A Lady's Submission

Peter and the rest nodded their heads and started to head off without any further question as to my plans for pressing the war to the enemy.

I called out, "Ofunai, I want you to stay here and help Tyree manage the city should there be an attack on us here."

"Not likely. My scouts report no troop movement."

I nodded but said, "Just the same I'd prefer it for you to be here just in case."

Ofunai nodded without a further word and even though I could tell he didn't like it, he nevertheless went along with my plan.

~~~~~~~

Anna

Anna watched her husband steadily fade from view down the river. It felt like he was taking her heart with him.

She didn't feel at all that what he was doing was wise and yet he was a man of action. He had to do something in the face of such a provocation, but to her that was just the problem.

She understood his reasoning, but she also saw where there was room for deception. Here at Arn her husband's position was entirely defensible and yet at the outset of this war with a great colonial power he was going on the offensive.

She didn't like what she sensed. It didn't fit with how the situation should go somehow.

Now, as she watched him depart, she wondered if she had been wise to remain quiet about her objections to the course of action that he had set himself upon. Feeling over her womb, she felt at where she knew a new life had already begun to form.

Would her baby still have a father within a day or two days' time? Closing her eyes as Mahlon and the other canoes were no longer visible she began to pray in ear-nest for the protection of her husband and for the men with him.

Then quietly the voice of her Maker spoke into her spirit, "You are right my daughter to be concerned."

Anna's eyes flared open at the words spoken into her mind. Silently she questioned the spiritual voice that had spoken into her mind, "Do you confess that Jesus the Messiah has come in the flesh?"

"Yes, I do."

Anna's eyes opened again at the spiritual confirmation she had just received. Feeling tears gather at the corners of her eyes, she whispered, "Why did you not alert Mahlon to this trap?"

"He did not seek My counsel as you have done so. You are wise to do as you have."

Her lips quivering, she begged out softly, "Oh please bring him back! I... Oh please!!" She said at the last with a fervency of passion that she had never used to intercede on behalf of her first husband.

"Pray for him. Pray that he will seek My counsel and not trust in the strength of a man's insight. For what is a man's strength or his wisdom for that matter? He is here today and gone tomorrow."

Nodding her head at the glimmer of hope that was being offered to her, she breathed out, "Thank you!"

Hope or not she felt despair blossom at the reality of how strong-willed her husband was. Would he see reason before it was too late?

She could but hope and pray that he would!

She felt a presence at her side and opening her eyes she took in Tyree and Ofunai. Both wore looks of sympathy and were no doubt about to express sympathy and encouragement to her that everything would be okay, but she was not having any of that!

Shocking both men immeasurably she stepped for-ward to grip them both authoritively. Tyree by his shirt front and Ofunai by a tribal necklace he always wore. "Alright now, I want you two to get this, so listen well! God has revealed to me that this first strike action on my husband's part is not a wise one. The surprise attack which my husband thinks to make upon the enemy will instead likely happen here!"

"My scouts report..."

"I don't care what your scouts have to report! What are they to the Almighty God in heaven! Now this is going to be the way of it! You are going to keep the fighting men that are left in readiness to defend the settlement from attack. All the women and children of the natives and colonists must be relocated within the compound walls now! We will proceed with as much of a normal activity as possible as to lay to rest any suspicions by an enemy of our readiness for an attack. The gate will remain open, but have men concealed close by in order to close it at a moment's notice should the need arise. Ofunai I want you to pick out four of your warriors who have never been scouts before and send them out. Tell them that they are by no means to have any contact with your other scouts. Now go and do all that I say if you want even one man, woman, or child to survive!"

With her final quite uncharacteristic demand made she let go of the two stunned men and started for the palace within the confines of the compound's walls. Hesitatingly Tyree called out, "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to pray that my husband sees the common sense of all the things I held back from saying to him as to my reservations in regards to his course of action and hope that before it's too late that he gives up before he throws his life and all of the lives of the others away."

Anna moved on and Tyree and Ofunai were left alone to stare after the fiery dynamo outfitted in linen skirts that had just bathed them with intense heat to the point of being scorched. Finally, they glanced at each other.

Ofunai was the first to break the ice, "Mahlon left you in charge."

Tyree shook his head as resolution not usually found in one of his age affirmed his voice to say, "No, we do what she says. Everything she said!"

"You really think her God talks to her like that?" Ofunai asked with genuine curiosity.

Tyree looked after Anna and thought for a moment of all that he knew of the character of his brother's wife be-fore saying, "Without a doubt He must have, because Anna is not one to lie and she's too careful of an individual by nature to be one who is easily deceived. No, we do as she says."

Ofunai nodded and then sub-commented, "My gods never speak to me so. Maybe I need her God instead."

Tyree glanced at him and said, "I highly recommend it! I had my doubts, but not now. Anna's helped me to see more than I used two of the spiritual realm just by being who she is. Come on, let's get to work getting everybody moved into the compound." Both men headed off quickly, then to the accomplishment of a lady's command.

~~~~~~~

The jungle moved. A body of warriors glided through the shadowed understory of the jungle in virtual silence.

They were skilled in all the ways of the hunter. They had to be as they were hunters of the most dangerous animal of all, man.

In their wake they left the freshly cleaned off bones of three men behind to whiten and molder into powder on the forest floor. They had eaten well, but they were still hungry.

Not only were they hungry for more man food and for women to rape, but they were also hungry for the weapons and trade items that had been promised to them if they should overwhelm and destroy the encampment of Ar'mora. Such a task was all the more appetizing to them as their kind hated the Ar'morians.

Even to this day tales were told of how the Ar'morians of old had pushed their kind to the brink of extinction and that the only way the headhunters had survived was to flee to the darkest parts of the jungle.

Now they were back and they had no desire to flee once more to the darkest parts of the jungle where no sunlight broke through to light the jungle floor and where the flesh of men was scarce. No, they would destroy this incursion of outsiders once and for all and profit from doing so.

Their numbers had never been so great and once the other native holdouts to their way of life were destroyed or enslaved they would rule the jungle uncontested. Their roving band was but one of many, which were all, even now, converging upon the city of Arn.

The scouts of the city had been bought off handsomely by the Portuguese for their duplicity in the deception that had lured the main body of fighting men away from the largely impregnable compound city walls of Arn's inner city palace complex. The bought scouts would never collect on their promised payouts, however, because as a way of tying up loose ends the Portuguese had been very specific in outlining that they enjoy the scouts as a sort of preinvasion snack.

They had done so with relish, but now as always they hungered insanely for more as the regular flesh of animals was nothing to them as they preferred the taste of their own kind far more. Soon they would feast, but first they had to wait until all the tribes were gathered. They continued to glide onward an entirely lethal force adeptly skilled at preying upon their own kind.

After their passage a native warrior stood up from a hidden alcove beside an old fallen over tree. His eyes wide and his actions fearful since he'd had to listen to the act of men of his own village being eaten alive, he began to head back towards Arn on as much of a non-intersecting course with the group of headhunters as he could. He was not as skilled in the subtleties and need for stealth to be a scout as the others had been or else he would of wisely remained hidden for a little while longer.

As it was he let out a terror pitched scream of fright as a barbed headhunter arrow pierced his shoulder and sent him stumbling to the ground. He had no chance to even rise before the hunters of men were upon him.

His shrieks of warning and anguish alerted no one at Arn as to the eminent threat that was gathering in great number in order to do great evil.

Chapter Eight

Second Chances

We'd beached the canoes, six hours ago and ever since we had been headed inland towards the trading posts. We were as silent as a party of several thousand warriors could be, which wasn't all that quiet.

The noise of our passage through the jungle was annoying me in a way that was beyond the normal. What surprise could we hope to bring to the enemy with this amount of racket?

It seemed as if every warrior of the natives had suddenly lost all the forest craft that they had been born and raised into. What's more, they all seemed to be aware of it.

They glanced among themselves as if they thought themselves apart from their natural selves. To say the mood about us as a fighting body of men was less than to be desired was to put it mildly.

Angrily I continued to move forward stubborn to complete the task at hand. My foot fell and snapped a twig loudly. That was it!

I stopped and angrily motioned everybody else to do the same. Something was not right!

It was as if some invisible force was working against me. Suddenly it came to memory the way my wife had been silent on the whole premise of my plan, which wasn't like her to be when I outlined a plan of something.

She hadn't approved of my plan. I'd known that, even though she hadn't said anything.

I reached a hand up to wipe at my forehead and the sudden cold sweat that I found there. My wife was a very prudent woman, while I could sometimes be prone to acts of rashness.

Was this such a moment?

In the silence brought about by my gesture to halt I ruminated on the facts as they were. With a little more insightful logic applied it became apparent that of all things the Portuguese would expect of me to do it was to do something forceful, as I was doing right now, instead of remaining in my position of strength at Arn.

Arn was anything but strong right now, as it was defended by only a quarter of the number of warriors needed to do it adequately.

"What have I done!" I exclaimed inwardly to myself completely aghast at my own blindness.

Abruptly I turned around and strode back the way we had come my actions causing warriors to have to jump out of the way quickly in order to not be bowled over.

"Mahlon?" Sean cried out uncertainly.

In a voice that everyone could hear I said, "We're going back! Now!!"

As one the warriors turned and with eagerness made back the way we had just come. The level of silence that greeted my ears at our passage through the jungle only echoed to the fact of how we had been miraculously diverted from disaster of the worst kind. The warriors once more moved with the silence of their natural born in-stincts.

Somebody had been praying and I was pretty sure I knew who it was. "Thank you God for my wife! Without her I... thank you so much!"

~~~~~~~

Anna

Anna knew the exact moment the attack was imminent. She'd been listening to the sound of a loon calling out. The loon's voice had stopped mid-note and in that instant, somehow instinctively knowing the cause of it she had turned to scream at Tyree standing near the gate, "Close the gate!!"

He jumped looking startled at her shout, but in the next instant barbed arrows and poison tipped javelins were raining down everywhere within the compound. Men, women, and even children alike screamed out in both terror and pain.

Scores of the villagers and some of the colonists dropped to the ground transfixed by the aerial assault that had occurred almost without warning. Native warriors that had been in concealment on the compound walls straightened up throwing off blankets and sheltering debris to bring their own bows and arrows to bear upon the suddenly visible enemy.

Some of the brightly painted enemy fell in their head-long rush through the settlement towards the compound walls, but not nearly as many as would be desired. Anna dodged out of the way of another downward arcing javelin and dove across the ground to come up beside a little girl that she taught in one of her classes.

The girl was screaming, as she stared at the sight of her mother lying still upon the ground, staring sightlessly up at the sky, as her hands gripped around the poisoned javelin lodged in her stomach that had ended her life al-most instantly. Anna wrapped an arm around the girl and drug her into the sheltering overhang of a wagon's wooden bed, as more and more projectiles rained down within the compound.

Holding the girl to her Anna looked toward the gate and gasped at the sight of it still wide open! Headhunters were everywhere beyond the gates and many of the native warriors tasked with closing the gate were either dead or in the process of dying.

"Oh God!" Anna cried out hysterically, as all looked to be soon lost.

Three wildly screaming headhunters suddenly dropped and then two more fell as Tyree swung his sword in a backhanded swish, as he ran in a bulrush to-ward one of the partially closed doors, which was in the process of being flung wide open. He hit it hard and sent three more headhunters on the outside reeling back-wards.

As he crammed the one side of the gate closed his back was exposed to headhunters already spilled over into the compound. Anna was about to cry out to him in warning when Ofunai dodged forward and swung away with two obsidian stone chipped axes into the backs of the headhunters in the process of turning back to the gates in order to halt Tyree from closing them.

Tyree got a hold of the second gate and heaved against it with his one arm and side even as with his other hand, he hacked away viciously at the headhunters trying to barge through the narrowing gap. The headhunters were pushing against the gates again and it was all Tyree and several other surviving native warriors could do to hold them half closed.

Ofunai with a wild scream as ferocious as any headhunter dodged forward to leap through the gap be-tween the gates with both axes swinging. The outside pressure against the gate immediately lessened as Ofunai made a gory impact upon the enemy gathered there.

The one gate slammed closed and the warriors who'd done it immediately reached for the crosspiece bar. Tyree's side of the gate was about to close when he ducked through to the other side and was gone from view for a moment.

During the whole ordeal Anna had ceased to breathe at some point as she watched on in horrored fascination. Breath came back to her starved lungs though, as Tyree reappeared suddenly, as he muscled and out of control and very bloody Ofunai back through the gap in the gate.

Once clear of the gate the other warriors slammed it closed and the crosspiece bar was slammed down into place. The gate was now secure, but was the compound?

People were dead or wounded almost everywhere one looked, half of them being the warriors along the wall top. Those remaining alive, held their places, though as there was no retreat from this fight. It was a fight to the death to keep their children from being eaten and their women from being ravaged all in order to bring forth another generation of corrupted seed that would be trained to prey upon the likeness of its own self.

Tyree and the warriors by the gate were now filtering along the wall tops trying to hold the enemy of all civilized mankind out by any means possible. Twisted together hemp ropes with knots for climbing were being tossed over the wall top everywhere, even as their wood-en anchors found purchase along the edges of the wall or on the rampart walkways.

The anchors bit in as the ropes grew taut as headhunters began to climb up the compound walls. It was plain to see that the compound could not hope to hold out against such an assault that was being made upon it with so few left to defend it.

Picking the girl up Anna ran with her towards the palace. Along the way she called out to other children and women to follow her. Some did while others just continued to scream and stare in shock at all of what was transpiring.

Anna ran on with those who would follow to the palace. There were a few sealed off rooms without window access that perhaps some of the women and children could survive in providing that the headhunters didn't manage to break the doors down. It was all she could think to do to save some, but seemingly any positive outcome would be so minute as to be pointless.

Anna came to a halt before reaching the palace doors at the sight of headhunters already dropping down off the compound walls to either side of the palace and heading for her from the direction that she had been running towards. Crying with abandon because of the loss of simply everything Anna dropped to her knees and screamed, "God please help us!"

The surrounding jungle shook as if in answer to her plea and for a moment her heart stopped at the sound of a roar she couldn't place within the framework of events currently happening. Then fuzzily it occurred to her that it was the sound of conch shell horns that she heard.

The main fighting force of men had returned! As if in answer to that arrows suddenly appeared transfixing the bodies of the headhunters on the walls and the sounds of a hard-pressed battle could be heard from just beyond the walls of the compound.

The headhunters that had been in route for her looked undecided as to what to do, but they didn't have long to think about it as Tyree, Ofunai and several others rushed past to cut them down where they stood with superior passion of the moment giving them the edge.

Headhunters vanished from among the land of the living everywhere one looked as native warriors used their ropes to climb up and repossess the interior of the com-pound. The gates opened towards the far end of the compound and Anna feeling very much in a daze started to walk towards her husband, whom she saw in the distance, as he stood at least a foot taller than most of the native warriors.

She passed by the bodies of the fallen both friend and enemy alike in order to get to the love of her life, who she'd feared that she'd never see again. In her pursuit to do that she missed the vengeful actions of a wounded headhunter intent on evening the score some before being put to death as he knew he would be in short order.

From his prone position on the ground he raised his blowpipe already loaded with a poisoned dart, and with a vengeful puff of air he let it fly. The dart flew true, but instead of connecting and piercing Anna's skin, it lodged into the fast-moving blur of Ofunai, who had seen the fallen killer's movements and even now stepped into the path of the dart that would have stolen the life of his master's wife.