Paths of Civilization II

[X] Spirits Know Best

Tehme was done. He'd marched upriver with his father and brothers and uncles as the youngest man of the family, and returned the only man of the family. He would likely have never really been anyone, but now he was hailed as a Big Man for his prowess in battle. He was good at the sort of fighting that had developed, but it had only really been possible because he had inherited gear as others had perished that had let him recover from mistakes and learn. He had a following of other young men who trusted him to lead them in war, in awe of his mana.

Some were jealous, but Tehme was simply tired. His family had been shattered and he was ashamed by his participation in such a pointless endeavour. He had believed in his family when they had said that they needed to punish those upriver who had caused the inundation to be so weak… but out past the rapids they hadn't found anything close to the source.

When Great Bull called for the warriors to keep going, to raid and conquer into the lands downriver, Temhe turned away and most of those who looked up to him followed. He went back to his family's land and hoped that the spirits would forgive him.

Despite the low food stores, they mostly made it through. Probably because there were fewer mouths to feed after all the killing, even if many stores and fields had been burned. The next set of floods were better, but still poor, and when Tehme looked at the people working the fields he mostly found sullen strangers. Too much land had been shuffled around by deaths, and many families were being supplemented with women and children taken from other people. These strangers were often beaten like unruly dogs or cattle, and it churned Tehme's stomach to see it.

So he left. He squared up the affairs of the family and went upriver. There were more young men and fewer vicious Big Men there, working the land seized during the misguided campaign to punish the innocent as the wicked. He made it all of a season before he found that he couldn't stay. He'd washed this land in too much blood, and the guilt weighed upon him. He had to go further, had to find the true source of the river and what spirits dwelled there so he might offer apology or punish the truly wicked.

He made none come with him, but once he announced his intent he had a small but significant number of men and women offer to join him. They settled their affairs, and after the harvest they set out upriver. They had animals laden with baskets of grain, enough to travel without resupply for months, and there were many skilled hunters among their number. Unlike before, they also wouldn't jump straight to fighting with the locals, but would just pass on through wherever possible and try to negotiate or trade to obtain passage.

Out beyond the second set of rapids the already dry land became parched and rocky, with almost no land available for planting good crops. The people there were more like desert nomads than people who lived on the river, but they did trade extensively in obsidian and hardwoods. It seemed that the obsidian mostly came from their secret sources, but the hardwood came from past even more rapids. So Tehme and his band continued their climb across the barren land. They battled locals who thought their mana stronger, fought off wicked spirits that turned their guts to water or sucked away the breath in sleep, endured blazing heat and scouring winds, and generally suffered.

Out past the next set of rapids the desert gave way to dry grasslands where the communities that clustered about the river were hunters who had been introduced to cattle and sheep within their father's generation. They had taken to it with great enthusiasm, and were fascinated by Tehme and his group. A few families broke off here, deciding that this land could be farmed and that the losses on the journey were too much. A few locals had joined them previously, but not entire new families who wanted to see where this strange foreign man would go.

They didn't hit rapids again, but travel grew harder as shrubs and trees grew thicker, eventually turning into complete forest. It was an alien terrain for those from grasslands and desert, especially when the rainy season came. The river, which was known to so many as being predictable, took on a different and more dangerous character. For the first time they started to note streams feeding into the river, something that they hadn't really seen before. As the terrain became denser, many wondered if they should turn back. There were more and more wicked spirits at night, and they were starting to affect many of the animals too.

Finally they reached a point where not just a stream but a major river joined the path they had been following. While there was a definite difference in prominence, the possibility that the river could have more than one source had never really occurred to anyone. Tehme stood at the banks for a day considering this and his mission, before he announced, "Blood ochre stains the banks of the lesser river. We carry on up this path. The flooding did not stop entirely, so perhaps only the spirits of this river were angered."

Those who remained nodded at this. They had followed him this far because they believed in his vision, and they would see this to the end.

It would take another cycle of the moon before they reached the headwaters of the tributary river, but what they found took their breath away. For the people already living there, the arrival of those with the marvelous seeds and animals could not have been better timed.

The Chapter on the Marshlands People Ends. The Chapter on the Tehmingi Begins. Choose a Legacy from the Marshlands
[ ] Legacy of Diplomacy
[ ] Legacy of Trade
[ ] Legacy of Craft
[ ] Legacy of Ferocity
[ ] Legacy of Exploration