The Blood-stained Belt

  THE BLOOD-STAINED BELT

  By

  Brian H. Jones

  Smashwords edition

  Published by Aichje Books on Smashwords

  Aichje Books -- Goulburn, NSW, Australia

  The Blood-stained Belt

  Copyright © 2010 by Brian H. Jones

  ISBN 978-0-9808107-0-7

  Written by Brian H. Jones

  Cover design and artwork by Elaine Cornwell

  Published by Brian H. Jones

  Goulburn, NSW, Australia

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

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  'You know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me when he murdered my two army commanders, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether. He pretended that it was an act of war, but it was done in a time of peace, staining his belt and sandals with innocent blood' (The Bible, 1 Kings, 2: 5)

  CHAPTER ONE: WHEN LAND AND PEOPLE MEET THE SEA

  Yesterday I saw Sharma struggling to heave his bulk across the courtyard, cursing at the men who supported him. When he stubbed his toe and pitched forward only the strength of both servants saved him from thudding to the ground. The great one of Keirine is falling and who knows who and what will collapse with him? Whatever happens, one thing is for sure – I won’t be around to see it. Sharma will ensure that. Yet, in spite of that, I can’t bring myself to hate him. I should, but I can’t. We’ve shared so much, done so much together, hoped and striven for so much that to hate him would be like negating part of myself. I can grit my teeth at him, ball my fists in frustration, and let my thoughts stalk all over that barren wilderness that is marked by roads not taken and signposts obtusely ignored – but, no, I can’t hate Sharma.

  By Zabrazal, Sharma and I go back so far that remembering our early days is like trying to see the shapes of other people’s lives while peering down a mist-hazy tunnel. Somewhere back there, I will find the days when Sharma and I played stick-and-hit together with the other bare-footed boys. Somewhere back there is the time when we were shoved into school to endure its misery for four years. That’s where we met and became friends. Together with forty other boys we hunched together on rough benches balancing our slates on our knees. The mud-plastered, turf-roofed building was too cold in winter and too hot in summer while what went on inside was either tedious or frightful. We flinched as we waited to see who would be the next victim of old Aggam’s tongue-lashing or, worse still, who would be the next to be beaten across his shoulders with the stick that Aggam brandished as he stalked the boards, a slave-master to his cowering slave-pupils. It was like watching the dice being rolled – if your number didn’t come up now, it would come up soon enough. You couldn’t escape Aggam’s stick. You could only hope to avoid it for as long as possible.

  Also, somewhere down that hazy tunnel is the day that we lay at our ease on the shoulder of a hill that overlooked the coastal plain. Sucking on a stalk of grass, Sharma rested on his elbows and pronounced confidently, ‘I’m telling you, Jina, one day we’ll conquer the Dornites. We’ll take their land all the way from here to the coast.’

  ‘Oh? What makes you think so?’

  ‘It’s our destiny.’

  ‘Destiny! Ha! What do you know about destiny?’

  Sharma sat up and looked hard at me, the yellow flecks in his eyes glinting. ‘There’s a prophecy that says, “Keirine only shall be free, when land and people meet the sea.” Have you heard it?’

  ‘Sure, I’ve heard it. So what?’

  ‘I believe it.’

  ‘How can you believe it? It’s just something that Aggam made up.’

  ‘Ha! It has nothing at all to do with that old fool Aggam. It comes straight from the oracle at Oshigna.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because my father told me so. He heard it from someone who heard it direct from the oracle. That’s how I know!’ Sharma clicked his fingers in a gesture of finality.

  I grunted and settled back against a rock, basking in the warmth of the sun. When land and people reach the sea? It was a hopeless dream. I banished it with a shrug. Even at that early age I suspected that dreams and visions betray you like wraiths that lead their credulous victims into fathomless swamps. Dreams and visions have been Sharma's provenance rather than mine. Mind you, cat-like as always, he’s had the tenacity to stalk them and then to seize the opportunities when they presented themselves. And, for all my scepticism, I have prowled at Sharma’s shoulder, my caution outweighed by his visions of the glories that awaited us when at last we scaled the heights.

  We were taking a risk that day when we lay on the hilltop and looked out across the coastal plain. Mind you, we didn’t have much choice because there weren’t a lot of other places that we could go. It was the dry season and there was no grazing left closer to Osicedi so we had shepherded our flocks further eastwards than we had ever been. From our vantage point, the sea was clearly visible across the coastal plain. It might have looked near but in fact it was inaccessible because the Dornites occupied all of the plain between the foothills and the coast. So near and yet so far -- to us, as with everyone else in Keirine, the coast might as well have been beyond the furthest islands of the Endless Ocean.

  But that was a long time ago – so long ago that it seems like it happened yesterday. Ah, the deceptions of memory! I close my eyes and, once again, Sharma and I wander across the sunlit hills behind the sheep or march south a few years later, comrades in youth-fired expectation, to enlist in Vaxili’s army. I open my eyes and I come back to the reality of being confined in a stone-walled room, three paces wide by four paces long. Sharma? Well, then, what about the great Sharma, lord and master of Keirine? Forget about titles, forget about achievements, forget about power – one thing is for certain: he has a little more space in which to pace but he’s no freer than I am. We’re both prisoners of old age and betrayal, Sharma and me. We share those same intractable realities even although our stories, for so long woven together like the strands of a piece of twine, have finally reached the loose, unraveling end.

  Our friendship was cemented while we were suffering at school together. Even now, my memory curdles as I recall how I hated school and I hated Aggam! Early on, I resolved never to let that old sadist see what I felt. No matter how much I raged and wept inwardly, I always showed him an implacable face. I made a point of enduring the pain of my beatings in tight-lipped silence, never giving Aggam the smallest hint of how much I suffered. Whack! Whack! The blows would descend on my shoulders while Aggam, panting, eyes glinting, would roar exultantly, ‘Aha! So mister Jina is too proud to cry, is he? We’ll break that stubborn streak, won’t we, eh?’ Whack! Whack! ‘Aha! Beat the child and save the man. One day you will thank me for this, my boy.’ The more Aggam beat me, the more I bit my lips, clenched my fists, and retreated into baleful silence.

  On the other hand, Sharma deliberately provoked Aggam. He would stretch forward as far as he could, twitch his shoulders and then raise them high, offering them freely to the stick and to Aggam’s lust. With each blow, Sharma would emi
t a low hiss that sounded like steam escaping from a kettle. When the beating was over, he would look steadily at Aggam, tight-mouthed, saying nothing but with the yellow flecks in his eyes glowing. After a while, Aggam gave up beating Sharma. However, he continued to assault me

  Now, on the day when Sharma lay on the hilltop propped up on his elbows, sucking on a stalk of grass, all that was behind us – thank Zabrazal for these mercies! We had done our five years of school and now we were free from Aggam's caustic control. We sat there companionably, looking over the hills that fell away below us, watching the sheep grazing. What was there to say? Prophecy or no prophecy, even youngsters like us could see how matters stood. The vegetation here in the uplands was thin and unreliable. Life was hard and insecure. To make matters worse, we were always in danger of being attacked by the Dornites. They treated the land, people, and property of Keirine like their private beehives, to be raided at their pleasure. Even at such a young age, I sensed that the struggle with the Dornites would never end until one side completely conquered the other. Neither the seemingly endless succession of sun--drenched days nor the endless vistas of hills, plains, and valleys could drive away that dark knowledge.

  Sharma reached into his tunic and took out his sling. He picked up a stone, put it into the pouch and stood there swinging the weight. Then, finding a suitable place, he pointed towards a chest-high rock and said, ‘Let’s have some target practice’. I walked over and placed small stones on top of it while Sharma looked at the targets with narrowed eyes, grinned and said, ‘They’re getting smaller all the time, aren’t they?’ He crouched and flexed his shoulders before he whirled the sling, reached peak momentum and let fly. Plink! The stone on the left went flying off the rock. Sharma continued to demolish the targets, missing only one out of the eight. Annoyed at having missed one, he took another shot just to make sure that he could do it. Plink! The last stone went flying. Sharma surveyed the results of his work with satisfaction and then handed the sling to me, saying, ‘It's your turn now.’

  I relied, ‘No thanks! Some other time, maybe.’

  Sharma thrust the sling at me, saying, ‘Come on, man, have a go! We’ve got plenty of time. Have some target practice.’

  I took the sling reluctantly. Although I wasn’t bad with it, I was nowhere near as good as Sharma was. In the first place, I didn’t practise half as much as he did. Also, even at that young age I preferred a spear. I've always liked the solid weight and balanced feel of a good spear. I like to see it fly through the air, level and sleek, dark with intent, quivering down its length as if eager to reach its goal. Most of all, I like to hear the emphatic thump as it hits its target.

  I gave in to Sharma’s urging and took aim with the sling. In spite of the fact that I hadn’t practised much lately my aim wasn’t too bad and I managed to hit five out of the eight targets. Sharma said, generously, that the unsuccessful shots had all been close misses. He also showed me a new technique that he had developed, in which he dropped his wrist level with his eyes just as he released the sling.

  Our target practice was a lot more than merely the playful activity of two boys with time to spare. When we were out on the hills, we needed straight arms and sure eyes for our own protection as well as for the good of our flocks. For instance, when a wolf attacked the sheep only a few weeks earlier, Sharma disabled it with two shots from his sling before I finished it off with a spear thrown from medium range and then with a flurry of thrusts from close distance. At first we were terrified but then, when we succeeded, we were ecstatic. We hugged each other, laughed and cheered and pranced around the dead body which was still shaggy with menace. Even as we celebrated, we were in awe at what we had done while, simultaneously, we were filled with the explosive, new knowledge of what we could do. It was the harbinger of greater things to come.

  We only left the hilltop and the view of the shimmering coast line when the sun began to sink lower in the sky. Sharma jerked a thumb and said, ‘I guess we’d better round up the sheep.’ He was right. Even at night, it was risky to be so far to the east in no-man’s land. We would have to move the sheep westwards, further into the hills.

  After we herded the flocks into a dead-end ravine and secured the entrance with thorny branches, we made our camp about thirty paces up the slope above the mouth of the ravine. It was Sharma’s idea. He said that there was less chance that someone would find us if we camped higher up. Even while I grumbled about the awkwardness of our position, squeezed into a small space between a boulder and the stony hillside, I knew that he was right. He usually was.

  It was too risky to light a fire so we dined on cheese and bread before we dug indentations in the sand, spread our blankets, and fell asleep less than an hour after sunset.

  Early next morning, I awoke with a hand over my mouth. It was Sharma, hissing into my ear: ‘Quiet!’

  ‘Huh? What’s up?’

  ‘There’s someone down below!’

  We peered over the top of the boulder, pressing as close to the rock-face as possible. In the half-light, we saw two men dragging away the branches. Further up the ravine, a third man was preparing to drive the sheep out.

  Sharma pulled me backwards so that we slid down the rock until we were seated on the ground and hissed, ‘Dornites!’

  I nodded and reached for my spears but Sharma restrained me, growling, ‘Are you crazy? They’re too strong for us. They’ll kill us if we take them on right now.’

  He was right. Each man carried a sword as well as three medium-length spears secured across his back in the quiver-like holders that the Dornites favoured. Besides, we were boys and they were full-grown men.

  I subsided glumly. It was against my instincts just to sit tight and wait. Sharma knew that, which was why he maintained such a tight grip on my arm while he whispered, ‘How many of them are there?’

  ‘I can see three.’

  ‘Yes. But maybe that’s not all.’

  ‘So --?’

  ‘So before we do anything we need to find out what the situation is.’

  ‘And meanwhile they get away with the sheep?’

  ‘If they kill us, they’ll get away with the sheep anyway. Not so?’

  The logic was irrefutable. We huddled there for a few minutes, pressed against the rock, tense with fear and apprehension before Sharma whispered, ‘They don’t know that we’re here. Let’s keep it like that. It gives us time to make a plan.’

  I said grimly, ‘You bet!’ I was shivering with both fear and anger. Through gritted teeth, I muttered, 'What if they come looking for us up here?’

  Sharma grunted phlegmatically, ‘Then you’ll get a chance to use your spear and I’ll find out how good my aim is with the sling.’

  My pulse raced faster as I realised just how close we were to capture or death. Death? Probably not. The Dornites preferred to take people alive, to be sold as slaves. Perhaps they would have had us castrated to serve as eunuchs in wealthy households on the islands that spread across the Endless Ocean. Perhaps they would have sold us to be raised as mercenaries to serve one of the Dornite city-states. Who knew? All that we knew was that we didn't want to find out.

  Sharma watched from over the top of the rock while I wormed my way amongst the bushes to get a clear view of the mouth of the ravine. We watched as the men drove the sheep over the nearest ridge and out of sight before Sharma joined me and said, ‘Three of them! I guess that’s the lot.’

  I asked, ‘What now?’

  It was a difficult question for two boys far from home on the edge of Dornite territory, having to deal with at least three fully-grown, well-armed enemies. Sharma said thoughtfully, ‘Three against two isn’t good odds.’

  ‘Congratulations! I was wondering when you’d notice.’

  Sharma grimaced and rubbed his chin while he said thoughtfully, ‘We have to narrow the odds.’

  ‘How do we do that?’

  ‘Our big advantage is surprise.’

  ‘So --?’

  ‘We’
ll take them by surprise, one by one. That way we’ll always be stronger than they are.’

  I muttered, 'Right! Let's go.' My hands were trembling and my knees felt like they needed to be clamped in a vice to keep them steady. However, above fear and above apprehension I was seething with the anger of a people who have been beaten, exploited, and oppressed but can still remember how things once were different. As we scrambled down the slope, I muttered to Sharma, ‘We’ll teach them to leave our things alone.’

  ‘Keep calm, man!’

  ‘Who do they think they are? Just who?’

  ‘Calm, man!’

  ‘The Dornites think that everything in Keirine belongs to them. We’ll show them!’

  Sharma took hold of my wrist and murmured, ‘Do you believe that Zabrazal cares for us?’ I nodded and Sharma said, ‘Then pray that he is with us now.’

  I replied, ‘Zabrazal is the defender of Keirine. He is with us.’ I shot a quick, enquiring look at Sharma. Not for the first time, I suspected that he didn’t believe whole-heartedly in the grace of Zabrazal. I shrugged and grunted non-commitedly. I had to admit that in spite of all that we had been told about the tender mercies of Zabrazal, right now he did seem to be a long way from us – a long way from two boys in an isolated ravine faced with three well-armed Dornite raiders. Guiltily, I tried to do penance for the errant thoughts. Oh, Zabrazal, forgive me! Those little, stray thoughts just slipped in when I relaxed my guard. Oh, Zabrazal, I know that you care for us and that you’re always with us. I didn't mean to slight you. Oh, Zabrazal, defender of Keirine, be with us now and I will burn five scented candles in the temple when I return safely to Osicedi.