CHAPTER NINETEEN:

Leaders

 

            Tyree and Shuyah returned to the Tranca and led the thaw migration. Tyree’s keen senses took them neatly around the Logalla blockade that had stopped the point legion’s march north and killed Rolak. Shuyah and Tyree moved the clan at night at the start of a three day blizzard. No clan ever made such a trek. They lost few to the cold and exhaustion and none to Logalla swords and arrows. The Logalla were bypassed in the storm.

            Young Valaar rode at his father’s side the whole way, while the boy’s mother led her people. She conferred with her husband, discreetly at first, and the Tranca made it safely to their hidden retreat in the north.

            Having killed their leader, the Logalla became even bolder and conducted raids on the Tranca. They came in the endless darkness, and once when the light shone in the night. Tyree’s Kodiak senses detected them and he helped Shuyah plan traps and ambushes. Every Logalla attack failed. Many Logalla were killed. The dead Logalla were put beneath the ice unmarked and their horses loosed into the Tranca herds. These small victories began a trend of self-respect that grew among those of the Tranca clan, and word spread quickly that they at last had a leader with the qualities of the late Zorgon: his daughter, Shuyah.

            As winter set in, Shuyah and Tyree began planning a preemptive attack on the ever more belligerent Logalla. Even the Tranca women in armor were made known to Tyree. They were a small force, still untrained, and not nearly the adept fighters Kodiak women had learned to be. Still, they added to the Tranca’s numbers. Shuyah wisely asked Tyree to train the female warriors. This not only allowed the untested women the guidance of the perfect instructor, it also diminished Tyree’s role in the eyes of Shuyah’s male warriors. It confirmed her status as leader of the Tranca, and Tyree’s as merely her advisor. Tyree understood this strategy. The strategy that puzzled him was the one that he and Shuyah had drawn in the snow.

            “I’m worried about the Logalla northern reserves,” Tyree said. “They would not be foolish enough to commit all their forces, no matter how convincing is our ruse.”

            The two conspirators were out of view of the Tranca camp. Under the dull winter sun of the first brief day in the frozen north, they looked down upon a large snow map. Tyree and Shuyah walked around the huge diagram, swords in hand. With their sword points they drew in the snow the routes their armies would travel, areas where attacks would take place. It was the way clan leaders often made their plans. A snow map was of great benefit in thinking through strategies. It was also temporary, easily wiped away with the swipe of hand or boot, keeping it from uninvited eyes.

            Deftly with his sword tip, Tyree drew a line in the snow from the northern part of the twisted forest, down in a sweeping arc past Verdanta, to the plains. Here symbols indicated two Tranca armies had a large Logalla army trapped between them. “The reserves will sweep down from the northern twisted forest and hit us from the flank.”

            Shuyah pointed her sword to Verdanta. “Perhaps we can conceal four thousand warriors at Verdanta,” she suggested, “dressed as citizens, armor hidden under peasant cloaks, should Logalla eyes be watching.”

            “A very good idea,” Tyree said scratching his chin in thought. “We can slip extra weapons into Verdanta in hay sleds and among lodge poles and caribou skins. Hide battle steeds among the work horses.” Tyree drew a line out of Verdanta which cut the sweeping line that was the Logalla reserves. “The Verdanta force can intercept the Logalla’s northern reserves. Delay them. Hit and run.”

            “Half those going into Verdanta will need to be women to complete the deception,” Shuyah noted.

            “Yes. Your whole female warrior contingent,” Tyree said. “Many of them are still not ready.”

            “There will be time to train. You will need a male force of equal size, one that you can trust to follow you against the Logalla reserves.”

            “Me?” Tyree blinked. This he hadn’t expected.

            “I trust only you to lead the Verdanta legion. Delay the Logalla reserves long enough for us to finish with the main Logalla army,” Shuyah removed her sword point from Verdanta, swung it southwest, and jammed the tip into the large oval that was the trapped Logalla army. “Here in the trap,” she added, spearing with warrior acumen the snow symbol for the surrounded Logalla main army.

            Tyree looked up at her and smiled with deep regard. “I’ll train my warriors primarily in retreat tactics,” he said. “Teach them traps and pitfalls. And bowmanship. Still, our forces remain too few. I have counted the Logalla and they far outnumber us.” Tyree stepped to her side and looked into her eyes. “Now that you are the Tranca leader, we might again approach the Kodiak to join us against the Logalla.” Tyree smiled impishly. “The Kodiak hate the Logalla far more than they hate the Tranca.”

            “The Kodiak have but a thousand warriors,” Shuyah reminded him. “We would still be well outnumbered.”

            “But they are Kodiak,” Tyree smiled again, “and I know of another clan that might add their warriors to our cause. When we begin the winter migration south, you and I will split from your clan—at night. We’ll make our way through the snowfields. Any Logalla scouts will be focused on the main body and unaware of our departure.”

            Far to the northeast the huge encampment of the Logalla spread out like a fungus on the broad flat surface of an active glacier the size of Spain. Their huge fires lit the smooth reflective glacier in dancing light.

            The Logalla conjurer sat by his small fire, alone before the hut he always placed secluded from and out of sight of the main camp. He wore no bear mask, but his eagle feather-adorned cloak remained. The conjurer looked up. There was a shadow at the edges of his pitiful circle of light. The figure said nothing, but obviously refused to venture into the circle. His breath came in puffs of white that were snatched by the cold and whisked away. The conjurer got up and took with him a tiny bottle made of wood with a leather stopper. The conjurer moved gingerly out into the shadows.

            “Here it is,” he whispered. “Pour a few drops into his ear or mouth and we shall begin the new age of the Logalla!”

            The little fire crackled and blazed higher as if coaxed by the wind, and the face of the shadow briefly appeared. The surly conspirator, his thick black hair and beard twined with twigs, the great scar coursing down from his whitened eyebrow to the cut of his jaw. His Logalla name was Boozagloo, and he hated that many of his enemies, and even some of his comrades, referred to him as The Scar. They would never do it to his face, he thought, for his scar would be the last thing their eyes would behold. Boozagloo took the tiny bottle from the conjurer. That same night, he approached the hut of the Logalla leader, Shidyak.

            Boozagloo gave up all his weapons to the guards outside Shidyak’s massive hut. It was the rule, for military leadership was predicated on strength of allies and assassination. The Logalla leader was not called a king. His official title was Overlord of Warriors. Shidyak had been overlord of the Logalla for some time and his record of victories against the Tranca had lately taken an unflattering turn. It was time for a change. The tiny bottle hidden in Boozagloo’s boot would be the tool. Logalla leaders gathered around them only those they could trust, and Boozagloo was Shidyak’s closest advisor. He had worked his way into Shidyak’s confidence, positioned himself to be next in line. Now all that was required was the death of Shidyak. The overlord’s inner circle of personal guards within the vast hut allowed Boozagloo entry as they often did.

            “He’s asleep,” one guard advised.

            “This is important,” Boozagloo sneered. “I’ll take full responsibility.”

            Boozagloo brushed by the guard, who went back to polishing his sword with a live forest rat. There was something about the rat’s fur, and its blood, that made the blades of the Logalla glisten. It was a Logalla superstition that blood attracts blood, so the rat had to be alive.

            The brief scream of the rat didn’t disturb Shidyak as he lay on his back on a vast bed of furs in his large central room, naked. Around him lay three Logalla females, all of them naked and well drunk on the cask of captured Tranca gruda Boozagloo had been saving for just such an occasion. Shidyak’s mouth was open wide and he snored like a bull elk after a night with the cows. Boozagloo crept closer. He had to step over one of the women. She awakened, but he didn’t notice. She might well have been the prettiest of all Logalla women, ever, and she watched as Boozagloo pulled the little wooden bottle out of his boot. He carefully removed the leather stopper and almost gracefully raised the vial, tipped it slightly, and poured two tiny drops of glistening liquid down Shidyak’s open throat. Shidyak snorted a bit, coughed, then his eyes shot open and his life left him in a long hiss.

            The woman pretended to be sleeping as Boozagloo returned the vial to his boot and turned. He crept out of the sleep chamber and walked briskly past the inner guard who was just finishing his sword maintenance.

            “Was he angry?” the guard smiled.

            “A bit,” Boozagloo scowled, “but he understood and has given me my orders. Don’t let anyone else in until sun rise. Our Overlord of Warriors needs his rest.”

            They both laughed heartily, and the next Overlord of Warriors went on his way.

 

                        *                       *                       *          

 

            They did as Tyree had suggested, he and Shuyah deviating from the clan in the night, leaving little Valaar in the able care of Koleefus. With Tyree’s Kodiak skills to guide them, they dodged the Logalla scouts with ease. By the second day they had made their way to the snowfields. In the white vastness without tree or bush, Tyree called upon the Ghost Warriors.

            “It is I, Tyree of the Kodiak!” Tyree shouted into the frozen stillness.

            Tyree and Shuyah had brought with them three ponies laden with meat and wood. Only after they’d camped three days, and Tyree had called to the Ghost Warriors a thousand times, did Jasika, leader of the Ghost Warriors, make himself known to the Kodiak and his Tranca wife. A tall spiral of eddying snow passed by, and the albino horseman suddenly appeared in its wake.

            “While the bounty you bring us is fine, it is repayment for something we would have done without need for reward,” Jasika said before Tyree had even offered it.

            Tyree carefully asked Jasika of his opinion of the Logalla, but the Ghost Warrior seemed to know Tyree’s purpose behind all the subtlety.

            “We cannot join you in your fight against the Logalla,” Jasika firmly stated.

            “Would not the defeat of the Logalla make your lives easier?” Shuyah said, taking the appearance of the Ghost Warriors in stride like a born leader would. “They could no longer foment war among the clans and use up the twisted forest upon which we all rely for wood.”

            “These are not concerns with which we occupy ourselves,” the Ghost Warrior shrugged. “Still, I will put the idea to our council. I hold less hope for their approval than you hold for the approval of the Kodiak elders.”

            “My thoughts seem open to you,” Tyree smiled. “Were you not at one time Kodiak?”

            “Or perhaps Tranca?” Shuyah inserted.

            “We are of no clan, yet of all,” the albino warrior said.

            He then mounted his white horse and led but one of the bounty laden brown pack horses away. The warrior and his white horse somehow vanished within a few yards, adding credence to the Ghost Warriors’ reputation for invisibility. Tyree and Shuyah watched agape as the brown Tranca pack horse seemed as though it were being led by an invisible hand, the leader rope held taut between the pack horse’s head and—nothing.

            Tyree and Shuyah then set their course for the Kodiak camped upon the plains. Tyree could not find in his mind the words he would say, and hoped they would come to him when facing the Kodiak Council of Elders.

            Beyond Tyree’s senses lurked a greater danger.

            When Chabo’s unit was killed by the Logalla, Chabo had been captured. Chabo was mesmerized by the Logalla conjurer, made to drink the magic elixir, and forced against his will to do the Logalla’s bidding. Chabo was released upon the snow and ordered to spy upon his own clan, to report their strategies to Logalla scouts shadowing the Kodiak. It was Chabo who told the Logalla where the Kodiak were a few thaws ago, an attack foiled by the arrival of Tyree disguised as a Logalla. Boozagloo, who many called The Scar, had plans for Chabo, plans that would lead to the eradication of all the Logalla’s enemies. Boozagloo had assumed leadership of the Logalla when their last Overlord of Warriors mysteriously died in his sleep while in the north. With Chabo, he could learn the goings on within the Kodiak camp.

            “This is Shuyah, whom we returned to her clan many migrations ago and whom I have married,” Tyree said as he and Shuyah faced the Kodiak elders who sat with Golanka in the large central hut where the council did business. One had died and been replaced in Tyree’s absence.

            “A Tranca ceremony?” a female elder asked.

            Tyree nodded.

            “Are you not Tranca, then?” she added.

            “I will always be Kodiak,” Tyree shrugged, “even over my banishment from my people. I seek to arrange for the safety of both clans, and it is for the welfare of both clans that we have come here to talk.”

            “May I speak?” Shuyah said.

            The council spokesman nodded his approval.

            “I am now the leader of the Tranca,” Shuyah stated, “and in that capacity again offer an alliance.”

            “We have regretted the opportunity, many thaws ago, to make the bargain you again bring before us,” the spokesman for the council said. “Let us consider it and vote. You shall have your answer tomorrow. For now, Tyree, enjoy the comfort of your former clan. Renew friendships. You have proven more than once than you still hold us close to your heart.”

            “Should the very reason for Tyree’s banishment be overturned by your vote, is it not then appropriate that your banishment of him be also rescinded?” Shuyah asked.

            It was out of turn, and chilled Tyree’s spine.

            “This, too, we will consider,” the spokesman agreed, no hint of reprimand toward Shuyah for not knowing protocol.

            As they left the hut, Tyree smiled to himself. His smile did not escape Shuyah’s notice.

            “What are you thinking?” she asked.

            “How strange it is for a Tranca to be asking that a banished Kodiak be forgiven,” he replied, turning to look into her eyes. “You feel this is important to me, and so it is, but I have hitched my life to your sled. This union of ours is what is forever.”

            “You could have both, and be happier.”

            “Yes, but only one such as you, with your perceptions of my inner needs, would take that small contentment into account when larger things are at risk.”

            “Your happiness is the larger thing to me,” she smiled.

            “This is why I love you so,” he said, and then he kissed her deeply.

            “Forgive my interruption,” Golanka said, stepping from the council’s hut. The two parted and Golanka clapped a firm hand on Tyree’s shoulder. “It seems your journey has brought you full circle,” the commander of the Kodiak military smiled, “and it would seem this Tranca girl has been the center of your circle. I become an elder after the next thaw. It has always been my wish that you take my place as leader of the Kodiak military.”

            “I have other duties, now, uncle,” Tyree said.

            “Is any duty more important?” Golanka replied.

            Then Golanka smiled, bowed his head respectfully to Shuyah and went on his way, leaving behind a confused Tyree.

            “A husband and his wife, leaders of the Kodiak and the Tranca armies,” Tyree said drawing a deep breath. “My grandfather would be pleased.”

            “Was he not a visionary?” Shuyah noted.

            Tyree agreed. “If this alliance comes to pass in this fashion, he will have been the most insightful of us all.”

            “Then our son, whose name is your grandfather’s, is well titled,” she suggested.

            “That I have always known,” Tyree smiled.

            Tyree and Shuyah then went to unpack and erect their hut for a longer stay with the Kodiak than they had anticipated.

            The next morning, the council vote was four to one to confirm the alliance with the Tranca and to remove Tyree’s banishment from the Kodiak. Word spread throughout the camp in moments, and Chabo slipped away. He knew the placement of the Kodiak sentries and avoided them easily. Chabo went to where the Logalla scouts were camped and told them of the alliance. They immediately sent two of their number at full gallop to the twisted forest to tell Boozagloo.

            Boozagloo’s decision was swift and deadly.

“We must kill this Tyree and his Tranca wife as they travel to bring word of their alliance to the Tranca clan. Once this is accomplished, we will attack and kill the entire Kodiak clan.”

            “But overlord,” one of his lieutenants grumbled, “each time we attack the Kodiak they become ghosts! Either they’re not in their encampment, or the encampment is gone!”

            “Fear not, commander,” Boozagloo assured. “This time, our spy among them will prevent the Kodiak from deceiving us. This time, they all will die!”

 

LOOK FOR CHAPTER 20: “TREACHERY”

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