Stranger Times

To Be Remembered

A constellation of eyes watched and waited on a moonless light. Their faces flickered and shifted under the light of a single bonfire. Distant crickets shouted against the staccato crackling of burning wood; quiet sounds thundering into the silence the warriors left as they waited.

Waited for me.

Waited for me to tell the story of my clan, who lay in the fields or were carried in the idle current of the river.

Waited for me to tell how my clan died.

Waited for me to tell how my clan lived.

I struggled to speak, but grief gripped my throat and quashed the words before my mind could form them. I was no skald, no chief. I did not know how to speak of what my friends, my family, gave to stop the mad chief who wished for a crown.

My thumb rubbed against a small, flat stone that dangled off the haft of the spear I still clutched. Had clutched since the dawn, when it was given to me in trust.

And as I traced that bauble, that my father had worn around his neck, I remembered the last words that he ever spoke to me.

"We will live as long as we are remembered."

Like an avalanche begun by a single cry, the words finally broke from my terrified, grieving thoughts and spilled out into the air.

"My father said that, when he handed me this spear and told me to wait. He knew you would come with rage and arrows, and break the usurper's tribes," I said breathlessly, struggling to weave the thoughts into a story as they tumbled off my lips.

"He sent me to the hill, just above the shallow bend, so that I could tell their tale. So they wouldn't be forgotten. Then they covered themselves with blankets of moss and grass, or hid in the water and breathed through hollow reeds. And there they waited for that monster who called himself the sun god."

I took a deep breath, and smiled. "The usurper reached the river at sunrise. The fool."

I paused to take in the shifting expressions of the warriors who listened. Many of them balked in surprise, a few scowled. But some of the older hunters, the weather-worn warriors of many winters, smiled in understanding.

"He lead his horde in his gold painted chariot, and believed he was invincible under the sun. He lead at the front, without scouts. He marched his horde towards the sun just as it bit at their eyes, and helped hide our ambush."

"When my friends were children, the oldest hunters tried to teach us that patience was the deadliest skill. I never knew it, until I watched the war chief in his gold chariot wade into the river. His horses slogged forward, the water up to their bellies. His closest companions fell behind with the water up to their chests. It was like they came to be ambushed."

"My brother was the first to reach the chariot. He threw himself over the front of the cart, and punched his spear into the usurper's chest so hard the spear-tip pierced out his back. Arrows and then spears swept into his closest companions, and none of the men in the river escaped."

"Then my brother and his closest friends turned the chariot around. They led the horses back through the river, and just as their hordes drew close, charged the chariot into them."

I laughed a little, recalling the sight. "They scattered like birds startled by a charging wolf. Dozens of clans with all of their warriors, pushed back by two men and a wagon."
"But that could only last so long. Eventually, they killed the horses and halted the chariot. My brother was lost in a sea of stabbing spears."

"My father gathered the clan at the far side of the river, and commanded everyone to hold their place. My family, my people, all stood and waited, while they carved my brother's body apart and threw his head into the river."

"Eventually, other chiefs and leaders in their force herded them into the river. The sun had risen higher and they could see how few we were. But my father wouldn't let them run. My clan held, even as they crossed the river. We met them at the shores with our spears and swords and arrows, held on the shores as they waded through the shallows to reach us."

"Their bodies littered the river, but it didn't take them long to encircle us. They offered no quarter, even as we fell and the circle shrank to a few dozen of us. I wanted to join, I wanted to die with them, but I had orders. Orders from a father who knew how to defeat that horde."

"You know the rest. You butchered them in their multitudes, and washed their ambitions in the river. But this is important; you didn't avenge my father and my family. You were the last act in his plan to kill the usurper's dream. You showed the clans that no man is a god, that no man can ever be a god. And my father wanted me to live so that I would remind you of that truth."

I paused finally, and took a breath. I stepped forward into that crowd, directly to one of the chiefs, a proud warrior who had been first to clash with the enemy. I stepped in front of him, and held out my hand.

"And as long as they are remembered, no man will ever try to make himself a god."

The chief met my gaze, and eventually handed me a sword decorated with the rising sun, a sword that had belonged to a man who called himself the sun god.

I set the point of the sword into the rocky ground, and leaned on it until it broke.