03

Part 2: Hilda's Questions

(Many thanks to my editor, kenjisato)

My skryba wants me to tell you more about me, but he also has a question from his woman, Hilda? These Western names all sound strange. Their mothers never taught them to talk properly. In fact, that is what our people call them--niemcy. Those who cannot speak properly. My skryba is frowning...Ha ha ha

His woman has vexed him for days, so now he had to courage to ask this scarred pancerni, "Why does he talk of buc and kulki so much?"

Because I am a man! A niemoralny old man! I like your woman, skryba...even though she has a face like dough...she has the breasts of a nursing mother of giants! She is strong so I will tell her humbly...yes, skryba, I can be humble...do not sniff at me like that! Ha Ha!

In truth, I was very innocent in those days. The coicie had raised us like farm animals...well fed and cared for, but we ran wild, were never schooled. We were to learn 'things' with the men, but the men were focused on the hunt and survival. And although it is hard for 'modern' people to believe we were not the rapacious beasts of legend.

I spent my time as a nowe, as a niewinny...do not laugh at me, skryba. I know it is hard to believe, but I am being honest for the sake of your woman...I honor her courage in asking a question like this. I rarely thought of my buc and kulki then...no more and actually less than any other part of my body. The buc was necessary for the passing of water, and unless I sat a horse the wrong way, I paid no mind to my kulki...until I did.

I have told you the tunics we all all the men of the Eagle Clan wore were short. After a year as a nowe...on a hot day on the stypia, my kulki hung below the tunic...this was new they were always tucked in close to my body...I marveled how I could make them swing back and forth and how good the breeze off the stypia felt cooling that part of me. A simple observation of a nowe. All is new to us. We are learning how to be men. And yet, the older men rarely spoke of such things. Although I have previously described the men of my squad in some detail, these details meant little to me as a nowe, it was simply, the way of things. Only as an older warrior having experienced many things, do I go back and relive these details.

So this may be the opposite of what your woman expected of me...my kulki were the first signs of my body changing...for some months the kulki hanging down to be caught by the stypia grasses and thorns as I pursued game on the hunt. Blessed be the gods, if I was frightened, the kulki had the sense of their own to protect themselves and get back up under the tunic.

There is nothing to say about my buc, things of the buc are between me and my women. They know of its qualities, and they are responsible for its transformation and when that happened. Unless your woman is interested in finding out personally, skyrba? Ha ha...

Your woman should know that as a member of the Eagle Clan, I would never share such things with a woman that had not allowed me to be so intimate. But the Eagle Clan is no more, and I am with people with different standards.

Bah, I am tired of telling you about me, I was not important for my first year, or so, in my squad. I made no big mistakes, was rarely even cuffed by the older men; I listened, I learned. I was a good tracker, but way below the standards of the squad's best tracker.

Skyrba wants more about the sorm uprowadzenie. A story to tell his woman tonight...she knows Skryba and she wants you to get more out of me. sorm uprowadzenie is not what you think, skryba, not what your woman thinks, not what our neighbors or our neighbors thought. THOUGHT because there is no Eagle Clan. We are NO MORE. I am the Eagle Clan, and the secret is with me. But now, the secret serves no purpose.

I will tell you this: No, I will not I will keep you guessing. I will tell it the way it was for me. My sorm uprowadzenie. Because until then, I believed as all the stypia believed. The cruelty the brutality of the sorm uprowadzenie. That is a tale for another time. When we meet again, skryba...keep Hilda happy some other way...she will complain you have not done her bidding.

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Once a King

Part 3: The horse handler.

(Many thanks to my editor, kenjisato)

My story, skryba...you write my story...in the order I tell you, skryba.

Horses, it pleases me to speak of horses. I was not good with horses, at least not like Filip, the clan's horse handler. The clan's horses were of one herd, kept and bred and cared for by Filip, the clan's dozorca koni. When I say bred, I mean he supervised the breeding! Clean your mind, skryba!!!

The clan's herd was small because the clan was poor, and horses required a lot of resources. The settled peoples assume we live on horseback, but in truth, the clan would be hard pressed to mount a third of its men on horseback.

The squads bargained for the use of horses with Filip. He made sure that if certain horses had just seen hard use on a hunt, they had plenty of feed, water, and rest. As far as feed goes, we were not so well off as to regularly afford grain for our horses. For the most part, they grazed the stypia and found water in the ravines.

Filip had to corral the necessary horses for a hunt, by tracking them down on the stypia. He knew (how we all wondered) the ways of the lead stallion and where he sheltered his mares. The bachelors were more difficult, but they would not be too far from the mares, especially when the mares were in season. They would try to steal mares from the lead stallion, Burza.

In horses, the men of the clan were as they were with women. The horse that favored you, that accepted you, was your horse, at least for that expedition. So it was with the women, if the woman wanted you, you were her man--at least for a time.

I was as lucky with horses, as I was with women; just a bit better than most of the men in the clan. The horses thought me gentle, or at least, not a man that would overuse them when riding. I was careful, did not ask them to jump dangerous things; unless jumping the dangerous thing would save both horse and rider, from a greater danger, a stypian tiger, for example.

Our horses were small, but then, they carried small men. And no more than a small man in a tunic, with his weapons and a saddle, that the settled peoples mistook for a saddle blanket with small loops for stirrups.

The nowe, before we knew it, we lusted after the bigger horses of the settled peoples. They looked so tall and strong! For the settled peoples, they worked well; they got whatever surplus grain the settled peoples produced and were strong on that. But if they were limited, in drought, to the grazing grasses; they survived but could do less work. For the purposes of the clan, they would not hunt where the only feed was grazing. They lacked the stamina of our little horses, which the settled peoples called stypia ponies. They were not ponies--they were OUR HORSES, and we were proud of them.

Our horses were as rugged as the men who rode them, and got sick as we did--poor food not enough water. But they endured with us.

Without the horses there would be no sorm uprowadzenie, which was the Eagle Clan's signature myth. The raiders from the stypia raiding peaceful farmers at the edge of civilization to steal their daughters. Steal we did. We stole many things. This was not a crime in our culture.

But the other thing...the thing the clan had no word for was not true.

The settled peoples at the edge of the stypia called it rzepak. Nik, our 'madry' who knows many tongues, says that our enemies, those who would be the death of the clan, called it, viasmós.

It is a shameful thing, not unknown to us, but so shameful it could not be named.

So how does the sorm uprowadzenie reconcile with the clan, respecting the decision of the woman on the man she is to breed?

Literally the phrase is correct: we 'steal' a woman. Stealing is not wrong. In fact, most of the time, it is not stealing at least from the point of view of her family. The woman is bargained for in secret. Nik has ways of knowing the isolated farmer who has more daughters than he can find husbands for. Or too many sons bothering his girls.

Sometimes, Nik finds a mother who wants the daughter out of the house because her husband is paying improper attention.

Virginity is not an issue with our people.

If the woman has had other partners, that is not our business. Our clan wants our young men to become fathers with the first woman that accepts them. We have heard this is the reverse for other people, and we find it strange.

All this I knew, only when I experienced it. As I have said, our older men are very discreet with intimate details.

Nik negotiated with a poor farmer at the very edge of the stypia...his land was poor; he had no horses; the water was tainted. He had displeased a hetman in some way and was forced to live on the poorest land in the hetman's domain.

He had only one daughter, his wife was ill, and they were desperate to survive. In this case, the daughter was willing, she loved her parents and in a dark part of her imagination believed the sorm uprowadzenie myth and longed for the shameful (untrue) part.

Nik brought me to the farm on horseback...it took us several days to get there. Nik and I rode together...only then, did he explain the secret of the sorm uprowadzenie. Nothing shameful was to happen. Stealing is not shameful. The forced taking of a woman in an intimate way is.

Ionica...such a name so unlike the names in the clan. I was eighteen when she was twenty? Older, strong-willed, hardy, darkly beautiful and taller than I was.

All this Nik told me, before I stole Ionica. He also explained what would happen that night and the days and maybe months afterwards. When we reached the farmstead, there would be some teatr. A show. The burning of a haystack...swooping in and grabbing Ionica.

Nik had already traded enough dried meat to keep the family through the hard times. More could not be guaranteed. Life was uncertain and this was a good bargain.

Ionica was taken to where Jurek waited with the spare horse. The teatr would play on...Ionica did not know the truth of the sorm uprowadzenie.

She would be lashed to the horse...practically necessary for farmers' daughters who never knew how to ride, especially those from a poor farmstead with no horses.

Ionica imagined many things, I am sure. It was a rough journey through the stypia, her already-ragged shift of homespun, was much stained and ripped when we reached where the coicie where encamped.

Ionica was removed from the back of the horse, a mare named Sunflower.

Jadzia and Kasia were the coicie who were to school Ionica in the ways of our clan. It was then, after a period of her own choosing, that she could make her life choice in the clan. In this, she had all freedom. In theory, she also had the freedom to leave us. But most women the clan stole, had no wish to return to their former lives where there was only misery and no choice.

So, what of me? The secret of the sorm uprowadzenie: the man must wait. The coicie will send word. If the 'stolen woman' is not willing, she will live with the coicie. Other men may visit. She may favor them, or not. There is only one sorm uprowadzenie: for a man. After that, he may visit the coicie and see if they favor him...or I suspect in some cases, take pity on him. The man honors the coicie and keeps them in supplies and horses as best as our poor circumstances allow.

The coicie raise the offspring the men's seed provides. Life goes on. The clan had been this way for as long as the memory of the oldest. No one knew the way would not last more than a few more seasons.

That, skryba, is a tale for another part of my life. Are you disappointed, skryba?

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