Tall Man we called him.
Tall-Man-On-A-Hill was not that tall. Tall Man saw things that no one else saw.
I don’t mean spirits, although some would say that were true. Tall Man could
see the way behind us and before us, and sometimes within us. Tall Man was able
to see what others could not see.
It was the dawn of the first day
of the diaspora, and Tall Man looked back at the valley he was leaving behind.
The children mostly lay in the wagons with their mothers gathering them under
blankets and near their breasts to keep them warm.
Men and women pulled the carts
filled high with sacks of dry bread, and barrels filled with water. Nothing
seemed to be left behind for the enemy. All they would find were empty houses,
and what we could carry was enough to last us several days, if we were
conservative. There were to be no fires.
There were to be few tracks. We swept the ground behind us. We covered over the
dung. We rode single file.
Tall Man knew we would not be
gone from the valley for long, but he did not want the year’s harvest to waste.
Livestock could not easily be transported without slowing our pace. We could
not bring everything.
The caverns below the village
were known to all, but explored by fewer than ten of our people. Tall Man was
one such explorer. The tunnels were dangerous, and they wound deep below the
river valley. Some said that these caves were the remains of a great city which
once stood there, the steel girders and thick glass windows and concrete walls
and asphalt roads long hidden by the wild, sunken low by the river waters and
heaving frosts of winters past.
The caverns were dangerous, but they were passable by those who knew
their secrets. It was Tall Man’s idea to move the livestock and the year’s
harvest below ground, along with our other belongings. It would take us many
hours of hard work to pack what we would need for the winter under the ground.
A few of the men and women stayed behind to tend to the stock resting
underground, and several others to tend to their needs as well, healers,
teachers, and leaders.
When Tall Man was a younger, shorter lad, he
would often spend weeks underground, exploring its depths, returning with what
treasures he could find. Sometimes he would bring back relics of a bygone age,
coins, jewelry, and strange devices, whose use was long forgotten. He often
found the bones of the dead, long buried by the centuries. Often, he found the
most sacred relics, the books and the words of the ancient people who lived in
that great ancient city of steel and concrete and glass.
Tall man was no stranger to the caverns. He
survived a rock tumble, digging himself out after a ten day struggle beneath
rubble and glass and steel. Ten days, he could breathe, and water seeped down
through the cracks in the walls. Many of the caverns were filled with water,
eyeless fish swam there, and he did not starve for lack of food. But it was
cold, and damp, and dark.
He thought upon the cattle there, and the food
and winter provisions. They would have to remain hidden for some time, he
thought, at least as long as they dared. And there was no way to tell how many
days would pass under the ground.
Tall Man feared the repercussions of the
village’s actions. Leaving the whiskey was agreeable – the people of the book
did not much like whiskey, and traded instead for things of value. Whiskey
dulled the brain and stole vitality from the body. Whiskey was a devil and
burned the soul. Whiskey was no friend, and neither were its makers.
Tall Man was a man of letters, like his
kinfolk. He spent his time pondering the writings of the people who came before
them. He understood much of what was written, but much was also lost on this
generation. Such writings as they could reckon were for a different age, its
time long past. Tall Man thought upon such things as Trains and Helicopters and
Computers –
but these things were
unfathomable, even to Tall Man’s sight.
Tall Man had read of such things, seen images
in the books he dug up from the deep, their pages well preserved under sand and
rock and steel. The words were often alien, the edges of the paper brittle, but
much was salvageable. A man of technology could not appreciate that the written
word would long outlast the digital ones and zeros. But these were not Tall
Man’s thoughts.
Tall Man worried for the future. If the
village to the North and the village to the East were conspiring against them,
they would not take too kindly to a poisoned batch of liquor. Were they to send
twenty men on horses bearing steel, they might drink heavily enough, and there
is no telling whether they would drink of the poison or not, but certainly they
would send a second group, and perhaps a third later on if the first were not
to return in due course. The village to the North may also send a score of warriors,
and learn perhaps of the demise of the first score. Three cases of whiskey
could hardly poison them all. And the ark underground would not last much
longer than a fortnight or two without proper air and sunlight. He feared for
them.
Tall-Man-On-A-Hill thought long and deep, and
dwelt upon the language of his forefathers. Was there anything he had learned
from the pages his people collected so diligently?
The people of his valley were not warriors, they were farmers and
hunters and healers. They knew of simple traps and snares to catch rabbits and
squirrels, and bow hunting to take down larger game, and of the stories of
clever men and women from times long past. They knew little of the ways of
swords and guns and treachery and war, except the very few who were traded from
traveling tribes, some who chose to remain because of a woman or a man, some
who found our people after long wanderings in the wilderness and joined us for
our pleasant ways. There were eight warriors amongst them, and this was
certainly no army. Their arms were strong, but their memories for such things
were not as sharp as they could have been - were they to be skirmished and
practiced daily against other seasoned warriors, they may have kept their
skills sharp, and honed the peace dulled spears of the young. No, these were
warriors turned farmers – the plough in hand does not so easily return to
blade.
Tall Man took stock of this people’s dilemma –
do they return to the valley too soon and risk being taken by the Warriors of
the North or of the East, or do they return too late and lose the livestock and
people buried underground? The consequences of the latter were too terrible to
think upon. The consequences of the former needed further planning. He needed
to protect his people, while also protecting the virtues that made them who
they were.
The sun began to peak over the hills to the
East, rising up over the land behind them. They would turn South, now,
following the river into the mountains, as it snaked its way through the
foothills, back to the glaciers from whence it was born.
Tall Man nodded off to sleep while riding aback his horse, it followed
the hand drawn cart before it, making pace with the sun following swiftly
behind.