9000 Years Ago, the Suffering Path

9000 Years Ago, the Suffering Path

Azaphi of the Zhu stood on the rocky beach and surveyed the remains of his tribe, huddled around driftwood fires. At his feet, a body shivered in the throes of sea fever. Sea fever was relatively harmless, it would pass in a couple of days, leave the victim weak, but strength would return.

He sliced the woman's throat. Watching as the blood gushed out uselessly onto the beach pebbles. A meal for nothing more than flies, if any were left.

They didn't have a few days.

They'd already seen the watchers along the woods. The people who lived inland were gathering, he knew. People had gone missing. Children, women. As always, the weak were taken.

This morning a spear had come out of the woods, striking no one, but coming within a few paces of a fire. It was a show of bravado, of course, but there would be more spears.

He had his men drag the woman's corpse nearer the treeline. It would be gone tomorrow. He hoped her fever ravaged flesh would sicken them, whoever they were.

Ahead, waiting his counsel, were Khufu and Nyshr, chiefs of their own Zhu tribes, the people he shared the beach with. Their ranks too were much diminished.

Once, the sight of their tribes so weakened would have filled him with joy. He would have roused his people to a glorious orgy of murder. Once he had dreamed of smashing Khufu's head, eating his brains and making a cup of his skull. He had fantasized about how Nyshr would scream as he raped him, of impaling him and the rest of his headmen on driftwood spikes.

Now, these men were the closest he had to friends.

"The Qys wait in the forest," Nyshr said. "They wait to kill us."

Azaphi and Khufu looked at each other. Nyshr's people had suffered more from the Qys than the others. They had tried to fight the Qys, to hold their lands, even as the other tribes had been forced to flee.

"Not Qys," Khufu said. "These people have no boats of their own."

"They're hiding them," Nyshr replied.

"No, they have none. Or they'd have hunted the sand bars of seals, and the rocks of penguins," Khufu replied.

Azaphi tended to agree with that. Whoever the people in the woods were, they had not been a water people. The penguin and seal colonies offshore had been untouched.

Which had been one of the Zhu nation's few pieces of luck. A tribes on the move were hungry tribes, and all the surviving tribes of the Zhu nation were running for their lives. From the mainland, the Qys had come with boats of their own, with nets and spears, hoppers and shaghui and plants they grew.

The Zhu had always been the people of the sea, inhabiting Fjords and coves, sheltered from the elements and their neighbors. From these redoubts, their numbers had grown, and they had moved out to take possession of the surrounding lands, and of the islands.

But when the Qys came, the sea had no longer sheltered them. The Qys came to their fjords and coves, and when they did, the Zhu died.

Now the only Zhu left alive were a few miserable thousands, a couple of dozen bedraggled tribes, starving sick and miserable, sailing along the shores, leapfrogging each other.

Luckily, the people of these lands were not sea peoples. The coasts were often picked clean. But the isles, the sand bars, the rocks and rookeries teamed with life, penguins and seabirds, seals and fish.

Between them, the tribes of Azaphi and his companions had picked the area clean. That, as much as anything, compelled them to move on, to sail further up the coast. To stay here was to starve, it was already beginning.

Sea fever was already starting to take root. Not enough land food, Azaphi thought. Just fish and seals and penguin, sometimes seaweed. No roots, no seeds. Normally, an outbreak of sea fever called for a cull.

But not this time. Azaphi coughed involuntarily, tried to hold back the trembles. We are culling ourselves to extinction.

The tribe leaders glanced at the woods. Not Qys, Azaphi thought. They'd left the Qys far behind, for now.

At first, in the time of the fathers, the Zhu thought they could move and leave the Qys behind. But the Qys had always followed, until finally, there was no place left for the Zhu. They'd made their stand.

Those who survived had run, and would keep running.

Because sooner or later, the Qys would follow.

The people in the woods were not the Qys. But they were just as bad. Before they'd come to this shore, his people had sailed past another beach - seeing only burnt out campfires, abandoned boats, torn tents, and many bloodstains. No sign of the people, only drag marks into the woods.

The long night was coming, the hunger season was near, the white was baying. To the ones who watched from the woods, the Zhu were just meat.

Time to move. The weak would be left behind.

There was an ululating cry from the woods. From the despairing camps of the Zhu came an answering howl as warriors and fishermen reached for their weapons. Even women and children scrambled for sticks.

Khufu swore and darted off to rally his own people. From among the trees, black shapes poured, waving spears. Not the Qys, Azaphi thought, as he took a spear in his guts. But it didn't matter.

*****************

The long night was already begun. The air was cold, you could see your breath and everyone shivered constantly. It was dark now, the only light was the stars and carefully hoarded driftwood torches.

The seas were still open, though the lands were covered in white. The Zhu people were much reduced, Nyshr thought. The Qys had slaughtered most of their nation, only a fragment remained to set out on the suffering path. And of those, perhaps a third were left.

But against all odds, they'd made it. The endless driving winds had broken, the Zhu had found a sheltered sea, and within it the fjords and coves that so resembled the blessed lands of home.

There were people here. Not sea peoples, but land peoples. The land beyond the shore was hilly and broken. It was good, their numbers would be smaller, harder for them to organize and bring themselves against the Zhu. Already, most of them were retreating to their homes for the winter.

But the Zhu were not deterred by the winter night. The sea would be their friend again. When the waters turned to ice, there would still be the penguins on their rookeries.

And the auger, Nyshr reflected. A device that had spread among the poorest tribes in the remote islands. A device by which men could make holes in the ice to fish from. The Suffering Path had been an educational one. The tribes had mixed, sharing all their little tricks of survival, techniques for everything from fishooks and fishing lines, to sewing and insulating. Men were even talking of building penguin rookeries, of the best ways to handle penguins, taking the example the land peoples hive monkeys and thousands of years of their own half regarded lore.

The people who held these lands expected that the Zhu, newly arrived, sick, starving and exhausted, would be gone by spring.

They were wrong, thought Nyshr, after all the Zhu had suffered, they would not fail now, they would endure.

It would be the inhabitants who would be gone by spring. The Zhu had learned their lessons well. They would exterminate any humans they found here. They would not war upon each other. When the Qys followed, as they always had, they would be ready.

In the beginning, Nyshr reflected, the Zhu had been their own worst enemies. That was why the Qys had driven them from their homes. That was why they'd been forced onto the suffering path.

No more. The Zhu would no longer be their own worst enemies. They would be everyone elses.

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