Chronicles of the Wolf: Of Wolves & Spiders

chapter 2

Sometime later we had made it to the village of the Obscuros. The village itself was not much different than ours. It had many huts and shacks mostly made of wood, there were some however that was made of this metal that I had heard of, before but had never seen up close.

“Tis called Iron,” the Beghrest male said when I looked at it curiously. He was a much smaller Beghrest than what I was used to, he in fact was only a few inches taller than I was as a young pup back then which dwarfed him when compared to other male Beghrest.

“I’ve heard of this,” My father said looking at the metal.

“Supreme Chief,” the Beghrest put his hand to his heart and bowed.

“So, this is the ore that Baharus found is something that we can melt into something else.” My father said as he knocked on the metal.

“Ay sire, it is quite durable, and malleable, we can form into virtually anything.” The Beghrest said. “We even made weapons out of this.”

“Well I am going to have to ask Baharus about that,” my father said as he raised his arm to his heart. “We must be on our way.”

“Ay sire,” The Beghrest said replying in the same way.

We then made it through the rest of the village. There were many a Beghrest who came up and saluted my father, and they often saluted him with their arm across the chest. It was a sign of respect for the Supreme Chief of the clans.

It was one thing that my father was the Supreme Chief, it was quite the other that he was hard not to see, as massive as he was he towered above many of the Beghrest, no one came close, there was an occasion one that was perhaps a foot shorter than my father, but they were smaller. To top it off only the Supreme Chief Alqamar had platinum fur.

A short walk later we met the Chief Medicine Beghrest. He was quite the exotic Beghrest. He stood about 12 feet tall, and he had all these markings on his face. Red lines, blue swirls, gold stars. He had great green, red and orange feathers on his mane, he swirled a stick around my father as we approached.

“The vile spirits shall be thwarted from thee!” the Medicine Beghrest said.

“Shall they always be thwarted!” my father responded.

I rolled my eyes thinking how idiotic this ritual was.

“And may the unbeliever see what is real,” the Medicine Beghrest said shaking his stick at me. He gave me a coy smile as he shook his stick. I looked at this stick questioningly, it sounded like it was rattling almost like an Acorba, a type of serpent known to have a rattle on its tail.

Despite how humorous it was to me I decided not to snort at this motion. The Medicine Beghrest looked at me for a while before he snarled at me.

“The boy does not understand our ways yet sire,” the Medicine Beghrest said and he looked over at my father.

“Yes, he has been a lazy one,” my father snorted. “If you only heard him on the way here, he would not stop whimpering like one who had not finished being suckled!”

The two adult Beghrests laughed at my dispense and gave each other hearty handshakes. They had placed each other’s hands and claws into each other’s arms and locked it there for what seemed like several minutes before letting go. I immediately knew who this Beghrest was it was my father’s best friend and my uncle Da’Mon.

“You always were one to pick on younglings Da’Mon,” my father said.

“And you were always too easy on them Supreme Chief,” Da’Mon said. He turned back to me and shook his stick at me again. “Though this pup, he is not even what I would expect a pup of yours to be.”

“Believe me Da’Mon if I had not smelled my seed in Efra when she conceived, I would not believe it now myself,” my father laughed heavily again. “Where is Baharus.”

“I think he is off with the female tents, getting that girl of his ready for the arrangement.” Da’Mon said. I shot a glance at my father when Da’Mon said this.

Up until now I had not heard anything about a girl or an arrangement. The only thing that my father had said that we were going to the Obscuros tribe and meet up. This was not totally irregular, we had gone to the Obscuros camp before. Da’Mon was a very good friend of my father, and so was the chief of the Obscuros, Baharus. So just going there did not set any alarms off for me.

I never liked the trek there, it took too long to get through the Bel’athore Forest and the lake in it always freaked me out. There were parts of the forest that they said had these wild primate creatures that had weapons roamed around the scariest thing was they were apparently fur-less and wore other animal skins. Skin-men they called them. Such a legend made the fur on my body stand on their ends. Of course, many disregarded the stories, just like the tales of the giant insect creatures. That however did not make me feel easy when I walked through the forest. Even to this day I still don’t like going through that forest.

“What girl?” I remember asking my father.

“You will see shortly,” my father gave me a grin when he said this.

At the time, I had not known about this deal about if a chief only had a daughter then he usually marries that daughter off to a neighboring tribe. Because of the friendship that Baharus and my father had, obviously it meant that Baharus’s daughter and myself were going to get arranged to be married. There was a whole ceremony that was involved with an arrangement like that, I had not noticed at that time that this was why Da’Mon was dressed the way he was with such ornate colors. I had not put one and one together just yet.

It was perhaps at that point when I noticed how festive everything was around us. The whole village was in a sort of festive frenzy. There were the ceremonial drum crews running out of this hut, I followed them with my eyes and saw them head off to an opening at the center of the village and started setting up these massive drums. There were maybe five or perhaps six of them, they all had these massive drums. I noticed that one had this massive drum that was easily five feet wide and he had these huge mallets in his hands.

He excitedly headed over with the other ones and he began hitting the mallets above his head. He made four or five clicks of the mallets. The others who had been setting up the other drums had finished doing so and started clicking their own mallets. This happened for about a minute or so before the one with the huge drum hit the massive drum with the mallets. It made a thunderous bang that made me jump.

“Behemet, there is no reason to fear the drums,” my father snorted. Da’Mon had still been next to us, and he had seen me jump. He started giving a laugh and started slapping his knees when he got into this cackle.

“It wasn’t that funny,” I said.

“You didn’t see yourself jump!” Da’Mon said laughing and wiping tears from his eyes. He cleared his throat and started to calm his laughter down.

“I’ll go talk to Baharus and see if everything is ready.” My father said he pointed at the center of the village. “You go off and watch those drummers drum.”