hadn’t yet met. Maybe gain access to new resources, and maybe new people. He had all but mined out the quality people from the local clans that were willing to join forces with him, and if he were to push his burgeoning civilization to the next level, he needed more quality people to push them in that direction.

◆◆◆

Up River

The way upriver was slow. While the current wasn’t fast in the non-flood stage, it was constant. Which meant paddling up river for the largest part of the day, and then camping on the banks with a fire to spook the local wildlife. Even crocs thought twice about approaching a fire, which was one of their few saving graces.

Even so, Dag was able to find plenty of useful places to gather resources from. Unfortunately, none of them significant enough to justify building another outpost. At least not yet. He marked them on the map he was creating, in an effort to help plan further expansion of his little empire. If nothing else, developing some of them would make for good places to stop along the river trade route when he did find something of value further up river.

That was his thinking anyway, but after two weeks of paddling, his supplies were getting low, and he still hadn’t found anything to make the trip worth the time away from home. Each day that he led this group up river was a day lost in adding to their store of knowledge that only resided in his head. If they were finding rich new food sources, or even copper ore easy to mine, it might have been worth it, but as things sat, Dag was considering turning back. It was only the knowledge that the current would be with them on the return trip, speeding them along and leaving more energy to hunt and fish, that made him willing to push on for another few days.

The day following his decision; he ran across the first truly useful thing on this trip. At a point where the river broke into two rivers flowing further north and east, Dag saw what could only be described as a primitive settlement. Relatively large stones had been moved into a basic ring, and people lived behind the low, primitive wall. The stones weren’t stacked, and they only really were a bit over knee high on him, but Dag could see where fires had been built on the top of each one, presumably to keep animals away.

The whole clan set up a clamour as he ordered his men to pull the boats up on the bank. Men with spears and clubs ran down toward them. Dag called out to his archers not to kill them unless a fight broke out. His shield men, on the other hand closed ranks to protect him. This led to a shouting match, in which neither side could understand the other, and no one wanted to cross the twenty yards between them.

Dag let this go on for a few minutes, and when the other side hadn’t managed to work themselves up for the attack, he slid to the forefront and dumped polished stone axe heads, and bone fish hooks out onto a small pelt he had laid out on the ground. After a long pause in the shouting, that was probably only a few minutes but seemed like an eternity, an older man with a bone through his nose and feathers in his hair approached Dag. He was unarmed as well, and as he crouched to examine the items, he let out a few hoots to those who stood behind him and they relaxed significantly.

Confluance

Large Clan

Leaving a shield man and an archer at the boats, Dag followed the now more friendly clan members as they headed back to their camp. It was a larger than normal clan, having a dozen men and more than three times that of women and children. While still small in comparison to their own growing clan, it would be a challenge to overpower with their current smaller numbers if things went south.

Things seemed to be going reasonably well though, as Dag and company were led to a central gathering around a large fire. There on the other side of the fire was a wizened old man, flanked by a man of middle years, as such things were reckoned in the here and now, and a little slip of a girl, maybe fifteen years old. A young woman by the local standards, Dag thought maybe she was the larger man’s wife. What put him back on his heels a bit though, was that each of the three had a shiny metal disk of about two inches in diameter tied to their foreheads.

It was the first metal Dag had seen of any sort, other than what he had brought, since he arrived here. While unable to know for certain, given its polish and that only jewelry was crafted from it, Dag assumed it to be gold. Anything else would certainly have tarnished or been used for something more practical. The large man spoke, dragging his attention back to the current situation.

One of the shield men nearby looked at Dag in confusion, “I can tell he is speaking, but I don’t understand what he is saying? It isn’t clan speak or your English...” he trailed off confused.

Dag nodded, “No, this is the clan speak of the locals. We’ll need to learn it if we want to trade with them.”

The old man spoke to the larger one who had been doing all of the talking, and the younger man grunted as if in agreement. The man stepped forward and did some sleight-of-hand trick with a stick, making it appear to bend, then disappear. Dag wasn’t horribly impressed by the little magic trick, but he could see his men with him were. He nodded and gave a small inward sigh. He went back to the little pouch of trade goods that they had brought and pulled out a small sealed jar of naphtha. This was a distillate made from the tar and was highly flammable. He only had a small jar of the stuff that he used to remove tar from his hands, but he palmed the jar, then did a little overly theatrical imitation of a stage magician, and threw the jar into the fire.

The resulting fireball had everyone scrambling to get away from the fire’s edge. His own men, having never seen this particular trick were impressed, but the local tribe was terrified. Dag just hoped they wouldn’t have to patch any holes in their canoes on the way home, or he’d never be able to get the tar off of his hands. As the fireball calmed down and the fire returned to its normal size, he could tell that he had everyone’s attention. The shaman battle was over, and Dag was the clear winner.

Night was settling in, and while the old chief made the offer for them to stay, Dag preferred to make their camp down by the river, to better keep an eye on their boats. He did watch with interest as large bundles of marsh reeds were placed on the top of each of the large stones as the sun was setting. Of course, the locals paid them just as much attention as the teepee was set up to shelter them through the night. Both sides were wary of the strangers camped so nearby.

As the third watch was coming on duty, Dag was brought to an abrupt state of alertness by the roar of a wild animal, and a bright light shining through the gaps in the hide tent lining. Grabbing up his bow, he slipped out of the tent flap behind the second watch guards who hadn’t quite gotten out of their gear just yet.

He quickly found the source of the commotion. A short-faced bear had decided to slip into the other camp for a snack, but those on guard there had dumped burning brands from the fire into the reeds stacked up on the rock. Unlike most predators who would shamble off in search of easier prey, the bear became enraged.

It wanted those inside the ring of fire, but as more and more spearmen answered the call, the fight looked like it was going to be ugly. Then the bear noticed Dag and his men not far away, and with no fire around them, they seemed the better target for it to vent its rage. The bear came up on its hind legs and bellowed its challenge. Dag’s archers were boys and using only the small bows, still they aimed for the eyes and sensitive snout, and soon the beast had four arrows sticking out of its face. Dag had put one in its chest from his much heavier bow, and the second one he aimed for the neck. It must have hit the bear just right to damage or sever the spine, because the great beast fell forward onto its face and drove a couple of the smaller arrows even deeper into sensitive tissue.

As the bear lay there wheezing out its last breaths, Dag approached behind a wall of shield men. In an effort to end it, he handed off his bow, and drew his belt axe. It was harder to cut through than he thought it would be, but he managed to hack through the bear’s neck, casually tossing the severed head down close to one of the stones. The fire on top made sure everyone had a view of the bloody mess below.

Dag stood up and stretched his back. “Well, with those fires we have the light. We really should get this meat processed before it draws more unwanted attention.”

The guts were carried down to the edge of the water, far away from both camps. The locals sent spear men out, but they hung back just warily watching. When Dag’s dive knife came out and the small team managed to skin it of its hide, and quarter it for easy transport before the sun was quite up over the horizon, they had a full audience of everyone in the new tribe. From the old chief down to slack jawed children.

◆◆◆

Sun Cult

Dag was soon invited in for breakfast. Especially as he offered up the bear meat for a communal feast. The morning fare was much simpler, just boiled wild rice from the local marshes with a few chunks of last night’s fish mixed in. Everyone was already talking about how well they would eat once the bear was cooked.

Dag soon found that he was a bit of a local celebrity. The killing of the bear, and more importantly the way it was killed from a distance, as well as his generosity in providing the meat to their whole clan afterward, had his praises being sung throughout the camp. Only the old chief and his younger shaman seemed to be less than happy with the turn of events. They were in a place too spooked to attempt any open confrontation. Not with a man who could shout a bear to death, which is how they had been explaining what had happened. Certainly not with one who was that popular with the people.

Eventually, the girl came to talk to Dag. They still didn’t share a language, but she was remarkably adept at signing and guessing the general intent of their questions. Dag was surprise that she was relatively clean by the local standards. Not in the bath every day way that his clan had all adopted. One a public bath was constructed, but maybe more like she didn’t do the work that the other women did to get dirty.

Dag pointed to the pendant on her forehead, and the girl pointed to the sky. Confused, Dag pointed to it again, and the girl pointed to the sky. When he still didn’t get it, she took off the little gold disk, and held it up to the sky and then made it travel in an arc, and Dag finally caught on. She was showing the rising and setting of the sun. The gold disk was a representation of the sun, which made these folks one of the earliest sun cults.

Dag took a closer inspection of the placement of the stones after this discovery and recognized a henge. Not tall standing stones like Stone Henge in England, but low flat stones, still positioned according to the seasonal movement of the sun in the sky. He quickly realized that these people were more sophisticated than he had given them credit for.

Dag wanted to trade for the gold. He wasn’t sure exactly how useful it would be as soft as it was, but to have metal again, even soft metal like gold, seemed like a dream come true. He knew he would need to trade with the old chief for this rare of a commodity, so while everyone was feasting on the roast bear that evening, he tried to communicate his desire to the old chief. It wasn’t going well until the girl spoke excitedly with the old man.

Dag was excited, thinking finally someone with a clue is in on this negotiation. He pointed to the disk on the girl’s head, and mimed taking it with him. Then he dumped out of the trade pack, salt, and ivory knives and combs, and even a good felt blanket. The chief seemed to want to hold out, but the pile of goods eventually had greed overcoming his reluctance and he signed that the deal was made.

It wasn’t until Dag held out his hand for the golden disk, and instead the girl took his hand, that Dag began to suspect that they had been bargaining for two totally different things. His suspicions were confirmed as the girl followed him around most of the day, and even to their camp that night.

At first he panicked and was more than a little freaked out by the situation. When he calmed down and thought about it, he realized that this wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. He needed someone to teach him the language anyway, and while he wasn’t looking for another wife, maybe after the language issue was cleared up, he could find her a suitable husband or something.

The only real issue would come in a little over a week when he had to explain the situation to Lavern. If it had been a modern American woman, he would have dreaded the conversation, but Lavern wasn’t like that. Once he explained the situation, she would be understanding.... wouldn’t she? Suddenly, he felt a lot less confident than he had a few moments ago.

Dag’s men found no end of humor in his situation. Dag was actually happy that the girl couldn’t understand them. The men meant well, but the humor was crude, and he didn’t want the girl any more scared than she was already going to be about leaving her home and her family.

What he hadn’t counted on was her terror of the boats. She had seen them arrive by boat, so should understand it was safe, but Dag understood the difference between knowing something on an intellectual level, and trusting your life to it. He tried to be patient and work her through her fears, but eventually just picked her up and tossed her in the middle of his boat. As they pushed out into the middle of the river, he could see her knuckles turning white as she gripped the edges of the canoe.

Dag just sighed. He hadn’t wanted to do it that way, but she had really left him with no other option. Besides, it was only a little more than a week to float downriver with the current on their side for a change. It would have him home soon. Of course, that also meant he would have less time to come up with a good way to explain how it happened to Lavern.

Back Home

Nissa

Getting the girl into the boat on the second day was marginally less difficult, but when Dag lost patience and simply tossed her in, the fight just went out of her. Each evening, when they stopped and she could scramble for the bank, she turned into a completely different person. As accommodating and easygoing as you please. It was just that each morning, getting her aboard the canoe that became a wrestling match.