The Blood-stained Belt

By

Brian H.
Jones

Smashwords
edition

Published by
Aichje Books on Smashwords

Aichje Books --
Goulburn, NSW, Australia

The
Blood-stained Belt

Copyright ©
2010 by Brian H. Jones

ISBN
978-0-9808107-0-7

Written by
Brian H. Jones

Cover design
and artwork by Elaine Cornwell

Published by
Brian H. Jones

Goulburn, NSW,
Australia

All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise –
without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only
exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Smashwords
Edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is
licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be
re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share
this book with another person, please purchase an additional coy
for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase
it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return
to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the hard work of this author.

'You know what
Joab son of Zeruiah did to me when he murdered my two army
commanders, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether. He pretended
that it was an act of war, but it was done in a time of peace,
staining his belt and sandals with innocent blood' (The Bible, 1
Kings, 2: 5)

CHAPTER ONE:
WHEN LAND AND PEOPLE MEET THE SEA

Yesterday I saw
Sharma struggling to heave his bulk across the courtyard, cursing
at the men who supported him. When he stubbed his toe and pitched
forward only the strength of both servants saved him from thudding
to the ground. The great one of Keirine is falling and who knows
who and what will collapse with him? Whatever happens, one thing is
for sure – I won’t be around to see it. Sharma will ensure that.
Yet, in spite of that, I can’t bring myself to hate him. I should,
but I can’t. We’ve shared so much, done so much together, hoped and
striven for so much that to hate him would be like negating part of
myself. I can grit my teeth at him, ball my fists in frustration,
and let my thoughts stalk all over that barren wilderness that is
marked by roads not taken and signposts obtusely ignored – but, no,
I can’t hate Sharma.

By Zabrazal,
Sharma and I go back so far that remembering our early days is like
trying to see the shapes of other people’s lives while peering down
a mist-hazy tunnel. Somewhere back there, I will find the days when
Sharma and I played stick-and-hit together with the other
bare-footed boys. Somewhere back there is the time when we were
shoved into school to endure its misery for four years. That’s
where we met and became friends. Together with forty other boys we
hunched together on rough benches balancing our slates on our
knees. The mud-plastered, turf-roofed building was too cold in
winter and too hot in summer while what went on inside was either
tedious or frightful. We flinched as we waited to see who would be
the next victim of old Aggam’s tongue-lashing or, worse still, who
would be the next to be beaten across his shoulders with the stick
that Aggam brandished as he stalked the boards, a slave-master to
his cowering slave-pupils. It was like watching the dice being
rolled – if your number didn’t come up now, it would come up soon
enough. You couldn’t escape Aggam’s stick. You could only hope to
avoid it for as long as possible.

Also, somewhere
down that hazy tunnel is the day that we lay at our ease on the
shoulder of a hill that overlooked the coastal plain. Sucking on a
stalk of grass, Sharma rested on his elbows and pronounced
confidently, ‘I’m telling you, Jina, one day we’ll conquer the
Dornites. We’ll take their land all the way from here to the
coast.’

‘Oh? What makes
you think so?’

‘It’s our
destiny.’

‘Destiny! Ha!
What do you know about destiny?’

Sharma sat up
and looked hard at me, the yellow flecks in his eyes glinting.
‘There’s a prophecy that says, “Keirine only shall be free, when
land and people meet the sea.” Have you heard it?’

‘Sure, I’ve
heard it. So what?’

‘I believe
it.’

‘How can you
believe it? It’s just something that Aggam made up.’

‘Ha! It has
nothing at all to do with that old fool Aggam. It comes straight
from the oracle at Oshigna.’

‘How do you
know?’

‘Because my
father told me so. He heard it from someone who heard it direct
from the oracle. That’s how I know!’ Sharma clicked his fingers in
a gesture of finality.

I grunted and
settled back against a rock, basking in the warmth of the sun. When
land and people reach the sea? It was a hopeless dream. I banished
it with a shrug. Even at that early age I suspected that dreams and
visions betray you like wraiths that lead their credulous victims
into fathomless swamps. Dreams and visions have been Sharma's
provenance rather than mine. Mind you, cat-like as always, he’s had
the tenacity to stalk them and then to seize the opportunities when
they presented themselves. And, for all my scepticism, I have
prowled at Sharma’s shoulder, my caution outweighed by his visions
of the glories that awaited us when at last we scaled the
heights.

We were taking
a risk that day when we lay on the hilltop and looked out across
the coastal plain. Mind you, we didn’t have much choice because
there weren’t a lot of other places that we could go. It was the
dry season and there was no grazing left closer to Osicedi so we
had shepherded our flocks further eastwards than we had ever been.
From our vantage point, the sea was clearly visible across the
coastal plain. It might have looked near but in fact it was
inaccessible because the Dornites occupied all of the plain between
the foothills and the coast. So near and yet so far -- to us, as
with everyone else in Keirine, the coast might as well have been
beyond the furthest islands of the Endless Ocean.

But that was a
long time ago – so long ago that it seems like it happened
yesterday. Ah, the deceptions of memory! I close my eyes and, once
again, Sharma and I wander across the sunlit hills behind the sheep
or march south a few years later, comrades in youth-fired
expectation, to enlist in Vaxili’s army. I open my eyes and I come
back to the reality of being confined in a stone-walled room, three
paces wide by four paces long. Sharma? Well, then, what about the
great Sharma, lord and master of Keirine? Forget about titles,
forget about achievements, forget about power – one thing is for
certain: he has a little more space in which to pace but he’s no
freer than I am. We’re both prisoners of old age and betrayal,
Sharma and me. We share those same intractable realities even
although our stories, for so long woven together like the strands
of a piece of twine, have finally reached the loose, unraveling
end.

Our friendship
was cemented while we were suffering at school together. Even now,
my memory curdles as I recall how I hated school and I hated Aggam!
Early on, I resolved never to let that old sadist see what I felt.
No matter how much I raged and wept inwardly, I always showed him
an implacable face. I made a point of enduring the pain of my
beatings in tight-lipped silence, never giving Aggam the smallest
hint of how much I suffered. Whack! Whack! The blows would descend
on my shoulders while Aggam, panting, eyes glinting, would roar
exultantly, ‘Aha! So mister Jina is too proud to cry, is he? We’ll
break that stubborn streak, won’t we, eh?’ Whack! Whack! ‘Aha! Beat
the child and save the man. One day you will thank me for this, my
boy.’ The more Aggam beat me, the more I bit my lips, clenched my
fists, and retreated into baleful silence.

On the other
hand, Sharma deliberately provoked Aggam. He would stretch forward
as far as he could, twitch his shoulders and then raise them high,
offering them freely to the stick and to Aggam’s lust. With each
blow, Sharma would emit a low hiss that sounded like steam escaping
from a kettle. When the beating was over, he would look steadily at
Aggam, tight-mouthed, saying nothing but with the yellow flecks in
his eyes glowing. After a while, Aggam gave up beating Sharma.
However, he continued to assault me

Now, on the day
when Sharma lay on the hilltop propped up on his elbows, sucking on
a stalk of grass, all that was behind us – thank Zabrazal for these
mercies! We had done our five years of school and now we were free
from Aggam's caustic control. We sat there companionably, looking
over the hills that fell away below us, watching the sheep grazing.
What was there to say? Prophecy or no prophecy, even youngsters
like us could see how matters stood. The vegetation here in the
uplands was thin and unreliable. Life was hard and insecure. To
make matters worse, we were always in danger of being attacked by
the Dornites. They treated the land, people, and property of
Keirine like their private beehives, to be raided at their
pleasure. Even at such a young age, I sensed that the struggle with
the Dornites would never end until one side completely conquered
the other. Neither the seemingly endless succession of
sun--drenched days nor the endless vistas of hills, plains, and
valleys could drive away that dark knowledge.

Sharma reached
into his tunic and took out his sling. He picked up a stone, put it
into the pouch and stood there swinging the weight. Then, finding a
suitable place, he pointed towards a chest-high rock and said,
‘Let’s have some target practice’. I walked over and placed small
stones on top of it while Sharma looked at the targets with
narrowed eyes, grinned and said, ‘They’re getting smaller all the
time, aren’t they?’ He crouched and flexed his shoulders before he
whirled the sling, reached peak momentum and let fly. Plink! The
stone on the left went flying off the rock. Sharma continued to
demolish the targets, missing only one out of the eight. Annoyed at
having missed one, he took another shot just to make sure that he
could do it. Plink! The last stone went flying. Sharma surveyed the
results of his work with satisfaction and then handed the sling to
me, saying, ‘It's your turn now.’

I relied, ‘No
thanks! Some other time, maybe.’

Sharma thrust
the sling at me, saying, ‘Come on, man, have a go! We’ve got plenty
of time. Have some target practice.’

I took the
sling reluctantly. Although I wasn’t bad with it, I was nowhere
near as good as Sharma was. In the first place, I didn’t practise
half as much as he did. Also, even at that young age I preferred a
spear. I've always liked the solid weight and balanced feel of a
good spear. I like to see it fly through the air, level and sleek,
dark with intent, quivering down its length as if eager to reach
its goal. Most of all, I like to hear the emphatic thump as it hits
its target.

I gave in to
Sharma’s urging and took aim with the sling. In spite of the fact
that I hadn’t practised much lately my aim wasn’t too bad and I
managed to hit five out of the eight targets. Sharma said,
generously, that the unsuccessful shots had all been close misses.
He also showed me a new technique that he had developed, in which
he dropped his wrist level with his eyes just as he released the
sling.

Our target
practice was a lot more than merely the playful activity of two
boys with time to spare. When we were out on the hills, we needed
straight arms and sure eyes for our own protection as well as for
the good of our flocks. For instance, when a wolf attacked the
sheep only a few weeks earlier, Sharma disabled it with two shots
from his sling before I finished it off with a spear thrown from
medium range and then with a flurry of thrusts from close distance.
At first we were terrified but then, when we succeeded, we were
ecstatic. We hugged each other, laughed and cheered and pranced
around the dead body which was still shaggy with menace. Even as we
celebrated, we were in awe at what we had done while,
simultaneously, we were filled with the explosive, new knowledge of
what we could do. It was the harbinger of greater things to
come.

We only left
the hilltop and the view of the shimmering coast line when the sun
began to sink lower in the sky. Sharma jerked a thumb and said, ‘I
guess we’d better round up the sheep.’ He was right. Even at night,
it was risky to be so far to the east in no-man’s land. We would
have to move the sheep westwards, further into the hills.

After we herded
the flocks into a dead-end ravine and secured the entrance with
thorny branches, we made our camp about thirty paces up the slope
above the mouth of the ravine. It was Sharma’s idea. He said that
there was less chance that someone would find us if we camped
higher up. Even while I grumbled about the awkwardness of our
position, squeezed into a small space between a boulder and the
stony hillside, I knew that he was right. He usually was.