The First Book of the Pure (5 page)

Emerging from the far side of the melee, he
chased a small group of barbarians who had decided it was healthier
to hide and come back later. He let them move faster than he did.
He could have caught them, for he could run for hours. Even though
there were several of them, he could have killed them all, such a
warrior was Maximus Palamos. Yet he continued until he was out of
sight of the battle, and went on to the caves he had recently
visited.

After moving deeply into his hide, he lay
down and made himself comfortable. He dropped his armor in a pile
and arranged his weapons.
Sad
that a man such as I would
have had enough of life.
He gave his leather pouch of gold
coins and jewels a gentle kick and said to it. “If there is an
afterlife, you could be helpful, but I don’t think I’ll be needing
you again.” He lay down and began to breath more slowly, then very
shallowly, and then stopped breathing altogether. The heart of the
greatest warrior in the history of Rome simply stopped.

***

“Ah, another of your pure people dies.”
Wanting to forestall any attack from his host, he continued
quickly. “Please don’t misunderstand me. While I really do find
this all very interesting, I don’t quite get it. They all seem to
die, and that doesn’t seem to fit into what you started with.”

Those bottomless, dead eyes stared at him for
a moment, and then, “I will continue. Maximus lay dead for many
years, his body safe in the caves from men and animals, hidden away
with care before he ‘skipped.’”

“Wait.” Kenneth raised his hand holding the
pen he was using just slightly, to signal his lack of
understanding. “Skipped?”

With a sigh his host stared him into silence.
“You’ll recall that I said we can move toward the future
differently than you?” When Kenneth had nodded, he continued. “You
move through time by seconds, while we can move through it by
decades or more. Maximus lay still until Rome was no longer a world
power. He awakened several times, and each time spent just a few
months to a year awake, living off the land and making very few
contacts with people. He was convinced each time that the world
hadn’t changed much, so he returned to his sanctuary for another
skip. He skipped in and out until the Renaissance had come, and the
world had mellowed somewhat. Then he rose. I believe he lay as long
as his body would allow each time without inviting true death to
overtake it.

“Normally it’s simply a matter of setting an
internal clock. It’s as natural to us as the ability to wake at a
certain time is for those people who can do it, and we ‘program’
ourselves in a way, as they do, to wake after a certain length of
time. It’s far from precise, and we really don’t know exactly how
it’s done. I think each of us, the first time, thought we were
really letting ourselves die. Insects and the bacteria that send
the dead back to dust and dirt seem to avoid us in that state; why,
I don’t really know, even now. I do know that the first time I
“skipped,” I did think I would die, but I also couldn’t bear to
give up all my wealth, so I took some with me. Let’s face it
Kenneth, money is a form of score keeping in this world. I have a
high score. Think of the old Pharaohs hiding their wealth in their
tombs. I don’t really think they intended to take it into the
afterlife; it was just a way to hang onto what was theirs. I
suppose they hoped that by doing so it wouldn’t become the property
of someone else.

“But Max arose, gathered his things, his
wealth, and left the cave.

“Gheret did the same thing actually, and his
is a very interesting story, so I believe I’ll share the next step
of his journey before I give you the other side, as it were,
because there are very definitely two sides to us.”

Gheret’s Return

Shaking himself awake, Gheret took stock of
his surroundings, and slowly tried to rise. It was like rising from
being seated too long in the same position, but much more intense.
He really thought he was finally dead, after far more years than a
man should live. But he was pretty sure a dead man shouldn’t be
breathing, or feeling so cold. Especially he shouldn’t be hungry,
and Gheret was very hungry.

This was the first time Gheret had slept the
long sleep of a “skip,” and he was as surprised as anyone else
would have been, had they still been alive to see him. He had
stayed with his first people for many generations as he should have
aged, but didn’t. In that setting, little attention was given to
such a life. Life spans were so short as to make it problematic to
track anyone’s length of years. In their minds, he just made it
from their generation to the next. There was no record-keeping
except stories, and nobody would likely challenge him anyway. In
reality he had been with them for many hundreds of years, and
helped shape their tribe and culture from the crudest of beginnings
to what it was today. But he hadn’t done this particular thing
before.

He was pretty obviously alive, but also
hungry, cold, and uncomfortably stiff. After lying there awake for
awhile, he struggled upright and staggered from the caves, to a far
different scene than he’d left. The forest was thinner and it was
much warmer than he remembered for the season when he entered the
cave. This area had always been warm, but not like this. He decided
then and there that he would live in a cold climate, and start
over. And so he did.

His travels took decades, but then, he had
the years in which to do it. That journey also included additional
long skips, one near a sweet water lake as big as an ocean. He
stood and just stared out at it, amazed at the immensity of the
vast lake, and its lack of salt.

He eventually ended in an upper western arm
of the North American continent, where there was snow and cold
aplenty, and game, and fewer people than in the lands he’d traveled
to get there. The people, who called themselves Inuit, were
welcoming and friendly. He stayed with a small tribe while he
learned their language and ways. They were patient people, and had
learned how to survive in a harsh environment. He liked them, and
he liked their fortitude. Particularly he liked the igloos he
examined as they visited tribes much further north. It sparked an
engineering mind-set he hadn’t been aware of in himself. He learned
their way with the spear, the bow and the knife, and they found
that he had skills to teach them as well. They were intuitive
people, and intelligent. It didn’t take them long to realize that
he was different in ways other than his looks. He had no epicanthic
folds, the uniquely angled eyes shared by some races, and he was
taller than the tallest of them. His strength was a wonder to his
new people. They had many hunters, but none with his natural
strength and prowess.

What set him apart most was his fearlessness
and ability to do nearly anything he attempted. He decided to hunt
one of the great bear of their area, which stood six feet taller
than he was when on its hind legs. He insisted on going alone, and
was gone far too long. They had long since given him up for dead.
But then he returned, hauling a great brown hide. The scars on his
back and sides were still healing. The elders of the tribe knew he
shouldn’t have survived that hunt, but the fact that he did made
him not just a great warrior, but a wonderful addition to the
tribe. No other individual could provide food and safety for the
tribe like Gheret.

***

Eventually he married one of the tribe. At
the age of becoming a woman, just 14 years, Annu’e was lovely, with
raven hair and smooth skin, darker than his own. Her eyes too were
dark, and she captured his heart with them. She was a tiny thing,
standing four feet seven inches tall, weighing maybe ninety
pounds.

Through their years together they eventually
had three children, all boys. He was somehow surprised at that,
because they didn’t have a child for nearly ten years. Then the
boys came, one each year. Of all the children he was aware of who
had sprung from his seed, none were girls. He filed that away to
give it further thought at another time. These three sons were each
one year apart, and he taught them great skills. At eleven, twelve,
and thirteen they were skilled trackers, and could follow an arctic
hare, nearly invisible in the snow, and get close enough to take it
without a bow.

As they grew in years, they also gained in
strength, skill, and of course the desire to be men. That winter
Gheret took them, all three of them, on the great hunt. His
farewell to his wife was the same as always: he expressed his love
and told her if he did not get back that she should not mourn long,
and be glad for the time they had together, and for their sons.

His oldest son, Achar, was the biggest,
nearly as large as a grown man. He was arrogant and fairly mean
spirited, but obedient to his father and respectful to his mother,
which was about all Gheret required from them. Achar wasn’t
particularly interesting as a person. Even as they readied the
final preparations for the hunt, Achar was trying to bully
An’Kahar. “Just carry it!”

“Carry it yourself, you great moose!”
An’Kahar yelled back.

Achar attempted a back hand swing at his
smaller, more nimble brother, who dodged him and kicked a foot from
beneath him. Achar fell, cursing An’Kahar.

His middle son, Luntar, was a good boy,
adequate in all that he did, and intelligent. While being adequate,
Luntar was not particularly interesting either. As he walked by his
feuding brothers, Luntar whacked An’Kahar on the side of his head,
stunning him and sending him to the ground. He kept walking toward
their sled, ignoring both his brothers.

An’Kahar was the youngest. Gheret watched as
his son got to his feet.
Now that boy is interesting
. He was
very intelligent, scheming and manipulative. He could get his older
brothers to do most anything for him, convincing them through some
odd or twisted logic that they should do his work for him. As
An’Kahar started toward Achar to keep the fight going, Gheret
stopped the quarrel. “Enough! To the sled, now!” Obediently the
boys headed out.

Together they traveled for two days, camping
in the dry, sheltered areas under the great pines, out of the snow.
When they were just hours from the prey, Gheret sat them down and
explained his plan and their parts in it. “You, Achar, and you
Luntar, will make the kills. You will lie in the snow as I’ve
taught you, with lances just under the powdery snow. When the beast
comes at you, wait till it’s almost on you, get to your knees,
brace your spear on the ground and let it impale itself. You each
know how to do this from all the practicing.”

An’Kahar was incensed and broke into the
explanation. “But father, I’m skilled and can…” He got nothing else
out because his father sent him flying with one back handed blow.
There was no explanation, no warmth or comfort following that
painful strike. Gheret continued as though there had been no
interruption, although Achar and Luntar cast amused glances at
their brother.

“You, An’Kahar, will go far around them and
then drive them to us. Don’t presume to tell me how this shall be.
I’m the last line, in case we don’t get two as they come by. But
I’m sure you boys will make your kills.” With a curt wave of his
arm he sent his youngest boy to circle around behind the prey.

An’Kahar, thin, wiry, and cunning, took his
time circling around behind the herd. His anger and resentment
after his father had struck him was slowing his steps. He was
ashamed before his brothers, and in some pain as well, although he
shook that off as they’d all learned to do. Finally, hours later,
he’d circled in a wide path, and the caribou were just ahead,
between him and his family. He took out the metal pieces that were
connected by twine, and his spear. He raised himself up and
challenged the great beasts with a roar, racing toward them and
screaming at the top of his lungs, all the while shaking the string
of metals together to make a loud and scary noise, at least to the
brutish caribou. They were magnificent creatures, any of which
could have crushed this boy with their great antlers. But startled,
they yielded to their flight reflex. Off they ran at full speed,
An’Kahar at their haunches, screaming and waving.

In mere minutes the distance that had taken
him hours to carefully traverse were eaten up, and the caribou were
racing directly toward Gheret. His older sons were invisible,
hidden in the snow, lances ready.

Achar was first, and rose up perfectly,
impaling the rushing beast on his long lance. The weight and
momentum of the animal meant that it couldn’t be stopped with the
lance, only killed. As it died with its great heart pierced, it
nearly crushed Achar as it fell on the lance at the place Achar had
just vacated. His move was practically perfect in that he held the
lance until the heart was pierced, but moved so quickly after that
was accomplished that the beast dropped next to him and not on him.
Even a successful kill could leave a hunter maimed.

Luntar however, was not so smooth. He jumped
from the snow late, and his lance was not set firmly at the base,
so the speeding caribou was only dealt a glancing blow with the
lance, which didn’t deliver even a crippling blow, let alone a
deadly one. Luntar was thrown to the side, hurting his left leg as
he hit. The maddened caribou rushed on, mindless now in its fear
and panic, Luntar’s lance hurting it as it bobbed and held to the
beast with several inches of the blade in its muscle. Unfortunately
the caribou ran near Gheret, but not into his lance. Gheret leaped
up, hurled his heavy lance at the stampeding caribou, causing it to
stumble as the spear hit. With several lifetimes of skill, Gheret
chased the great beast, leaped on its back and held onto its broad
antlers. Anchoring himself with one arm, he drove his knife into
the thick neck repeatedly, and as the beast dropped on its side, he
had his knife at its throat, ready to finish it. But the mighty
heart of the caribou was already beating its last, and the bellows
of its great lungs released their last gust of warm breath.