Chapter XXXI
On the incline of the bluff, above the flooded fields lining the Alluvia, but below the Rufoux village, the clans pitched the games. The thud of wooden swords upon wooden shields popped in the air, lances flew in long wobbling spirals into helpless targets, and axes beat huge logs into submission. Rufoux riders raced across the foot of the hill, displaying great skill and courage as they manhandled their giant mounts, narrowly missing each other as their paths criss-crossed and riders jumped from one hippus to another. Dancing to the Melic harmonies raised the spirits and perspiration of the clansmen; Andreia even succeeded in drawing Artur into a short and clumsy jig. Franken, looking like a fiddler crab with his one huge arm wielding his axe and the other waving wildly for balance, managed to take honors for wood-chopping. Jakke wandered about, forever offering, “Fight?” with no success. The Koinoni stood observing silently, unmoving within their robes except for spinning. Over it all presided Dungo, beside himself with delight at the spectacle unfolding before him.
“What a glorious day!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands in glee. “What a time we live in! Never has a Bedoua vizier dared believe he would witness such splendid pageantry! Ho-ho! And the Rufoux, such riders! The sight of the reality puts the toy to shame. And those songs, how do the Melics make such tones as those? So much have we missed in the desert, living these long generations separated into the forbidding sands. What a time to exist, in a day when Bedoua would join with Rufoux, and with Melics, even Koinoni, in such a wonderful display of strength and beauty! Ho-ho! And what’s that singing sound?”
Indeed, a sound like a woman singing, only tinged with terror, emanated from the forest. Suddenly, Carolingia shot out of the branches at the forest’s edge and ran hysterically for the stockade, clutching her frock about her desperately. “They’re in the forests!” she screamed. “Aoten are coming!”
Music, celebration, games — all stopped abruptly. All the clansmen streamed toward the gates of the fortress. Only the Koinoni took a different direction, running to their boats and casting into the water. “Won’t see them again,” Artur said to himself. The last stragglers gathered inside, and he shut and secured the gates.
“Everyone in?” shouted Artur. “Families, count yourselves.”
“Pepin, take stock of the Melics. I will speak with Carolingia,” said Theodoric.
“Sylva?” asked Dungo, and she shook her head, holding up one finger. “One Bedoua goes missing,” he yelled urgently. “We number only a few here. Who is missing?”
“Humus,” said Carolingia. She sat on a low stump, breathing heavily. “They have taken Humus.”
Theodoric looked at her sternly, and Pepin grabbed her harshly by the sleeve.
“How do you know this? What has happened to him?” he demanded, the veil of his contemplative accommodation at last falling to anger.
“We walked about in the forest, seeking plants he knew of. The giants fell upon us before we knew it. I leapt into the trees and ran the branches as fast as I could. But they took hold of Humus.”
Andreia cried out quietly, then sobbed. “We must save him!” declared Dungo, but Sylva lay her hand on his shoulder and shook her head. “But we must! We must!” he protested, and still she demurred. “Humus!” he cried.
“No,” said Artur, putting his arm around Andreia for just a moment. “We must stay inside. They will be down on us like the river. Anyone else missing?”
The clans people agreed, everyone else had made it safely inside the stockade walls. Theodoric allowed that most Melics had retreated into the trees. Artur looked to Dungo.
“Humus is lost to us.”
Andreia broke down. Aachen quietly found Sylva, and promised to teach other Bedoua the knowledge Humus had shared. Carolingia’s body shook violently as she sat, and Pepin shoved her shoulder as he threw aside his grip on her clothing. “The dead rumidont of my dream,” his low voice deafening with disdain. “You bring death to everything you touch.”
“Here they come!” warned Osewold, high upon the roof of a hut to see over the wall. “They bring bows into the attack!”
Indeed, the Aoten swarmed out of the forest, bearing down on the high walls. They waved clubs and crude swords, along with bows too small for their hands, as they came upon the front wall of the stockade with much inarticulate growling.
“They have grown hungry indeed,” said Theodoric. “The nuts and berries of the forest undergrowth no longer can sustain them. They must not have found what they wanted to the east of the Alluvia; or perhaps they did.”
The giants hit the stockade like a wave, and it groaned under the pressure of their massive bodies. Clever though they had been, the Rufoux and Melic builders had built no wall walk, preventing them from effectively mounting a defense. Artur hastily threw some grain in a fire and invoked the Rufoux prayer to Mog. Arielle joined Osewold and expertly fired her arrows at the Aoten, but the missiles mostly caught in the giants’ heavy hair and did no damage; she also could see them using their own bows, very clumsily and with no success. Other Rufoux could only hack away weakly at Aoten fingers that peeked over the top of the walls.
“I had not figured on this,” Artur fumed at Wyllem. “We sit blindly inside walls to await our fate! I cannot stand this. Rufoux pray to win victory, not to be safe! I must fight, I must battle!” And he beat angrily upon the wall with Kylie.
“Won’t that just weaken the wall?” Wyllem asked.
In a rage, Artur sheathed Kylie and stalked away. The barrier swayed in and out, complaining mightily against the pushing of the Aoten, but so far it did not yield.
“They round the corner! They flank the stockade!” yelled Osewold from his perch, and Andreia looked about her. “Jakke, come with me!” she commanded, and he followed her to the nearest gate. “Move all those extra timbers against the gate! We must fortify the gate!” Others joined in as they realized the developing danger.
“We could make a leap for the forests,” Pepin said quietly to Theodoric.
“No,” he replied. “The dog is a friend until it turns tail. Then it is just a dog.”
“True, that,” said Pepin.
“Besides, we’d never make it anyway.”
“They demand too much, too much!” Dungo repeated angrily. “We can not have this, the Bedoua will never stand for this. To think that we would be so mistreated by such a despicable race. The Bedoua will not allow this, Dungo will not allow it. Shall we sacrifice Humus, and our pride as well, and humbly be so ill-treated! Waylaid in the wilderness, corralled like a herd of rumidont, captured to be slaughtered by infidels, who give no honor nor fear to Wolven! The Bedoua will never stand for it, we will not allow this outrage to stand!”
Artur listened to the fat Bedoua’s prattle for a moment before turning away. If Dungo thought he had been lured into a trap, well enough then. They were all in the same position. If he thought this predicament came from a Rufoux trick, well, perhaps the villagers didn’t need Bedoua help to defeat the giants. The Koinoni had already abandoned them, and now so too would the Bedoua. Artur’s clan would find its own way if it had to.
Again the giants swarmed upon the wall, unable to breach its height but testing the limits of its strength. The binding between the logs stretched painfully, and the ground began to churn away from the posts’ mooring, and the wall leaned and groaned. Soon the attackers would find the gates, and the little fort’s weakest points would be under attack.
“What’s that sound?” asked Aachen.
“Oo-oo-ooo!” an eerie, unearthly noise arose from the distance over the sound of cracking wood. “Zoot-aloo-oo-ooo!”
The sighing moan caught the giants’ attention quickly, and they looked toward the river with a start. Dozens of figures like phantoms, dressed in long, flowing robes and arms waving as if casting incantations, seemed to float toward them like dust rolling on the wind. The Aoten stopped their siege of the stockade and turned for the forests. With galloping strides they fled from the onrushing
Koinoni.
Arielle stood on the hut completely aghast. “I don’t believe it,” she said.
“What happened?” yelled Artur.
“The Aoten have fled. They are afraid of Koinoni.”
“Smarter than I thought,” Artur muttered as others cheered and tried to clamber atop huts to see.
The gates opened, and the Koinoni entered the fortress to much congratulation. Theodoric studied the open door, pulling an object from its face.
“What has happened?” asked Artur.
“The Aoten fall easily into fright,” said a Koinoni, probably Yarrow. “Easy to startle. We have done so before. But it does not change their ferocity; they will be back.”
Theodoric held an arrow out to Artur. “They carried Raspar weapons.”
“Meaning what?”
“We have no time for idle talk,” interrupted Dungo, eyes burning with rage. “A Bedoua has likely died. We can tolerate no talk of any other thing. A Bedoua lies dead, and not even in his own territory, torn by the rage of a strange people, and not even Wolven. A Bedoua has given his talents to your clan, sir, and now he has given his life.”
“Yes,” said Artur. “Osewold, take men and search the forests.”
“Carolingia will guide you,” said Pepin flatly, and when she began to sneer at him he pushed her through the door.
In moments the body of Humus returned to the stockade, carried upon Rufoux shields. Battered beyond recognition, his limbs broken and twisted, the corpse rested at the front of the community building, Aachen and Andreia standing at his head.
“Never have the Bedoua suffered such atrocity!” declared Dungo, shaking both his fists, angrily directing his words from one clan leader to another, Sylva standing behind him. “You brought us near to the clutches of this savage race. You begged and bargained to bring us here! Never has Bedoua generosity been so ill rewarded! Never have we traveled so far from our homeland, to be so unjustly received! Never has so barbaric a people laid upon us such an outrageous offense! The Bedoua will not stand for it, we will not stand for it!”
The Bedoua vizier passionately voiced his fury at the crime he had suffered upon Rufoux land. Artur turned to leave, not willing to be lectured in the midst of his people.
“No, Artur of the Rufoux, you will stay! You will hear me! For the Bedoua will fight the Aoten! Humus will be avenged! Every Bedoua man and woman will fight the Aoten, tooth and nail, to their last drop of blood! Humus will not have died in vain, his life will not be reckoned meaningless! The Bedoua will fight!” And a chorus of clicking arose from the clansmen who had borne Dungo’s litter.
Dungo’s anger drained into grief. “But first, we must gather Humus back to his people. We must deliver him back to his brothers, Mistral and Ingle. We must immediately accompany him back to his family in the desert, that they may deliver to him the honors commanded by Bedoua tradition.”
“What tradition?” Wyllem asked Artur quietly.
“You are a man of many questions, Wyllem,” Artur replied, and felt his stomach up in his throat. “Don’t ask this one.”