Oh boy.
Such a Crowd I have Fallen In with.
So, we are stumbling and tilting all over in these lumbering frames we wear, what with nothing but Death all over the place, and the stupid horses useless for all with their clumsy clopping feet and the ground as unsure as the brittle coral when the sea has fled and leaves the fishes flapping. O, bones, bones, bones! They are everywhere, and if my old Fathers could look on me now, they would surely shit eggs like boulders. ‘Oh, look at the crass fool, how he stamp on the bones of the Dead like they are so much rubbish! Oh, how he cares nothing for what is Right and Good! Oh, he will come to nothing with such retarded behaviour!’
What can I do? Did Gramper kill them, did he ask them to lie down their empty bodies where he cannot help but tread them beneath his self? No, no, it all happened long ago, and the Dying spread themselves like a shiftless mass all along the valley floor, to keep the Living well away. What a mess, it is shocking, really – bones, bones, bones as far as the eye can see. Nothing lives here, even the little lichens and the worms and the beetles do not linger long. It is a sad place, overwhelming hopelessness drifting right through you like you are not even there. Great heaps of deadness, with only ruins of stone buildings here and there to catch any seed of grass or leafy thing.
It does not do well to linger so close to such an absurd volume of dried up carcass. Ugh! All it does is make one think of what a useless show these bones and muscles and organs that we walk around in truly is. What use is the living skeleton inside ones fleshiness really, when it all ends up mashed up on the floor like this?
After a while, one loses track of what is really going on. It makes one to feel quite depressed, really, always dropping the foot through the rotten raft, the recurrent broken crack and snapping that jerks the body, making one to feel quite drunk and not in control of ones being. Soon I am sick to death of my friends with their stumping and lurching and splintering noises, no one talking, only swearing an oath now and again. The world begins to bore me, and I glaze over with the Great Gift bestowed by Uncle-Heler-Who-Brings-The Rains.
Whoa! Who would have guessed it? The whole valley, it is alive with the spirits of the fallen. Ah, what a delight to see such strange folk gliding and drifting about me! Such a myriad of colour and movement! What a marvellous Gift the Second Sight truly is! So soon, I am feeling quite enchanted with the place, and the journey begins to fly...
Then come the man, and he jolt me out of my splendid time with the Otherfolk, bowling down the hill and shrieking and crying out for aid against the evil that besets him – Trolls! He cry – Trolls! Agh! Such vile and ugly things, always hungry and consuming everything, never satisfied until they are dead and their bottomless gut rot away. Oh, but this man, his spirit look strange to the Misty Eyes: what is wrong with him? Well, I am looking back to where he point, but nothing there is at all but still bones and dancing spirits.
Oh Uncle, but wait, what is this? Way off up there? Yeuk! Horrid great bone frames lumbering down the hill, no spirits to help nor to guide them! Lifeless things of Undeath, sorcerous hulks batting along toward us, horrible skeleton trolls with mouths agape but yet no belly to feed! I look to yell at the fellow, but – he is gone! Some strange ghost that should have long parted from here!
Well, I think to myself that I have learned well my lessons since I Fall In with this Crowd, and Gramper knows what he must do this time. Calming the poor dumb horse I am leading along like an idiot, I move him into the cover of the ruins, then I skip about to find a good spot to hide. This is warrior work, and Gramper is no warrior, no way. I think this will please my Ancestors well, to show that Gramper learns his lessons, and that he is ready and adaptable to all situations. Soon perhaps they will no longer call me the Fool and berate me for my ignorance.
I tell you this true, these guys I am with, they are soldiers. They learn to kill and to run about with the bronze on them and set about them with strong bows and with metal. Gramper has learned, for he wears only the hides of the sea-beasts, and he fights with the sling and the spear he has made. He does not carry the terrible encumbrance of the metal ripped from the Earths heart, for to do such a thing is a weakness, and interferes terribly with ones control over the spirits. And in the strange two-natured way of all things, the better I get with the spear and the like, the less I have the taste for it.
Listen: it happened to my father too. I hear the voices of my old Uncles and they tell me: ‘Oh, but he was a wonder with the Spear was your father, before he waken his Spirit-Self.’ ‘Always he would take whatever he hunted with a single cast in the days before his Great Change.’ ‘Such a blow it was to the tribe when he returned from his Kindling in the Black Caves to find his arm so weakened.’ It is the same, I tell you. I can feel it coming upon me. One day I will Awaken to find myself but a portion of the man who stands so here this day. For the Flesh-Self will fail, so that the Spirit-Self might then be strengthened. To worry and to strive to increase ones physical prowess so much – it is but weakness and folly.
Best to let the warriors face these enemies, and Gramper stay out of the way and live to see another day. After all this frustration of stumping about in the valley, everyone else is all too up for the fight. Darkos is yelling and kicks his dumb beast into the thick of the skeletons, Grant strips so the Powers of his God alone will protect him from the evil Things, and stands naked and woaded with sword in his hand. Cleombrotus is ready to meet their charge, spear at hand, his eyes a Black Death upon them all. Still, I will help them a little, from behind these rocks where it is safe, and fling at those nasty Undead Things with my sling, for all the good it might do.
Oh boy. Well, I try real hard, but yet again Gramper shows that he is nothing but a fool and a hindrance to all those around him. I let off a good strong shot to help Cleombrotus out, and all I do is ding him real good in the head. What a clang it makes on his bronze helmet! Lucky for me he is far away, and in the middle of fighting way too many Unliving Things to know that it is Gramper that is almost killing him, and not the thick mace of one of those horrors. Oy, now I feel sick to my stomach and I can see my father cast his eyes up into the skies at the shame I bring upon him. I feel the true fool and lose my breath and get angry with my bird-brained behaviour. Oh, there is only one thing for it now – I take up that spear I have begun to hate, and that shield that is such a bother to me, and I charge right in there to try and make these Things lie back down again among the other bones as best I can, before Cleombrotus ends up dead with a troll club or a Gramper slingshot buried in his skull.
I do not really remember very well what happened after this, only that I am darting and running about doing no good whatsoever in trying to knock these Things down, and only avoiding a swift death through the grace of the Spirit’s Protection and the feeble strength of my old hide armour. I am trying to help out Cleombrotus, if only by drawing some of these Undead away from him, and copying the way he times his thrust to try and take the Thing in the skull, and then there is nothing.
Oh, yes, yet again this Crowd are getting me into a right old fix. I tell you now, all the great adventures of my life take place when I am totally out of my mind and I have no idea what goes on save what my friends tell me after, and even then I do not always believe it.
I wake up in the field of bones, with blood all over my face, thick bandages all about my fragile skull, and the almightiest of head pains that ever there were. When I feel under the bandage, there is a deep dent in my head that feels like it goes all the way into my battered brain. There is vomit on me and I have been sick and burbling some nonsense apparently, and everyone looks halfway between Concern and Exasperation. I do not care about what ever their bother is, only that I am almost dead and my head is broke like an egg, and to cap it all they tell me it was one of those damn stupid horses that did the dirty deed.
That does it. I have had it with these broken beasts, they are to be avoided at all cost, and if I get the chance I will feed them to the next troll I see, no question. All the days of my life I will wear this hoofprint bashed into my bald head to show how Gramper was nearly finished by a stupid horse, and when I cast off this flimsy body and all that is left of Gramper is his old bones scattered about the place, all the tribe will be able to see, and they will shake their heads and toss their eyes about and say ‘Ah yes, that is Grampers skull alright, see where the foot of that horse get stuck right into his mushy brain’, ‘Ah, regard how dim that boy must have truly been to allow the dumb broken animal to stand on his head’, ‘Oh, what was he trying to achieve in his misled life to roll around beneath the hooves of such defective and vicious beasts’.
Oh boy. It never ends.