10. ATTACK

An army consisting of two young children arrives sliding down a mountain

A woman pushed her way to the front where Prince Diggory was scrabbling at his own feet looking for another stone to launch at the small boy, possibly one with more weight to it than the one he had just launched towards the boy. He had missed, the stone falling well short of the tiny weeping figure, but he wasn’t satisfied. He needed to establish himself to the rest of the tribes people watching as a man who made decisions that mattered even if it meant killing a child.
“Who are you?” h demanded of the woman, “and what do you want with me?”
She stared at him, her eyes open in disbelief. “You don’t remember me?” she asked, “when you promised me so much?”
“Susu? He asked, his memory trying to work out whether she and he were friends or bitter enemies. In his world there was precious little to distinguish between the two, but the last thing he wanted now, with an enemy of the tribe as he saw it, and actually in sight threatening them as he scrambled down the mountain, was anything like a personal enemy from the past.
“So you remember my name at least,” she said and gave him a quivering little smile, one devoid of anything like humour or friendship. One he recognised as very like his own when he was wanting to convince listeners of his good intentions when he had none.
Seeing his obvious confusion she went on to remind him of something he had apparently forgotten. “We had plans, you and I, once,” she said flatly, “you and I were going to rule all of creation. Bty it came to nought when you went off with that boy…”
“You will keep quiet about that!” he snapped, “he was only a friend. Boys need friends, you know.”
“As do girls,” she said, “and I wanted you to be my friend. I wanted you to do all the things that boys do to girls when they’re feeling friendly. I needed to scream my pleasure at what you gave me...”
“I’m not like that,” he replied, scowling at her.
“So I discovered,” she almost snarled, then she smiled slightly, “but that’s in the past, Prince. The future is something else…”
Dear reader, you will understand that this conversation is a reworking into what you or I might more easily understand if you were trying to make some sense of a load of grunts and squeaks that were the prehistoric means of communication. So she said the future was something else, or grunts to that effect.
Then she took one of his hands into her own so that he was forced to swallow a lump of bile that had somehow found its way from his stomach, and he went pale.
“Dear Prince Dickory,” she murmured, “I am with you all the way.”
“What do you mean, Susu?” he stammered.
“It’s you who told me what is clear before our eyes. We are being invaded. That’s all.” she said gravely, and she leaned towards the ground and picked up a handful of pebbles, which, using all her strength, she hurled towards the boy who was still slithering down the mountainside.
She had a better aim than did the Prince and several struck the scrambling boy, and he cried out with pain and almost fell rather than scrambled down the last part of the mountainside.
Owongo and Mirumda both leapt forwards.
“What are you doing?” demanded Owongo, “can’t you see, boy is young and boy is hurt!”
“And boy is invading!” snarled Prince Dickory.
“Boy will take our homes, our food and our beds,” added Susu.
“You stupid woman!” snarled Mirumda, “you really think a child so young would do so much? Are we that weak so as to allow it! You sicken me!”
“He is just a vanguard,” snapped the Prince, “you wait, there will be others following, a whole army, I should think.” And that was probably the first time that a word like vanguard was used in human affairs. And furthermore, in peaceful times such as the one they lived through, the tribe living in the valley through which their stream ran had no need for words like army.
“Throw another stone at that poor child and I will stop you, using force if need be,” almost shouted Mirumda, and Prince Dickory looked at her and decided that any battle with her would be an unequal affair, with her more likely to be victorious.
“Don’t you see,” he tried to explain, “we are under attack! Our homes will be stolen from us, our possessions will become their possessions and we will be slaughtered in our beds!”
“And you are that scared of a small boy?” asked Owongo, “you are not the man I thought you were! You are both a coward and a bully, if you can put those two things together and say they belong to the same man!”
“Not man, but cowardly creature,” added Mirumda.
Then a cry went up from nearby. “Look! Here they come!” It was one of Prince Dickory’s henchmen, no doubt using the sum total of his vocabulary with that shouted call..
Mirumda and Owongo looked up towards the mountain pass where the boy Brava had been scrambling. There was another child, much higher up and by the look of it this time it was a girl, maybe of five summers old. She had a tangled mass of dark hair that fell limply across her dusky face that was streaked, no doubt with her own tears.
“Wait here,” Mirumda whispered to Owongo, and she raced towards the foot of the mountain, running over rough pebbles as lightly as she could. As Owongo looked the girl slipped and started falling, and he knew that the distance she had to fall would most likely be the death of her.
“See!” snarled Prince Dickory.
“Yes, see!” encouraged Susu, “the army comes and it will slaughter us all, men and women alike, and take everything from us.”
“I can’t believe you are saying that!” snapped Owongo, “So small a child can mean to harm to you! No harm whatsoever.”
“Look at the pretty woman!” urged a voice from behind Owongo, and he stretched his neck so that he could see all the better.
The girl child half-fell and half-scrambled straight into Mirumda’s arms, and she held on to her tightly.
She was hardly a day older than her own girl back in the cave, and her face was a mask of pain and fear. And her voice, what they could hear of it, was that of a very young child overcome by horror and fear, and nothing like that of a warrior of any size or description.
“You are safe now, darling,” whispered Mirumda, and taking the greatest of care she gently carried the small girl, who would tell her in a shaking whisper she was called Coocoo. Mirumda carefully held on to the child even when she almost slipped and finally made her way to the safety of level ground, where Owongo was standing, waiting proudly for her.
© Peter Rogerson,12.11.23
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Author's Note

The rather limited editing features of this site seem to have disappeared altogether and the font size is not one I would have chosen.