Chapter 26 - Ant Hill
Soils of the Leva. SE Britain
Two young women march with heavy feet as mud sticks to their bark boots. They saunter side by side along a dirty trail churned by the hooves of Leva beasts. The dung of these tamed beasts has further enriched this sticky mess.
This world of the ant-people is always so muddy, mulls Ur’salla to herself as she strides along with a bloated companion. Here in this rudely rearranged world of degenerates, there’s always more mud spilling from long wounds into the belly of Nature. Today Ur’salla and Aniko don’t carry firewood to the saltpans. They’ve been tasked to tramp this southerly bound trail deeper into the spoiled lands of agriculturalists.
The trail follows the course of a small brook cutting across a rolling lowland landscape. The vale has been depleted of much of its original Nature and is only sporadically afforested. Stubborn mother trees remain along with thinned out copse as reserves of fuel, game, and for the fat swine that they've introduced. Elsewhere Ur’salla sees ash, dirt, tree trunks that have been stripped of their bark, along with a faint green veil of a springtime monoculture across gardens. Raked up brush borders their margins.
Here and there stand turf-walled shelters topped by roofs of thatch. Mothers clad in cowhide skirts chase their many children out from the crowded doorways of clay hut abodes. The little ones skip around cooking pots and earthen kilns. Aunts rise up from aching knees abandoning their labours. Uncles spit or chew on long straws from their crops, as proudly they lean onto long handled axes. This is a rare day for these aliens. A day of celebration albeit Ur’salla remains ignorant of its cause. She drifts along behind farmers dressed in their best leathers and calf-skins. Some of these folk wear the masks of their tame beasts upon bearded faces. A strawman priest joins this convoy, decked in his costume of wheat straw. Another follows, wearing a crown of bullhorns.
The muddy trail ascends free of the confines of the vale, gently climbing a prominent local hillside. This mount has been severely scorched by barbarians, clear-felled to leave no more than a dissipation of charred stumps around its lower slopes.
Ur’salla sees this and reflects to Aniko, ‘They’ve transformed this landscape to create a sacred breast from which they may suck the life-milk out of Nature’.
When they climb the open hill, Ur’salla notices that part way up the slopes, the Leva have cut a deep pit into the hillside.
She loudly speculates, ‘It must have taken the labours of many to hack this out with tools of antler and cow bone. What incredible effort and for what?’
This question catches the attention of Aniko who answers, ‘That ditch will act as a bridge to our ancestors whose spirits lay trapped beneath this sacred hill’.
Ur’salla just once dares to observe the bereaved forming a row to kneel on the lifted spoil of the deep pit. She hears their crones wail out deranged messages to lost husbands and sons. These mourners beseech their dead to join in celebration. Ur’salla witnesses one crone shear locks of her lank, grey hair into the ditch. She doesn’t stare. Such an act by a wildborn could be perceived to be a threat.
Aniko, with her belly swollen to full term, puts out a hand stalling Ur’salla’s progress, ‘Stop, we must wait here. Concubines may not enter the sacred circle of this hilltop unless summoned’.
Many people gather around the hilltop. Perhaps not a notable population in comparison to the crowds of your future world, but never before have I witnessed so many in one place. In addition to these people, Ur’salla sees that cattle have been tightly corralled into hillside enclosures. Her attention is drawn to focus on the hilltop rituals.
Men wearing crowns of bull horns, coax a lone white bull up a hillside and into the circle. They deliver this poor beast to those others who don suits of straw, gathered by a tall timber frame.
Discreetly, Ur’salla asks her friend, ‘Aniko, who are these men who wear the bull horns, and those others who are clad in straw?’
‘The former are the bullmen. Part-time priest of Ilua the bull father. The latter are the strawman, followers of Daghnu the wheat father’.
Ur’salla nods then spots the naked women who dance around the periphery of the circle. She does not ask, but surmises, and these must be the witches of Athiratu the frog mother, who the barbarian men fear.
She observes these rituals of religion. The strawmen priests place a thick rope around the neck of the white bull, as the others watch on. They wrench this rope over their timber gallows. The rope tightens as the white bull bucks and struggles. The bullmen scatter in a panic before the noose closes to drag the poor bull up against the timber and then up onto its hindquarters, forcing the poor beast to dance on two legs.
About the moment that white bull’s heart ceases to beat, Ur’salla senses my own presence. She turns to search for me, but finds me absent among the crowd. Confused, she returns her attention back towards the hilltop events. White Bull has been hoisted clear of the ground. His movements consist of death kicks as his spirit vacates. This execution is complete, and together the priests adjust their rope to invert the carcass.
One strawman moves forward with a blade of an exotic green stone held within his hands. Using this cold blade, he slices white bull’s throat. Several Bullmen move in, each clutching at a round bottomed pot. They clamber to catch a sacrificial ooze of bulls blood. The strawmen move back, forming an inner circle around the priests of Ilua. The witches make a wider circle. They dance and sing in praise of venerated ancestors. Several of the strawman-kind rattle the long bones of these ancestors to make a morbid music.
These rituals completed, Ur’salla watches on as butchers dismember the carcass of the sacrifice. Bullmen priests carry the severed head of white bull down to the pit. With prayers being said, on ropes they lower their offering to the dead.
Bonfires are ignited on the hilltop. Witches of the frog mother make divinations. These announced, the crowd roars with delight.
Perplexed, Ur’salla whispers another question to her companion, ‘Do not think I'm ignorant, but what is being celebrated today on this hilltop?’
Aniko frowns, then grumbles, ‘Today we give thanksgiving to ancestors. A brave venture has been launched. Our pioneers have entered river valleys to the north of the Lynx, where their scouts have found virgin lands of light soils’. Insensitive to how this might affect Ur’salla, Aniko returns her focus to the celebrations. Ur’salla reels with shock. Blood drains from her face, as vomit threatens,
North of the Lynx might well refer to the wilds of my own kin. My own paradise to be devoured by this ugly progress by barbarians. Not all hope is drained away by Aniko’s thoughtless statement. Ur’salla refuses to despair. She tells herself, I am the Huntress, and descendant of Ma’ankilla of-the-Moon.
The rituals complete, priests and witches host an exchange of livestock. Leva boys are called on to drive cattle up from hillside hurdles and into the sacred circle. There these beasts are reassigned to new collective owners before driven back down to new enclosures. Brides of the Leva are next to be exchanged. Maidens are beaten up the hill by brothers armed with birch. In the circle, the priests relocate them to the communes of their intended grooms.
Cattle, and then their women. The priority of this strange new culture she reflects. Her own peace is disturbed when she is rudely reminded that the Leva own livestock of lower value. The boys return from the hilltop, with their sticks bloodied by the flayed flesh of beasts and sisters. They eye their outcastes, the wildborn concubines kept captive. One such barbarian boy, perhaps no older than ten summers of age, ambitiously has chosen the tall Goshawk savage as his latest charge.
Ur’salla has just endured the sting of his swipe, but Aniko begs for her restraint, ‘Please Ur’salla! Should you strike him back then his uncles will break both of us. I can’t risk my child’. With her warning made, Aniko grabs onto Ur’salla’s hand, and leads her into the hilltop circle. Their little tormentor watches their compliance as he giggles at his mischief.
Inside the sacred circle, two concubines are confronted by a red-faced bullman. Crowned by bull horns, this unpleasant barbarian curses, before he uses his stone headed mace to break apart their hands. He waves this weapon at each of them interceded by two opposing hillsides. Aniko has been commanded to return to the clan of the saltpans, whilst Ur’salla is directed to new masters. There is no allowance for farewells nor hugs. They part abruptly.
Ur’salla joins a new commune of Leva folk. She searches among their ugly faces but finds no friendship. Unsupported, she stares down at her feet in the manner as prescribed to her by Aniko. Ur’salla practises her new art of faking deference. Later she'll plan her escape.
Hilltop celebrations finally completed, the ants leave their hill. Worshippers pick up baggage before commencing their return to the turf-walled hovels dispersed across their stolen landscape. Obediently and in silence, Ur’salla follows her new clan of masters. They return to the vale that brought her here, but thereafter the route alters to a more westerly direction away from the saltpans.
This convoy trudges down into a wider river valley. Ur’salla sees a wooden jetty has been constructed to project into the waterway. Moored to this jetty is a longboat of the Leva. While some watercraft of the barbarians consist of dugouts or simple baskets of wicker and cowhide, they additionally construct amazing craft of timbers split from the forests of damaged wilds. These timbers they skilfully join supported by withies of willow. To these clever joins they apply pitch to make a seal.
The convoy reaches the jetty. A few bovines are first to be drugged before bound up, and dragged aboard. While this work is being done, Ur’salla reflects on her experiences with these aliens, the pioneer’s hall acts as a focus for a community of these farmers. But today on the hilltop I witnessed the coming together of several such barbarian collectives.
Ur’salla doesn’t quite understand what she has seen. More than community, through collective worship and exchange, the birth of wider society. Religion acts as its glue, fortified by collective efforts, the construction of a megalithic tomb, or a pioneers’ hall. A deep cut ditch upon a hill, or the building of a timber sea-going vessel. Ur’salla couldn't fully understand this alien and complex culture. She fears there are too many of these ant-people. Her indigenous kind will not be able to slow their progress.
The beasts are on the farmers’ ark. A few wildborns including Ur’salla are next to tread the ramp. They are forced to cram between a gang of miserable oarsmen. Finally the masters board. Mooring ropes are released as a barbarian sea-captain barks out his orders. Oarsmen steer the rudderless vessel out into the channel. A sleek bow of woven reed parts the waters.
The longboat follows the river to reach its mouth. As Ur’salla had guessed, it flows out to join with the salty waters of the Serpentine Estuary. The crew fight to traverse the currents, as the sun falls to the horizon, Ur’salla sees beacons of salt pan fires which burn beyond the southern marshes.
Quietly she prays to spirits, ‘Please safeguard poor Aniko and her unborn child’.
The waters grow rough as the timber boat wrestles against treacherous currents racing out to the eastern sea. A gust blows salt air across her face while waves conspire to bob this sea-boat up and down with violence. The seal-skinned captain is fearful they could be carried out to sea. With increasing intensity he screams out demands upon his crew. Passengers begin to cry out in alarm, whilst others vomit up their ant-hill feast onto the sweaty backs of the rowers.
The sun has died to be replaced by the darkness of night. The longboat evades conflicting currents to slide into calmer waters of a northern shore. There beyond more salt-marshes, Ur’salla can see a few torchlights of hearths. She welcomes this new destiny on northern lands. These she knows to be the barbarian encroached wilds of the southern Lynx. Closer to the own home wilds of the Goshawk, and absent of any wide stretch of estuary to cross.
She optimistically speculates, surely here my chances of successful escape will be much enhanced!
New hope warms her Goshawk heart to permit a rare smile to crack her salty lips.