Reincarnated to the Past 8.5: Chief Ghigari and Ureya (Patreon)

Interlude: Ghigari

The three of them returned a week after they left, and to Ghigari’s surprise, it wasn’t Ureya or Alan who told them that they messed up but his old friend, Hoktim, who professed that the mission to cull the number of the Scythian raiders had failed.

Ghigari didn’t think they failed, even if the initial night raid that they tried had been a failure, because as they reported to him of their success in killing at least a dozen of the Scythian horsemen in their first encounter of the night raid, and killed a dozen more in the three retreating skirmishes without losing any single one of them. 

It … was incredible. Any kind of combat with the Scythians had always left him with less warriors killed on their end than his. He’d grown up learning about how the Scythians, not the Thracians to the south and their colonies in the east or the other tribes beyond the mountains to the west and the north or even their neighbors, were their greatest threat. 

He’d grown up seeing warriors die so often and so uselessly against the Scythians, whose bows were better, whose horses were stronger and faster, whose warriors seemed just that much more powerful.

And then Alan, Ureya, and Hoktim did the impossible and came back without dying. 

This was a victory for them.

“How fast can you make those crossbows of yours?” he asked Alan, who looked stumped by his dismissal of their “failure.” If they were that damaged in the head to consider their attacks a failure, then what was the rest of the tribe? Retarded idiots who should’ve died at birth?

He knew that Alan wasn’t a trained warrior. It was in the way he moved. The man moved exactly as he wanted to when he wanted to, but it was a sloppy movement in and of itself. One could improve a sloppy movement to be less sloppy, but because the act’s foundation remained primitive, the improvements did little. 

This was what he saw when he tested the man out himself after Ureya attacked him. It was why he declared that Alan couldn’t be a warrior. 

But if a non-warrior like Alan could use his weapon to kill that many enemies…

“I can make … two a day if I have all of the materials necessary.”

“And do you? Have the materials?”

Alan scratched his chin. “Only for one.”

“If I loaned you the tribe’s carpenters?”

Alan looked surprised. He shouldn’t. This was a matter of the tribe’s future survival. If he got ten crossbows among his tribe’s women who were willing to fight who would then train with them for a week, then he would have ten more archers to keep the Scythians at bay. Alan professed the ease of use of the crossbow, and Ghigari was willing to believe him; why would Alan himself use a crossbow if he was untrained when he himself admitted that his contraption had shorter range but required far less training than a bow. 

It would forever irk Ghigari that he had to bring women upon the battlefield, but the survival of the tribe demanded it, especially when the other members of the confederation of tribes were all too willing to use his tribe as a meat shield against the Sycthians.

‘I’ll get back at them one day,’ he promised himself. ‘Leaving me and my people to face this threat alone!’

He didn’t care that those backstabbing traitors who’d sworn to come to each other’s defense must have been equally terrified of the Scythians, who’d never lost. Did it matter? They swore on their blood and ancestors!

He took a deep breath in, lest he start roaring in anger. Again.

“Perhaps t-three a day?” Alan asked-replied. 

“Then start on it. I want at least a two handfuls of women trained in this while I train my men in your phalanx formation.”

Then he turned away and left, mind busy at work despite the casual walk he took back towards the warrior barracks. 

Ghigari was still very enthusiastic about a wedding between Ureya to Alan, but after he showed that such a thing wasn’t necessary for him to tie himself to the tribe, he wasn’t so sure. But then he got to know more about Alan, and issues cropped up; Alan wasn’t a strong or assertive soul. Ghigari told Alan multiple times that such a timid attitude wouldn’t work out well, but the youngster dismissed his concerns.

He himself only listened to Alan because Alan gave him many useful improvements for the tribe, but once his eldest son took over, Alan would lose favor because he wasn’t strong. His eldest son only cared for a man’s strength, a woman for her beauty. He was the stupid sort, and Ghigari never managed to teach his son wisdom, for which the tribe might suffer once he died. 

It was why he wanted Alan to marry his Ureya and for Ureya to woo a non-warrior, which was what she’d wanted. Something went wrong, though. She doubted his choice in a man for her, and Alan hadn’t been too interested in pursuing Ureya, content to work on his contraptions tirelessly when he wasn’t ... teaching.

But Alan had been some sort of a warrior, regardless of his insistence and Ghigari’s own feelings and expertise on the matter. Ureya attacked Alan, a serious offense since Alan hadn’t done anything to her, but the man forgave his daughter easily. 

His attempt at finding Ureya a husband went awry, the other tribes refused to help despite their promises, and the survival of his tribe looked bleak.

Where had he gone wrong? 

-VB-

Interlude: Ureya 

Alan was definitely a warrior. The way he moved, the way he fought, and how easily he dispatched the Scythians made her skin crawl. 

She could’ve killed more of those blasted warriors if it wasn’t for Hoktim. 

And Alan showed her exactly why his words were false when he called himself not a warrior but a “tinker,” a weird word for someone who dabbles in creation. No mere creator of tools could have used his tools to such an accuracy with such precision and speed as to fell a warrior every five racing heartbeat. No mere smithy of weapons could have so easily felled warriors whose armor and speed advantage had been so overwhelmingly shattered.

Alan was a liar. 

She hated him, hated him, hated him, hated him-!

She sniffled. 

But ultimately, he was also responsible for saving her. She’d gone on the mission expecting to do very little, but instead, she’s become a burden. There was no doubt in her mind now that had Alan gone on this mission by himself, then he would have ended the entire Scythian raiding party by himself. He was a liar. No civilian could have planned out a way to strike the enemy, devised hand signs to signal each other (even if they didn’t get to use it because of Hoktim’s fumble), and disengaged the Scythians three more times in the chase after their successful retreat from the Scythian camp.

And she owed him.

… How could she pay this back? She refused to hold this for long, fearing the day that he would call up on it.