Reincarnated into the Past 3: Hooked (Patreon)

Wide-eyed and not a little scared, I stood before the Kettin tribal chief. The guy who ordered the deaths of slaves, the guy who declared a war over blood feud and wiped out another tribe, and the guy who killed the killers for their failures… Yes, that guy.

And this guy was … small. Or maybe it was I who was tall, not that it mattered. I stared down at five foot eight inches or so of a man bound in muscles. Those muscles looked like it could bench press me, so I wasn’t going to be making fun of his lack of height. He also had numerous scars on his bare arms and face, and the way he handled the spear in his offhand was enough to convince me that if I tried to run, then I would end up skewered pretty fast. 

Sure, I had Perfect Memory Recall and Perfect Accuracy, but I didn’t have a Perfect Body, yet. 

“H-hello?” I greeted from where I stood right outside the gates leading into this wooden log palace. It reminded me a bit of Iroquois and Norse longhouse. What made this longhouse stand out was the fact that it was the largest of all of the longhouses and smaller houses.

“You look weak.” He scowled at me. 

Rude motherfucker, ain’t ya? But I couldn’t insult the leader of a band of murderous slavers. Oh no no, that was a one-way ticket to Death’s embrace. 

“Medicine woman told me that you want to see me?” I asked without getting into whatever that insult was about. 

The chief’s eyes widened before his scowling face morphed into an apologetic smile. “Ah, you are the wise man. Come in, please,” he said more amiably this time, even moving out of the way of the door. 

I walked in hesitantly and not a little warily. Calling me a wise man and being nice about it, there was something going on here. After he closed the door behind him, he led me to the center of the front half of the longhouse, where there was a table and fur-lined chairs around it. I also noticed that there was a woman his age tending to the fire further into the house, and she looked up. When she saw me, she turned to the chief and raised an eyebrow.

He ignored her.

He sat down at the head of the table with his back to the woman and gestured for me to sit down. I did and looked around. This longhouse, unlike the medicine woman’s smaller longhouse, showed off. For example, I never saw fur-lined chairs before around here. There was an iron pot when most of the pots I’ve seen were wooden ones. The woman - probably his wife or sister - wore quality linen clothes, had closed toed footwear, and didn’t seem to have much wrinkle or calluses on her hands. There were also some jewelry here and there on shelves (and the fact that they had shelves to show off jewelry). 

What really set all other buildings I’ve been in was the fact that the chief’s longhouse had an ornamental gold axe having at the back end of the longhouse.

Yeah, that more or less cemented the fact that this guy was the chief.

“I am the chief of the Kettin people. I am Ghigari the Great,” he stated proudly, and then continued. “The chief of the Manna-Kettin tribe, council member, and general of the Greater Kettin Tribes.”

He seemed pretty proud of those titles.

“I am Alan. It is good to meet you.” Pleasure, in Kettin, referred only to feelings one got while having sex. It would be very awkward if I said that to him.

He looked at me part-suspiciously and part-curiously before he spoke. “Wise man, why do you hunt, craft, and barter?” he asked.

I blinked. “I need to eat.”

He looked at me in surprise before laughing out loud. “You are different from other wise men.”

Another linguistic thing to note, the Kettin added a “g” to the end of a word to denote plural form of that object/subject. Kettin word for man was “dorln” and plural form was “dorlng,” which sounded like “dorn-gu.” A true direct translation of men was thus “mans,” not men, but … my mental personification of English did not like that.

What was I doing? Oh yes, talking with the chief of murderous slavers. Yes, that’s what I was doing.

“How so?” I asked, not a little curious. 

“Other wise men demand respect while doing very little work. They teach but keep many secrets, revealing secrets only to their successor,” he replied. “You do not. You shared knowledge necessary to defeat a heinous disease. You didn’t ask my mother for a reward for the knowledge. Why?” 

“Because diseases should be defeated without hesitation and secrecy,” I replied. It was, admittedly a notion I carried with me from the future-past to the past-present (and isn’t that a doozy way of thinking things). Unlike the future-past, past-present was still transitioning from Bronze Age to Iron Age. At this point in time, people died in droves to diseases. It was an everyday part of life. 

In this day and age, the ability to combat, control, and win over disease was an ability akin to a god. It was, in fact, an ability prescribed solely to gods as the “mortal” method of combating diseases such as bloodletting, opioids, and other primitive methods were more likely to kill you as they were to save you. 

“You… say ridiculous things,” the chief replied with a frown but the expression wasn’t directed at me. To me, it looked like he was frowning upon the concept of diseases being able to be defeated. “But then again, you helped my mother with a disease we knew nothing about… Perhaps you are right in wanting to remove diseases. You must want something, however. What can I get you to stay with my tribe and teach us about diseases?”

Ah, so this was the reason why he wanted to meet me. He wanted me to stay and work for his tribe. 

… I didn’t want to work for a slaver tribe, though. What happens if I refuse, though? Depending on the chief’s mood, the result might range from no consequence to exile on the spot - or worse, execution. It was just the kind of world I lived in right now. There was no such thing as “action without consequence” anymore. This was, after all, the brutal era where petty theft was rewarded with amputation of the thief’s hand.

The chief noticed my indecision and sighed. “I will not harm you if you respond no, wise man.”

I let out a sigh of relief.

“But if you do respond yes, I shall give you much authority within my tribe. Only I and two others would be above you.”

I looked at him in surprise. I hadn’t expected that kind of offer. 

“Seriously, you want me in your tribe, huh?” I muttered.

“Yes,” the chief replied resolutely. “If it can convince you, then I shall give you any unmarried maiden within the tribe as your bride.”

I nearly did a spit take. “No, no, no. I’m fine. I don’t need that,” I replied quickly, holding my hands up and shaking them on instinct. “I’m not quite ready to have family!”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re already in your prime. What’s the reason not to have a family?” he asked incredulously. 

“Just … grew up very differently from the Kettin.”

“Will you tell me about your land?”

… I supposed there was no harm in doing so. I got comfortable and talked at length about the world that was the future. I twisted the facts so that it would seem like it was another nation in the present in a far away land. 

It was an outlet I hadn’t known I needed. I felt so out of place from this time. So different and foreign. I had kept a world to myself that only I knew about, so when the chief wanted me to talk about my home… I talked.

“I come from a land called North America, home to three nations - that’s our greater tribe unions. We have Canada, Mexico, and the United States of America. Of these, the United States of America is home to three hundred million people…”

-VB-

Interlude: Ghigari

Ghigari saw that the wise man in front of him held no ill will towards the tribe. He knew this because he was a great judge of character. Together with the fact that the wise man “Alan” shared knowledge about disease, Ghigari knew that the wise man was benevolent. 

But there was naivety to the man that he couldn’t exactly see. 

When he heard the man begin to talk about a land called “America,” he understood why soon enough.

The great tribe Alan came from was just too different. Too affluent. Too powerful. He talked of longhouses taller than trees and even hills. He talked of the numerous people and how different each of them were. Of plentiful food. Of clean, limitless water. Of luxuries unending. And of terrible wars that made his people’s conflicts small and meaningless. Of war waged with more people than the entirety of his tribe on each side of the conflict. Of the terrible weapons.

“Then why are you out here?” he finally asked. 

At this point, he was wary of Alan now. Why else would a people who make wise man-s like Alan care about their little side of the world other than scouting a land ripe for the taking? Against ghost arrows, man-made thunder, and more, what were swords and shields?

Nothing.

Ghigari didn’t dismiss Alan’s stories of his people. The wise man went on more than one rant regarding the design of some of the weapons. There were too many details for his stories to have been made up. He certainly didn’t ask Alan to talk about the fractured and corrupt nature of an institution of democracy nor did he want to know about the lack of honor among the leaders of his people...

On the other hand, Alan freely shared and thus Ghigari learned about rotation farming, “fertilization” that makes food grow better, and more. Those two ideas alone made up for the time he spent listening to the ranting young wise man.

Eventually though, the sun set and it was time for the young wise man to leave, despite Ghigari’s desire to extract as much knowledge and wisdom as he could from this man. No one knows what happens in the future. The young wise man might not be there tomorrow, and with his disappearance, so would the knowledge and wisdom not be there tomorrow. Yes, he was solely tempted to -.

“Father, I’m home!” 

As if the gods themselves wanted this meeting to happen, his youngest daughter walked in. Alan looked over his shoulder and froze upon seeing his daughter.

Ghgari smirked when he saw Alan stiffen. 

“Father, who is this?” his youngest daughter, Ureya, asked while looking suspiciously at the young wise man.

“He is a wise man,” he replied. “He is here because I summoned him.”

Ureya, his most cherished daughter of twenty summers, stared dubiously at Alan. “He’s too young to be a wise man.”

“I have heard him speak, daughter, and I believe him to be a wise man.”

“He never claimed to be one?”

“Daughter, enough,” he grouched, and Ureya huffed. She ignored them as she walked past them deeper into the longhouse, where there were curtains.

Ghigari did not miss Alan’s eyes staying on Ureya as she passed by him and then his eyes dropped down. The chief smirked as he leaned forward once he was sure that his daughter had gone beyond the curtain into the living areas of his home. “Wise man Alan, are you sure you do not want to stay with my tribe?” he asked with a knowing grin. “My Ureya is beautiful, is she not?”

From the way Alan was giving him a bewildered yet consenting look, he knew that he had hooked the wise man. Considering that wise man Alan seemed to be a caring man, he wasn’t against giving him Ureya’s hand in marriage.

He had, after all, nine more children who had gone on to be warriors or be wed to warriors. He already had twelve grandchildren to advise from the side. 

… He also doubted that Alan would be able to tame his fiercely wild youngest daughter. She’s been a headache for him, refusing to get married, even going so far as to earn alliances with her siblings to prevent him from giving away their hands in marriage without their consent. While he could have gotten a lot more alliances with other tribes had they let him do what was necessary, he couldn’t say no anymore, not when they’d given him a dozen grandchildren, especially more so once he saw that half of them would grow to be very strong warriors for the tribe. 

If the notion of being able to marry Ureya would keep the wise man in his tribe longer even if he eventually left, then it was worth a try for a chief to goad him into courting his youngest daughter.

For gods’ sake, his daughter was already twenty summers old! She needed to get married already!

-VB-

“Uh, sure,” I mumbled.

And then I saw the chief’s smug face. 

Drats.