Reincarnated to the Past 20.1: Ghigari I (Patreon)

A map has been released along with this chapter over at Patreon (and will be on QQ after a week). Take a look at it to understand more of the geopolitical struggles of the Greater Kettin Confederation. 

-VB-

Reincarnated to the Past
Interlude: Ghigari I

-VB-

To think that Ureya would marry a wiseman. 

Ghigari didn’t see it coming. 

It wasn’t that he blamed Wiseman Alan for stealing his daughter or find much fault with that man. He was, in many ways, the opposite of Ghigari himself. 

He was short; Alan was tall.

He was wide; Alan was thin (and now muscular).

His features were hard and round; Alan had sharp if narrow jawline and narrowed stares that unnerved most in the tribe.

His eyes and hair  were natural dark brown; Alan’s eyes were unnatural gemstone green and hair was black, a rarity among Ghigari’s tribe. 

He wasn’t smart or innovative; Alan was.

He was barely a leader who nearly died in the latest battle; Alan, in his first battle with the tribe, led a cohort of mildly trained women into battle and killed the Scythian chieftain and his eldest son.

He was a mortal.

Alan might be an actual demigod, if not a god.

It was really the last thought that made it so that Ghigari didn’t feel any envy. It was only natural for a demigod to be better than a man. He was just thankful Alan wasn’t using his status among the tribe as “god-touched” to usurp the position of the chief. 

Still, Ghigari knew that he did a fair job of being a chieftain, especially for an unprepared man whose position had been forced upon him by his irresponsible brothers. It’s been decades since they left. Ghigari wondered sometimes what happened to them. Did they find a good life? Where did they settle down? Couldn’t they have taken their more violent looting and raping followers with them? 

Good thing the fucktards - his older brothers’ followers - went out on their own merely weeks before Alan came to the tribe. They never came back, and thank the gods that they didn’t run into Alan, because he didn’t show up wounded when he first came to the tribe. 

Because Alan was worth much more than a dozen wayward warriors who couldn’t keep themselves in check.

Speaking of whom…

“What are you thinking of, Alan?” he asked his son-in-law. 

The man blinked and looked down from his stare into the sky and met his eyes. 

They along with half a dozen warriors rode towards the Kettin Tribe of Higher River, the only place of neutrality within the territories of the seventeen tribes. They were the natural mediators and diplomats; living at the center of other sixteen tribes tends to make a tribe cooperative.

Eight was the limit to a chieftain’s group that could visit the High River Kettins as was agreed to by all seventeen tribes at the start of this confederation years ago. Ghigari would know: he was there with his father when the agreement was made.

Alan continued to stare at him for a moment. If it had been anyone else, then Ghigari would have struck them for being rude. Alan, however, was family, and it was a well known tick of his that he would actually think for a long time before he spoke. 

Very odd behavior, that. Were all of his people before he settled with Ghigari’s tribe like that? Or was it just a learned behavior that Alan got from his parents?

“I am thinking about the possible connections between the sixteen tribes you have described to me.”

Ghigari grunted. Of course, that’s what Alan was thinking of.

As he had explained over two days before this trip started, the sixteen tribes of the Greater Kettin Federation were not quite disparate but still measurably different. 

To their east were two tribes: Low Hill Kettin and River-Coast Kettin. They were amicable to Ghigari and his tribe.

To the west lay every other tribe: Smooth Hill Kettin, Big Kettin, Small Gettin, Red Oak Kettin, Split River Kettin, Higher River Kettin, Fast River Kettin, Mountain River Kettin, Rolling Hill Kettia, Mountain Kettia, and lastly, his rival, Mahk’s Kettin. 

It was a fact that the River-Coast Kettin and the Low Hill Kettins were friendly with his tribe; his tribe was twice the size of any of theirs and didn’t fuck over other Kettins, unlike Mahk’s. 

Mahk’s Kettin tribe were aggressive pieces of shits that wouldn’t stop harassing smaller fellow tribes of the Wide Plains when there were outsiders who would come and pillage these lands and its tribes from the south and northeast. 

Sure, his tribe was the first to suffer, but if his tribe lost and got swept aside, everyone else on this side of the great and long river would also suffer. 

Including Makh’s. 

“I think I know why Mahk Kattins are as aggressive and hostile as they are: it’s a necessity for their survival.”

Ghigari blinked twice while focusing on Alan. Then he frowned. “What kind of necessity makes a fellow plainsman hostile to other plainsmen?” he demanded angrily at the idea that a tribe couldn’t survive in the bountiful Wide Plains.

“You said that their tribe sits at the foot of the north mountains, yes?”

“Yes.”

“While the river provides water, that area must not be a great location for farming. Maybe hunting, but hunting cannot support the biggest tribe of the Kettins.”

Ghigari frowned. “So are you saying that the idiots chose the worst spot to settle and then harassed others for their mistake?” 

If that was the case, then he might as well go without the confederation: that kind of idiocy would kill the rest of the confederation tribes.

“Ah, but you also said that Mahk’s Kettins are the last to join, previously outsiders only generations ago from the north.”

“Yes…?”

“Has anyone taught them how to farm properly? Or ask why they came down from the mountains?”

“What does that have to do with us?”

“If you help them solve their problems, then they’re less likely to harass us or other tribes. I imagine that they actually serve as gatekeepers to any invaders from the north.”

He laughed. “Invaders? From the north? The north mountains are harsh lords of the land. What kind of tribe could grow strong enough to threaten the biggest of the Kettins?!”

“Tribes who might have been pushed out of their own lands. Tribes that are desperate to feed their families.”

Ghigari grimaced. “... Aye, desperate nomads make the worst enemies. They do not run from the fight or surrender even as they lay dying.”

“Imagine floods or droughts in the northern mountains. Tribes desperate to eat must come south to the fertile plains to find food. Did you not say yourself that your great-grandfather fought the Mahks when they came to settle the northward river?”

“He did.” And his great-grandfather did his tribe proud by defeating the then-chieftain of the Mahks. It was a call to arms by blood, for Ghigari’s great-grandfather had married a woman of Vin's. The Vin’s Kettin had needed help and had called for all of the blood alliances they had forged. 

It cost them a lot of favors, but it kept the Vin’s Kettin alive and the Mahk’s contained. 

“And I suppose that the Vin’s are not happy with Mahk’s, so they probably didn’t share how to survive in the Wide Plains.”

“So? Let them die. Mahk’s are -”

“Just like us, father,” Alan interjected with a soft and sad smile. “Two generations down, and they have still yet to survive properly as all Kettins do. Is that not what you told me?”

“And? Mahk’s have raided every other tribe save the River-Coast and the Low Hill, but that’s because those two tribes are further away. We’ve suffered -”

“But should we not help a member of the confederation so that they become its strength, not its liability? To help them would be to make sure that they change their ways. If their survival is truly the cause of their hostility, then we might even be able to gain concessions out of them. Remember father, we have more to gain from a stronger confederation than the Vin’s or the Mahk’s. We’re the ones getting repeatedly cucked by the Scythians from the Great Plains, not the rest of the confederation.”

Ghigari grumbled.

His son-in-law made a good argument.

It didn’t mean he had to like it.

-VB-

A/N: added some descriptions for Alan and Ghigari as I saw that there were questions as to what they looked like.