A Hard Ride
“Oh, my love, I am so sorry,” Mehetabel said to him, after hearing the story.
“Sorry?” Ishvi asked, thickly, “Whatever for? I have been made a fort commander. I believe that is the equivalent of, what, a Baron? A higher honor than I could have hoped for back home.”
She came over and wrapped her arms around him, holding him for a few minutes before she responded, “But it is not what you want, my love. You wish for a farm, above all things.”
“Well, not above all things!” he said to her, taking her hand. “Accuse me not of such foolishness, or such heresy.” Then, shaking his head as if to clear it, “And I need not play the fool. If I do this job well, then I will perhaps be given a farm, and indeed more than a farm. I can tell, it is obvious, that there will be wide and strong rivers over by the mountains; rivers whose banks we will line with farms, farms that − that will feed multitudes and still leave more than enough room for those stupid Horsemen to have their wide open plains.”
She hugged him a long time after that.
--
“Don’t you wish to come?”
“Well of course I wish to come. But you cannot blame me for being a bit nervous.” Mehetabel pulled at her skirt, trying to keep her agitation down.
Ishvi had just told her last night that she would ‘get’ to go with him today, as an Aviovamen, to the site of their new fort, and she was acting alternately pleased and nervous.
“I am a bit − the clothes −” she said, pulling actively at the skirt again.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You’ve worn those clothes often before, all the time in class, and on the ride.”
“Well, yes, with everyone else, all the other girls, wearing the same thing.”
“But you will be riding with all the other Aviovamen.”
“That’s different,” she said.
“Well, if you do not wish to go…”
“I wish to go!”
“Well, come then,” he said, opening the door. She gulped and followed him.
They walked down the hall and out into the courtyard, she holding his hand and arm tightly. “Mehetabel,” Hadassah said, coming over and greeting her, “I am so jealous.”
“Jealous? I feel like such a spectacle,” Mehetabel whispered into her ear as they hugged, “and I am so scared.”
//Well,// said Hadassah, switching to Kelii and walking her over to her horse, //I don’t blame you. But the Beasts have been quiet so far, and, once you change, you will easily be able to outrun them.//
Her horse was at the edge of the group, and there were dozens of Aviovamen all around, which made Mehetabel feel better. She leapt up onto her horse, settling herself down, and felt herself begin the change. Ishvi watched her, grinning.
Several of the other Wives came riding over to her. //Greetings,// they called, ignoring Ishvi, except to ride carefully on the far side from him.
//Greetings,// Met said, //I will be riding with you this time.//
//We heard,// one of them said, an older Wife with an infant clinging to her back. //You are welcome.//
//Be careful though,// another said with a grin, //or one of our Husbands will steal you!// “Or perhaps my Husband will steal one of you,” she retorted, feeling the change finish, and grinning at Ishvi, “he is man enough, certainly.”
They all laughed. An Aviovamen was only actually ‘stolen’ once her Husband was dead, but the joke was a common one whenever Aviovamen got together.
“Have you seen many of the Beasts?” Met asked.
“Oh, hundreds,” one Wife responded, “our Husbands are eager to begin hunting.”
Mehetabel gulped and her horse pranced a bit. One of the younger Wives brought her horse over close, “Don’t worry, they hardly ever even look at us, and we will have all of the Husbands with their spears.”
“Thanks. I like your skirt, by the way.”
“Oh, we have been able to dress very nicely since we came. It is amazing the pay the Husbands are getting. They usually don’t get pay, you know, once they are married, and so we have to make all of our own clothes, and can’t put any metal on them. But look at all of the metal…” she reached down to the dozen metal rings sewed onto her skirt, one of them even of gold.
“So, you’re happy to be here?”
“Oh, yes. Just look at the land. Of course, the trip was awful. Oh! It is time to go.”
Ishvi listened to the Lasses’s byplay, while watching the rest of the group getting ready. He glanced back at his wife, “You have changed, my love!” he exclaimed, looking her up and down, admiringly.
“Oh, yes,” she answered, “and I have been talking with the other Wives. I’m eager to get going!” she said.
“Yes, that is the frustrating part of this trip, we go so slow! But come, we can ride ahead, you and I. There is no danger here.”
They rode out a mile or so down the track. “Are you feeling better, my love?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. You must think me so foolish. You knew I would feel better once I changed, no?”
“Well, I hoped so, but I wasn’t sure. I can hardly tell what I myself am thinking, nowadays; let alone how you are going to feel. How is the baby doing?”
Mehetabel put her hand on her stomach, “Well, I believe. He certainly kicks enough!”
“Good,” he said, grinning, “good. I know how I feel about him… or her, and you, anyway.”
--
It had been a frustrating trip, in many ways, but Ishvi was still enjoying it, and especially enjoying riding with his wife. As a Farmer, he probably would not have enjoyed it so much; hearth and home were more important, and he would not have wanted to mix work with pleasure − and this was definitely pleasure.
“Come, we are getting close, let us ride up together,” he said. The two followed the tracks that the wagons had left on their other trips, and rode ahead, around two separate hills, before they came in view of their destination.
“Oh,” Met said to him, “it doesn’t seem very tall yet.”
“No,” Ishvi replied, ruefully, “you would think after all of these trips it would be taller. But it is tall enough for a Farmer to stand behind… and it is rather wide as well. Come!”
They rode up to the construction, and rode through the opening between the two overlapping front walls and into − a sea of mud. Ishvi saw her look. “Oh, my love, never fear. Look, we have stored the sod,” he said, pointing to a corner, “and with the rain we get here, it should take quickly.”
“Why did you have to dig it all up?” she asked, her horse stepping gingerly in the muck.
“It was a hill, and we leveled it out, using the dirt to fill in between the walls. Come, look at the walls!” They rode over to the wall, and Mehetabel lifted herself up to see over the top of the wall: the two rows of stone with several feet of packed dirt between them.
They rode around some more, looking, and suddenly noticing the rumbling of the wagons, Ishvi rode off, with Mehetabel behind him.
“Come, Love! While the Dwarves move the stones, we haul gravel.”
He grabbed a tarp and some ropes off a wagon.
“Gravel?” Met asked him. The stream was just at the bottom of the hill, and he waited until they were there before answering.
“Yes. The Dwarves are building the walls with stones, and then fill them with gravel, gravel mixed with clay. They say it will make for a very strong wall, and it seems to be working. We need to get down now.”
Ishvi saw on Met’s face the same reluctance that he felt himself, but they both got down. Ishvi laid the tarp out at the edge of the stream and reluctantly waded in and started shoveling gravel into the tarp. Met joined him, walking with almost mincing steps into the stream and scooping gravel. Ishvi laughed, “This would be easier if we changed to Farmer, but then you would feel half naked.”
“And hungry,” she said, “I am already hungry from our first change. I’m not as good at it as Hadassah is, let alone Seth.”
Ishvi stopped for a second. “Seth’s body has seemed to adapt very well to changing. It is very odd, my Love, that nobody has ever heard of transformations before, and now we do them all the time.”
“Oh, but they have,” she assured him. “Not that they were common, but people had heard of them, Visserfrau especially, but not only them. But you are right, they have become much more common, among us, anyway. Perhaps they are something He Who Is has prepared just for this trip, for this adventure.”
Ishvi’s jaw tightened, but he had to acknowledge her logic. “Perhaps.”
“There, that is enough,” he said, some minutes later, climbing gratefully out of the water. Met got back up on her horse with a relieved sigh and Ishvi pulled the tarp together and tied it, handing her a rope and keeping one for himself. “Come, let us ride back.”
It took much longer to ride back up to the fort than it had taken to ride down, and they waited there in a line with other Horsemen for the Dwarves to haul off their tarps. “My, but they can pull quite a bit,” Met said, as one Dwarf pulled off their load, and three others helped him lift it up to the wall.
“Yes, they are short, but they are very strong,” Ishvi answered. “Come, we will need more.”
Three hours later, three very tiring hours later, the Dwarf that they met said, “That’s all we will need this time. We are wrapping up the work on top, and will be ready to ride out in a few minutes.”
“Well, good,” Ishvi said. “How did everything go?”
“Fine, Sir. It’s just basic wall work, nothing complex. If you would let us stay here while you all hauled stone back and forth…”
“I know, you would finish much faster. But… but I am not at ease about those Beasts. They make me very, very worried, and I couldn’t even tell you why.”
—
Ishvi was pacing along the walls; walls, now twice as tall as a Horseman, and taller than all but the tallest of the Beasts standing up on their hind legs.
The walls had been finished for three weeks, and the first week had been calm.
But then the attacks from the Beasts had begun, and had increased almost daily. All of the young Lords and several of the other Farmer couples had moved into the fort, into the rooms the Dwarves had made up against the walls all around the compound.
For days now Ishvi had been very disturbed. Indeed at times he was almost angry. This continuous work on the walls was proving impossible for the Farmers. Ever since that time on Schip, he had arisen as a leader, culminating in his appointment to this post. Angry over not being able to farm, he was even more frustrated that this, his most important assignment, was not going well.
Farmers are excellent workers, but they need to work. Standing for hours on a wall with nothing to do was extremely frustrating for them. Troll or Visser would have been fine with it; even Ellyll, who would have spent the time in contemplation. But Farmers couldn’t have nothing to do; and for Farmers, standing on the wall looking out for Beast attacks was nothing.
Farmers made good, even excellent, fighters, but not continually. They were accustomed to marching out somewhere, having a battle, getting it over with, and then going back home, back to work. This constant waiting and then continuous battle was impossible for them to sustain. When they got off shift after a battle they would go to bed, but couldn’t sleep, being too keyed up.
As a result, when the next call to battle came, they were dead tired and unable to fight effectively. Thus the walls were always under threat of being torn down, and there were far too many casualties. So far no one had died, but several were hors de combat, being tended by their Wives.
And it doesn’t help, Ishvi thought as he watched one of the young Plowlads poking at a smallish Beast that was worrying at the walls, that many of these men have never been off the farm before. They have never been trained even to hold their weapons. This particular man, for example; he is in no real danger, as the Beast is too small to do any damage. But the incompetent lout is holding the spear like a shovel. What else can one expect when one uses Farmers to man walls?
He froze, thinking. Suddenly everything that had been worrying him over the last few days crystallized. The entire solution washed over him in a few seconds and then he was moving forward, grabbing the spear from the unfortunate Farmer/soldier, holding it correctly, and bellowing, “Grinda Cha!”
“What?” exclaimed the lad, as several others in his vicinity turned their faces quizzically toward the two.
Ishvi slapped him full in the face, knocking him to the ground, and shouted again, “Grinda Cha!”
The young man cowered on the ground, until Ishvi pulled him up. He grabbed the lad’s hands, placed them on the spear in the proper position, covered them with his own, and forced him to the parapet. Then, by sheer force, he thrust the spear with both their hands on it down toward the Beast, which was very halfhearted in its own attack, and seemed annoyed at this vigor on their part.
“Grinda Cha! Grinda Cha!” Ishvi repeated with each thrust.
Bemused, the young Farmer thrust again and again in the proper position, even after Ishvi released his own hold. Several of the bystanders looked as if they would say something, but one look from Ishvi shut them up.
Others over the course of the afternoon were not so lucky or observant. Ishvi paced around and around the walls, muttering to himself in words no one understood, and forbidding, by force where necessary, any use of the ‘Farmer’ language. After the first few soldiers had been slapped, one or two right to the ground, the word got round the entire castle that something was up with Ishvi, and no one had better talk around him.
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von
Island People is a young adult fantasy book centring on a young prince. The book starts with his kidnapping and follows his adventures as he not only escapes from his kidnapper but gains critical allies and friends.
The entire book is scheduled on Substack, and there are several sequels. This is a book I wrote years ago, so it is in a bit of a rough form. Critiques and comments are more than welcome, they are requested.