“Arg! I’m not getting rid of you, damn it!” Dag roared in frustration.
Lavern shrank down just a little, and he suddenly felt like a heal for shouting. “I know that now...” she said in a small voice.
Still not ready to completely let go of his anger, Dag replied, “Well, at least that is something!”
Lavern was quiet for a long time, and Dag let out a long sigh, “I’m sorry that I lost my temper and yelled at you. You still haven’t told me what you expect me to do?”
Lavern nodded, “The only thing you can do. Be her husband. I was just afraid that you were casting me aside because I wasn’t as pretty, or maybe was getting too old...”
Before she could continue, Dag crossed the room in three strides and took her in his arms, “I was never planning to put you aside. I think you are beautiful. You are the mother of my children. I could no more cast you out than I could cut off my own arm. I was going to send the girl away because I hadn’t sought her out as a bride in the first place. I already have you, after all.”
Lavern was crying and shaking in his arms, “You can’t. It would dishonor her and our clan. It could even cause a fight. You wouldn’t be the first man to have more than one mate. I don’t want to see her hurt, as long as she isn’t replacing me.”
Dag was stunned. Even with Ajax’s situation, he hadn’t really considered it for himself. Yet, if Lavern wasn’t mad about it, or would get over being mad about it anyway, he didn’t see any reason why he should object. He tilted her head up so he could look down into her eyes, “Are you sure you don’t want this just so the two of you can have me outnumbered?” he teased. “Is this your plan to get help trying to hen peck me?”
Lavern fought back a laugh. It felt good to have him joking rather than yelling. She slapped his chest playfully and tried to draw out of his arms. “Oh, like this was my plan?”
Dag just swept her up in his arms, over powering the rather unenthusiastic struggles, and tossed her into their bed. “Quiet wife! I have been away too long to fight with you.” He growled playfully at her, while muffling her replies with kisses. It had been a long time, and Nissa curled up so close with him on the whole way back, had been a temptation that he had thought he was doing right to resist. Still, it had taken its toll, and he needed time with Lavern. Before their world turned on its side, he wanted to reassure her that all of her fears of being abandoned were baseless.
◆◆◆
Culture Shock
Nissa had thought her people advanced, but when she came to live with her new husband’s people, she had the shock of her young life. Not only did they travel on the water without sinking, and sleep under the stick and skin shelters, but the very earth grew up to provide them with caves in any shape they wanted. Plants grew all of one kind, in nice neat rows for them, and even the animals did their bidding. It was magic beyond imagining.
More than that, she watched her new husband go below the sea in a funny suit, and stayed below longer than any man could hold his breath. When he came back, he had a the biggest fish she had ever seen. One that they called a shark, and it lived out in the waters without end.
Water for them obeyed just like the earth and the plants and animals did. It went where they told it, even spraying up in the air as a fountain, and gathering in carved rock pools. Everyone from old to young, and from chief to the lowliest gatherer, all went to those pools, either to escape the heat of the day, or almost always as the sun set.
The vast wealth of these people was beyond her ability to comprehend. If only her father had known before agreeing to her bride price... While all of the exotic things that her new husband had paid for her, had seemed an exorbitant price at the time, seeing the wealth of these people made her feel as if she had been traded off cheap.
When she had first met her husband’s first wife, she had been a little shocked. She chided herself that shouldn’t have been. He was a great chief, after all; she had expected to be treated badly by the woman, as often happened in such cases in her own tribe. To be fair, the woman did seem very upset at first, but over the days they had spent together caring for children and tending to menial tasks, that in her clan was always handled by the lower class of nobility like her, she had learned that the woman didn’t seem to harbor any ill will toward her.
In fact, they seemed to be making more progress with communication than she had made with her husband on the trip down. She was still concerned that he hadn’t taken her in the manner of husbands and wives. When she spoke to the first wife, a woman named Lavern, the woman said her husband wanted to be able to talk to her first. That speaking with his women was important to him, and that he wouldn’t take her to bed as a husband should, until they could talk to each other. This seemed absolutely insane to Nissa, but each clan had a shaman to tell them the will of the spirits of that clan. As the new wife, it was her duty to learn her husband’s ways, not to question them.
She found that it did give her more incentive to learn the language quicker. She wondered if the same was true for him? He did seem very nice, at least compared to many men she had known in the past, her father and brother included. She had seen him angry though, and knew she never wanted to make him angry. Even if Lavern didn’t seem to fear him, she wasn’t about to take the chance. Maybe Lavern had never seen him roar a bear to death?
More Time
Family Life
As the months ticked by, Nissa settled herself in and made her new clan home. She worked hard to pick up the language. More of a struggle was coming to accept the miracles around every corner as normal. She found her spot among the women. Both Lavern and Shirley had made her transition to the clan much smoother than Dag had feared. Ajax’s second wife conflicted with her some, which confused Dag. He would have thought that of all women in the clan, the two of them would have understood the other better, but mostly it just proved to Dag how little he really understood women.
As confusing as American women had been, the women here were completely different. Usually in a good way, but no less confusing. He still found himself outnumbered in any argument, but unlike back home, once he made a decision, both women would simply start trying to make it work. This was especially hard to understand on the few times he had made the wrong call, and they had been right. Never did they undercut him in public, and only rarely did they become unreasonable in private. Crazy? Sure, that was just a given due to the different ways men and women saw the world, but finding himself with not one but two real partners instead of would be rivals was an unexpected boon of living in this world over his own. Beat the hell out of having internet any day of the week.
Not that everything was sunshine and lollypops. There were still small struggles to make sure he had enough time for both of them and the kids. John was growing fast, and the twins were starting to want more daddy time now too. He spent hours each day in writing, and slowly the small library began to grow. That led him to begin carving ivory letters. He first started with a few wooden blocks for the kids. It gave him practice in making the right shapes and having crisp outlines for the letters. Then he started carving typeset out of ivory.
It was the first step toward a printing press. He had left plans for it in a safe place, just in case anything happened to him, but he really wanted it working long before he passed on. He found that the grinding wheels and small drills in the workshop were quiet enough that he could talk to John while working. The boy was clever, and Dag knew if he were going to take over for him one day, that he would need to make sure the boy was ready. So, while he tried to pair the lessons with other work that needed done, he never lost sight of what the primary task was.
When he could finally talk with Nissa, he explained to her that she had a choice in all of this. At Lavern’s urgings, he didn’t tell her that marrying her had been part of a mixup, but instead positioned it as giving her choice in the situation. As much as she had grown on him over the months, a part of him actually hoped she would back out, just for simplicity’s sake. Even so, he was hardly disappointed when she said that she wanted to be his mate, and had come to love his family as her own.
After that first night together, Dag moved to one of the newer towers up on the ridge, and gave the girls and children the lower floor that was only accessible by the upper floor, and put his own room on the upper floor. It allowed Dag to protect the only entrance to his family. It also meant that many nights of the week, the ladies could take turns, either staying with him or watching over the little ones.
John, of course, was approaching the age where he would be too old to stay with his mother, and would need to move to the boy’s quarters, where all the boys training to take their place as hunters and protectors of the clan slept. They ate, slept, hunted together, and basically lived closer than brothers did back in Dag’s homeland. It was Dag’s hope that this familiarity would not breed contempt but rather comaraderie. It was really too early to tell, but with so many young boys in his clan that didn’t have parents as an option, it seemed to be the only logical solution.
The girls tended to stay with their mothers, or Oona in the case of those without a mother, much longer. They didn’t need to build the same sort of bonds as the boys needed, as they weren’t out hunting in packs like the boys. Even so, under Jill’s guidance, they each spent plenty of time each day learning how to shoot the bow and defend the walls. While he wasn’t looking for Amazon warriors, he wouldn’t have them and the children defenseless if the men fell, or starving for lack of a few game birds if the men weren’t available to hunt for them. The girls took to it well, for the most part. They didn’t seem eager to compete against the boys for what they saw as boy stuff, but a way to feed their own babies in time, and protect them... well that piqued their interest quite well.
One of Oona’s cronies had died that summer, and Dag noticed that it took its toll on the woman. She was still as feisty as ever when it came to running her portion of the camp, but he could tell that age was catching up with her. He was glad that she had Jill to help, but knew he would need to find someone else to take over. Jill wasn’t fated to running the orphan’s home. She would be snapped up very soon by one of the young hunters. He could see her just starting to blossom into a young woman. It would still likely be a couple of years, but he could see hints of the woman she would become, and he knew he wasn’t the only one to have noticed.
While he wasn’t her father, he felt a father’s responsibility toward her, and couldn’t help but wonder which of the young men she would choose. Bren had caught her eye, but she was young, and he was much older, so much could change before she was ready to make the decision. Ajax already had two wives, and Jack was too close of kin, and that left him with a yawning gap in worthy men that would be of the right age group.
Since he had decided to spend more time at home with the family, he found that these sorts of problems arose almost as fast as engineering problems did, and with far fewer easy answers. He shook his head, trying to clear it. He couldn’t, and shouldn’t, plan their lives all out for them, but he wanted so much better for his people than the lives they had been living. His biggest fear was that when he got old, there would be no way to hold them together. That despite all of his efforts, they would slip back into primitivism and barbarism as soon as he no longer held the clan together. His family deserved better than that.
◆◆◆
Land Exploration
While Dag couldn’t go, he did authorize a land exploration expedition with the new chariots. As soon as he had two to work with, he had Hendden put together a small team to go exploring. They set off loaded with salt and a little flour, but would be expected to hunt and forage for most of their food.
Dag was more than a little concerned about them, for while they had two grown men and four boys to act as archers, they were still vulnerable if they ran across hostile clans. Hendden had told him that he worried for no good reason, as few clans were openly hostile, and fewer still would outnumber them, and none could match their speed if the need to run arose, but that didn’t stop Dag from worrying like a mother hen, right up until they appeared back on the horizon six weeks later.
Hendden was all broad smiles, as they were leading a small band of twelve or thirteen behind them. As they got closer, Dag noticed it was mostly women and teens, with a smattering of toddlers thrown in. It didn’t take Dag long to realize what had happened. Hendden confirmed this when he introduced them. It was the remnants of a clan savaged by a pride of lions. Once the lions learned that human tasted good, they preyed upon the clan mercilessly.
Of course, lions were soon taught that humans make easy food when poorly armed, but not all people were poorly armed. As soon as the archers got into action, and the few hunters left were able to track the wounded ones down from chariot back, the tables turned and the clan feasted on lion that night.
Too battered by the lions to make it on their own, Hendden brought them with him. Dag was a bit concerned about taking on full grown hunters, but given the number of women and children that they would have had to support, there wasn’t really another option.
It wasn’t until he had sent everyone off to bathe that Dag realized it was the first time that he had gotten more mouths to feed, that he hadn’t worried about how he was going to manage it. Food security was nowhere near the levels he had experienced as a well off, educated citizen of a first world country, but the specter of starvation for his people was just that, a specter that threatened more than ravaged. With his flocks and herds growing, his fishing boats productive, and his fields of grain producing, feeding himself was finally not the largest expense a man had to worry about. It still took far more effort than it would have in the America that Dag came from, but it was far less than those joining his clan had ever faced.
