Wulf the Eternal Warrior

CHAPTER ONE

WULF IN EGYPT

It was the faint sound of a wooden spear shaft scraping against a shield that awoke Wulf. It was pre-dawn, and there was a chill in the early morning air. All about him was the camp of his sleeping tribe, but no one else stirred from their rude huts. Even the dogs of the tribe were undisturbed, sleeping outside on the earth.

Throwing aside his sleeping furs, the paleo tribesman called Wulf emerged from his own hut, silently as a cat. He did not consciously try to move in quiet- it was just his nature, as it was in his nature to fight and hunt. He quickly ran lightly across the clearing which surrounded the communal campfire ring, and peered off across the rolling fields and hills about the camp.

Far they had traveled, always looking to find a new place to settle. Wandering nomads is what they were, and what their ancestors had always been, for eons. The life suited them; these paleolithic peoples never desired to change from their ancestral ways of hunting and gathering- their life was good, and their great god was that of Nature herself.

But more and more, civilization had begun to attack them without reason, driving them off from wherever they had settled. Those civilized kings and masses of soldiers, all living together in huge cities crammed full of stunted folk who subsisted on bread and beans and other unnatural foodstuffs, yet had come up with superior weaponry. The bronze spear tips and armor of these civilizations made the weak soldiers who wielded them almost the equal of mighty, uncivilized men such as Wulf’s tribesmen, who had only flint weapons and wood and leathern shields.

Then he saw it- a glint of yellow light from a bronze spear! The crescent moon illumined it faintly, but Wulf’s keen eyes caught the slight glow, and then another beside it- it was a group of soldiers, and they were heading towards his tribe. Wulf, the foremost warrior amongst his tribe, despite being not yet of his majority, narrowed his blue eyes into slits of wariness and anger. Why would civilizations never let them be?

He ran back to the tribe, and woke his friend Heron. “Go and wake the tribe, and then you and the other warriors I gather will go to scout out the attackers who approach us.” Never did it cross Wulf’s mind to question what these soldiers wanted- they were of civilization, and they always wanted to steal and enslave others. Always, without exception.

The women and children, roused quickly and quietly from long experience and practice of the paleolithic survival tactics they had lived with their whole lives, silently followed the older women and children out of the village to a pre-chosen hiding place. It was a deep cave, hidden in a copse of woods to which they went. They had even provisioned it with foodstuffs and had taken care to choose a spot with a small clear stream close by. They would be safe here.

Heron and the other men of the tribe all joined Wulf in the tribal fire clearing, the huts of their people all about them. There were old men, white-haired but fit and hearty clasping weapons, along with warriors in their prime, and lean and fit women who held bows and had quivers of arrows slung in skin holders across their backs.

Wulf was a natural leader, and all looked instinctively towards him, despite his youth. He ran a hand to push back his long thick reddish hair, and he said in a low rumble of sound, “They are but a little way off. We need to go round to the east, into the forest, and then surprise them when they approach our camp. I don’t know their numbers yet, but we shall soon enough.” He grinned hardly, his strong white teeth shining in the faint light of the moon.

Holding aloft his own bronze sword, the other warriors all lifted theirs as well. The same reddish gold metal shone from the tips of the women’s arrows.

“They won’t know that we are using their own weapons, either!” he said in a satisfied voice.

The Kemet soldiers clanked down from a small rise, expecting to find a rude encampment of primitives, something they had made a habit of exterminating. 40 there were, along with their leader Menkapf, each with a wood-hide shield slung across his back, and a bronze-tipped spear within his grasp.

Menkapf hated the primitive people, who kept coming into their golden land, taking what belonged to the people of Kemet, those chosen of the gods to live in favor along the great Nile. It would be a great joy to slay these folk, who were unbeloved of the gods- who had cursed them with strange, light colored eyes, and hair of any shade except that of Kemet’s wonderful black.

Lifting his spear, he stalked into the clearing, as his men raised their own spears in imitation. He drew back his arm further, ready to throw, ready to slay these intruders in their sleep- and then heard a gurgle behind him.

Spinning about, he saw his second-in-command, Khui, fall to his knees, a spear jutting from his side. Blood poured from the wound, and the man toppled onto his face, groaning in agony. More spears flew through the night sky, glinting in the light of the gibbous moon as they flew to decimate his command!

A blood-curdling shriek of barbarous tongue assaulted the night, and a horde of white-skinned savages were all about, slashing with long knives of yellow metal! Shocked, Menkapf looked to his god Khonsu, the moon above, as if to ask him how such weapons of the civilized could have come into the hands of these unloved-of-the-gods.

Khonsu shone down, white and serene amongst the carnage that was happening all about his questioner. He offered no answer, until with a sharp blow to his unhelmeted head, Menkapf knew no more.

It was dawn when Menkapf awoke, groggy and with an aching head. His weapons were gone, and he was trussed to a post. There was a cluster of those hated light folk squatting about a fire, upon which he smelled roasting meat.

There was laughter, and one of the men looked over in his direction and pointed. A very large, muscular man rose, and walked over towards him. With long, uncouth reddish hair and skin that was sun-bronzed, rather than the light brown the gods had blessed the people of Kemet with, he approached Menkapf as if he was an equal. This in itself affronted to him, as he was a high ranking man of his land, and this other- well, he was not even really a man, according to the gods of Kemet!

“I am Wulf,” said the man, looking down at Menkapf, sagging on his ropes. Even if he had been standing straight, he thought uncomfortably, he would hardly come to the shoulder of the man before him. He tried to look defiant.

“We are the Allemani,” continued the towering figure. “We have slain all of your men, although we sought no grievance with you. Why do you continue to attack us, who have done naught to you or your people?”

Although the accent was uncouth, this Wulf spoke very intelligibly to the soldier of Kemet. Uncomfortably, the undeniable intelligence such a mastery of a foreign tongue denoted was shocking. The people of Kemet held their language, like all else about them and their land, to be sacred, and beyond the understanding of primitive outsiders.

Menkapf responded- “You are in the land of the chosen! Only those beloved by the gods of Kemet can live here- Anubis, Osiris, and Isis have so decreed.”

Smoldering blue-grey eyes bored into his own dark ones, until Menkapf was forced to look away. “We are far from your infernal, stinking cities here! Your men are lying in their gore, only you have been saved for questioning. Just leave us to live our lives in peace, far from you and yours, and all will be well.” He stalked away, back to the campfire, his broad back vibrant with power. The chosen people of Kemet were small, and prized their being such with being in likeness with the gods. But still, having witnessed the powerful ferocity of such physiques in the attack against them, Menkapf shuddered.

He watched helplessly as the men and women (yes, unbelievingly to a gentleman of Kemet- women were allowed an equal space at the fire!), discussed his fate. The strange, barbaric tongue they used was unintelligible to him, but as they looked over at him as they talked and gestured, he got the drift of their conversation.

A golden-haired woman, taller than him even- (an abomination that, according to the gods of Kemet), seemed to be arguing for his death. Her unnatural bright green eyes, (whoever heard of such a thing as that), kept glancing at him venomously as they spoke.

Another, a massive man with hair the color of the sand about them, seemed to argue the other way. Back and forth it went, with others chiming in, back and forth, as they all munched on meat that they plucked as it roasted above the fire. Menkapf’s mouth watered, he had not eaten since yesterday morning.

Finally, Wulf rose and held his hands out, ending the argument. The woman with the hair of gold looked down, angrily. Wulf walked again towards him, and produced a large, sharp copper knife. Menkapt shuddered as he approached, the glints of the morning sun shining off that wicked blade.

A large, powerful hand rested upon his shoulder, and the blade slashed down- severing the ropes that bound him! He had almost lost control of his bowels, but as a superior son of Memet he did not.

“I have decided- you will return to your people, your king, your gods- tell them not to attack us again! The Allemani are a fair people. Do not hurt us, and we will not hurt you. You may keep your infernal cities, jammed with undernourished folk- we want none of that! We just want space, to hunt and gather, and worship our own god, which is Nature itself. Now go- and warn your king!”

And with that, Wulf of the Allemani turned back to the fire, dismissing the major general of Memet’s army with the sight of his retreating back. With alacrity, Menkapt leapt upright, and although the pain of returning circulation was hard to bear, he staggered away. The bright green eyes of the gold-haired woman followed him vengefully, and he only wanted to escape them!