CHAPTER Twenty-Three:

Deceptions

 

            The huge Tranca clan returned to camp outside Verdanta and began the first deception. The three thousand warriors of the Verdanta contingent prepared inside huts at the center of the vast Tranca encampment so that Logalla spies could not see them. Kodiak scouts had reported that both the Tranca and Kodiak clans were under constant Logalla surveillance. Tyree used this to his advantage.

            Two thousand Tranca warriors put peasant cloaks on over their armor and walked their horses as they would work animals. A thousand warriors went undisguised, for the Logalla knew that a thousand warriors were always left at Verdanta. The women kept their hoods back so that the Logalla spies would see and recognize women. The Logalla knew that the Tranca didn’t have women warriors. What they didn’t know was that they had been deceived.

            It would be some time before Shuyah would see her husband and son again. As Tyree and Valaar departed, they said their goodbyes to wife and mother from horseback.

            “Take care of your father,” Shuyah said to the boy.

            Tyree leaned down from his saddle and pulled Shuyah up into his sinewy arms, her feet off the ground. They kissed long and deeply for all the clan to see.

            The Verdanta contingent set out, battle steeds hidden among the work horses, warriors hidden among the women. There were old people and workmen, livestock and children, all making up the throng if four thousand trudging across the snow toward the mists.

            Konka and Drinda had been reading the tantalizing new scents upon the wind since they’d arrived outside Verdanta. For two days, the cloud of steam was all Konka and Drinda saw of paradise. They were anxious to set their eyes upon what their special senses promised.

            On a ridge, Logalla scouts counted the warriors and watched the unsightly band march across the snow. Shortly after the Verdanta contingent went upon the snow, four thousand Tranca living their last day in Verdanta came forth through the curtain of steam. These, even to the distant eyes of the Logalla spies, looked refreshed and vibrant compared to the slogging, trail-weary troop going into Verdanta. The two masses passed each other midway between the encampment and the hot springs. Those leaving Verdanta bade the newcomers a pleasant stay. They hadn’t been told of the Verdanta ploy. The closer they got, the more they saw the truth. Hunched peasants appeared really to be strapping warriors and the young women looked to have armor on under their cloaks. So, the two groups went on their way, one back to the rigors of the snow and long journeys they’d known all their lives, the other for a short stay in paradise.

            Each leading borrowed horses, Tyree walked little Valaar, Konka and Drinda into the mists. All were disguised as peasants, hoods up, for the Logalla might recognize their distinct Kodiak features among the Tranca. The four could throw their hoods back, now, and bathe their faces in the misty showers of steam. Soon, the mists diminished, and lush Verdanta lay before them. Among the Kodiak, only Tyree had seen it before. Even as legend, Verdanta stood alone upon the snow, the colors, a thousand shades new to Kodiak eyes. Most flowers were past their season, but the trees, the poplars, oak and maple, the beeches and hickory nut, were afire with color. Ripe vegetables glowed like gems in the gardens. Colorful fruits hung plump and ripe in the orchards. From the instant of their arrival, first time visitors were held in awe of the oasis in the snow. The sights, the smells, the tastes were overwhelming.

            When they reached the farm lands, newcomers were always met by the welcomers. These were several hundred Verdantan residents who carried huge baskets of vegetables and fruits, drinks of a considerable variety, and succulent bread made from a newly discovered plant that, centuries in the future, people would call corn.

            “How did this come to be?” Konka said as he bit into a juicy red apple.

            “It was the will of the wind,” Drinda offered, eating grapes and feeding some to an astonished Valaar.

            “The hot springs make it so,” Tyree explained. “The warmth melts the snow before it arrives. Warms it. Changes it so the plants and people can drink of it.”

            “And those are the rain catchers you spoke of,” Drinda said looking off at the colossal structures that had been rebuilt in the four thaws since Verdanta was retaken.

            “Yes, the Tranca have proved to be very inventive,” Tyree stated, proud to show his new clan off to his old.

            “I hate them,” Konka scowled. “Not the Tranca, though I still have the urge to kill them when I see them. I hate those—those things.” He glared at the rain catchers.

            “The rain catchers provide fresh water for the people and their livestock,” Tyree shrugged.

            “Can these rain catchers be packed aboard a sled?” Konka rhetorically asked. “Do they come apart so that pack ponies can carry them on migration as they do our huts? Will not permanence be the end of life upon the snow?”

            “Perhaps the beginning of it,” Tyree shrugged again.

            With all the new sights and tastes and activities to consider, Konka was not happy. Tyree didn’t care. Konka was seldom happy. What bothered Tyree was that little Valaar was not happy, either. Tyree had noticed this by the second day, but said nothing, content to study the boy, no clue as to what was bothering the listless child. Little Valaar was usually the first to start a game or instigate a mischief. Many of the children that came to Verdanta were friends he’d made in the Tranca camp. They learned together in the brigades, as the Tranca called their schools taught by elders. Boys and girls alike were taught the secrets of the wilderness and the history of their clan. Only the boys received military training, but Shuyah was determined to institute military training for Tranca girls as soon as the coming war was over.

            Tyree took his son to Shuyah’s private hot spring where the bubbling water rejuvenated Tyree’s aching muscles and soothed his old combat wounds. They played in the steaming water, the boy pretending to be an unarmed hunter and Tyree a wounded bear. The boy laughed and splashed his father who grabbed and wrestled stocky little Valaar. They climbed out laughing and lay on the smooth lava rock warmed by volcanic energy deep beneath Verdanta. Once in awhile, the ground rumbled and Verdanta shook. People staggered and some were even rocked off their feet. Sometimes, a hut collapsed. Tyree and his son discussed this movement of the land and tried to imagine what forces produced such mysteries.

            Tyree and his son lay on the shore of the pleasant hot spring surrounded by lush bushes. It was on this spot Tyree first kissed the boy’s mother. Tyree wondered if he should tell the boy of that pivotal moment in his and Shuyah’s lives. He decided the boy was too young. To him, girls were just softer boys. Little Valaar’s troubles did not involve romance like so much of an adult’s worries did. The child was already past his laughing frolic with his father and sat glumly on the shore looking off across the spring.

            “Why so downcast, boy?” Tyree finally asked.

            “Oh, it’s—it’s nothing.”

            “It’s something.”

            Just then a trembler hit and the ground rocked. The water in the hot spring swayed left and right and some even splashed out of the spring onto the Kodiak and his son.

            “See there?” Tyree laughed. “Even the earth wants to know! Wants to know why you are not happy here. Is it fear of what the future holds? Do you understand the plans your parents have been making? The war that’s coming?”

            “I welcome the war as you and mother do,” the boy said, pleasing Tyree a great deal. “It’s—it’s mother. I’ve never been away from her this long before. I—I miss her.”

            Tyree smiled and hugged his son’s shoulders.

            “I miss her, too,” Tyree said, “and when you are not with me, I miss you.”

            “But does that not show weakness?” the boy asked.

            “No, it is the opposite,” Tyree explained. “To feel love for another. It is the one thing better than—victory.”

            The boy understood. He was, after all, half Kodiak. He hugged his father harder than he ever had, for he knew that, soon, his father would go off to the war, and he would be left alone in Verdanta.

            To this end, Tyree coordinated a home defense, a means to protect the old people and children left behind in Verdanta when the war started. The old people grumbled even more than the younger Tranca did when ordered about by any of the Kodiak. Tyree’s warrior contingent had long taken to obeying Tyree’s commands, but he could not tell the Tranca elders his orders directly. This was where Koleefus became invaluable. Orders for the elders had to be passed through Koleefus. When the orders went out to the elders, Tyree, nor any of the Kodiak, were in sight. Thus was created an elder’s army of three hundred, all men, who were taking up sword and bow as they once did daily. They reminded Tyree of his grandfather—proud old warriors eager for one last chance to die in battle. The old warrior army would help shore up Verdanta’s meager defense, for once Tyree went to meet and delay the Logalla’s Forest Regiment, the defenders left behind in Verdanta would be a pitifully small force of five hundred warriors. All were mothers and fathers of the children that would be at the center of, and the reason for, the defense. The only child without a parent present was young Valaar.

            The plan was to fall back under any attack and make their stand at the rain catchers. The children and old women would climb up into the colossal structures and hide among the timbers and canvases. To even the smallest child it became obvious why Tyree had Tranca carpenters build a patchwork of scaffolding and canvas for the old women and children to practice climbing. This was during the training time in the main camp long before they’d reached Verdanta and Tyree made the exercise daily, and mandatory. The purpose became clear upon the first sighting of the colossal rain catchers. While the old women and the children would find sanctuary in the upper reaches of the reservoir, the five hundred warriors, mothers and fathers of the children and the three hundred old men who no longer went to war, would hold the line until the Tranca armies returned.

            “Should the Logalla come, they would take care not to damage or puncture the rain catchers or the reservoir. They would have learned from their last occupation of Verdanta,” Tyree told Thrabok and Koleefus, leaders of the parent warriors and the old people, respectively.

            “Yes,” Koleefus nodded, “if we hide among the rain catchers the Logalla will not shoot arrow nor throw spear in our direction. They will have to take us sword-to-sword.”

            Seven foot Thrabok patted his broad axe into the palm of one gargantuan hand. “That is the way true warriors like it,” he grinned.

            “Have them practice daily,” Tyree said rising to go, “then let them rest two days before the war begins.”

            Koleefus watched the Kodiak walk briskly out of her hut. Thrabok rose, but paused before the open door.

            “This one has his own mind,” Thrabok smiled. “He cannot be manipulated by you as were Rolak and Zorgon.”

            “Yes,” the witch woman smiled back, “it is fortunate for me that he and I agree on almost everything.”

            Thrabok laughed heartily, booming voice filling the hut. “Pray for us, witch woman,” he said, “we are reeds in the snow at the mercy of the wind.”

            Thrabok, father of seven of the children, left and closed the flap over the door of the caribou skin hut of Koleefus, witch woman of the Tranca.

            Koleefus got up, old bones creaking painfully. She went to her incense. She lit several sticks of three different varieties, all made from exotic herbs and strange hard black berries that grew up from the snow during the thaw. Koleefus breathed in the thick wafting smoke, holding it in her lungs while the narcotic searched for her needs. It first calmed her pain. Sometimes, it made her see visions.

            The tallow candles flickered erratically though no wind wafted through the well-sealed hut. Koleefus began to dance. She twirled at the center of her hut as she did at the clan dances of her youth. In Koleefus’ eyes, the lights of the candles left trails in the air as she spun. A vision was coming. She sat on the floor and let it overwhelm her.

            She saw dead warriors, Tranca, Logalla and even Kodiak. She saw death as the only victor. Then, it all was consumed by fire. The earth opened and enveloped the dead. In her vision, she screamed, but in reality she lay quiet and unmoving on the bearskin rugs of her caribou skin hut.

            “I must go,” Tyree said to little Valaar as Tyree tucked his son in for the night there in their hut in bountiful Verdanta.

            “I know,” the boy sighed, “it was a part of your plans I overheard. A part I cannot put out of my mind.”

            “Fear is of the mind,” Tyree offered, his grandfather’s teachings flashing before his tear-filled eyes.             “A strong mind can overcome fear.”

            “I’m not sure I have such a mind.”

            “But you must,” Tyree said fighting back emotion never before considered, for Tyree was but a boy himself. “A boy is half his father, half his mother. He gets his appearance, his hair, his eyes, from both. He gets his size, his weight, his strength from his parents. And so does a child receive a mind as strong and helpful as that of his parents.”

            “Thank you, father,” the boy yawned. “Thank you for all you and mother have given me.”

            Little Valaar fell asleep just before Koleefus came to open the flap to Tyree’s hut and stand in the doorway. She was alert and clear-eyed.

            “It’s time,” was all she said.

 

LOOK FOR CHAPTER 24: “WAR”

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