If the chiefs were going to fight to the death, it only could have ended one of two ways. So I wasn’t exactly shocked to hear that it was Ardu-un Iqul Roba who had fallen. Our whole tribe was weakened from the journey, and the opposing tribe’s leader had clearly been strong. I might have even said I was expecting our chief to lose, if pressed.
But I hadn’t expected the other losses.
Somehow, over the past couple of years, I had come to see Daru-an Bauq as a pillar in my life. Considering how absent he was in my childhood, effectively becoming the only child to the man and living with him like he was a single father had allowed us to bond even more closely than I had bonded with Somnial in my last life, albeit in a very different way.
And now my father was dead.
I stood over his corpse, looking down at it in equal parts dismay and confusion. The Uli wasn’t physically strong for our species, but he had great Blood skills and was masterful in the use of said techniques. He had already taught me so much, but I still had so much to learn from him.
All around me, the survivors were acting surprisingly subdued. Maybe it was the human in me, but part of me wanted to turn on the roving tribesmen and fight to the death to avenge my father and the chief. I would lose, obviously, as the roving tribe’s chief being strong enough to kill our chief meant he could easily kill any of the rest of us; that, combined with a culture of sacrificing life for strength, meant that while we were now in a bad position, it wasn’t particularly emotionally charged.
So what choice did I have but to harden my heart? Survival meant moving on and adapting. The strongest male would claim the role of chief, and if challenged, more would die so he could secure his position. Our tribe would have to leave this spot, pushing further up the coast, no matter the cost. Even more of us would die on the way, and if we couldn’t find a place we could defend, our whole tribe would fall, allowing stronger tribes to flourish. That was the law of this land. Really, it was the law of all life, aside from when civilization and enlightenment changed the playing field.
“Hey,” an Uli said to me. I looked up at him, blinking a few times until I realized I recognized him; it was the second Uli I had fought, who I had left for dead with a collapsed lung. He tossed the shard of ivory I had stabbed into his ribs back to me, which I caught after a bit of fumbling.
“You’re not dead,” I said numbly, only half-processing the situation. “Thought I got you.”
“[Blood Restoration],” the Uli said with a shrug. I scowled slightly, realizing that of course most of these warriors would have the ability to recover after the battle so long as they weren’t killed.
I should have finished him off in the moment, I thought sourly. I had killed the third Uli I was fighting, since it was clear the battle was coming to an end, and I felt like I could tolerate the Blood Fever, so I was displaying a number of new streams of names on my body.
My Blood had climbed to 54 with the two overpowered kills, which was enough to qualify as a full tribesman; the Uli mostly counted by sixteens, given their four hands of four fingers each.
Crossing 16 a year prior had been the difference between beginner and intermediate, which would have been a bigger deal in my training if Daru hadn’t already seen me as past that stage from the start, and crossing 32 would have pushed me into the final phase of my training towards becoming a full tribesman, but again, I was ahead of the curve, so little had changed for me. Jumping the rest of the way towards the level of a tribesman in this battle was something I would have been excited about, had we have won.
Blood growth slowed down for the average tribesman since there wasn’t as much of a need to fight within the tribe beyond that point. The Uli who made it to tribesmen status were a team when hunting together, and losses were usually from failed hunts, mantis attacks, or enemies such as these roving Uli. Still, the chief was supposed to have over 64 Blood, at minimum, four sixteens to separate himself from the average tribesman.
Not that I wanted to be the Roba, but I did want to somehow push my Blood beyond the 72 that my Will had been to see what happened. I rued the lost opportunity of the battle, since now that I was strong enough I could finally avoid killing any more of my own people, to the point where I almost didn’t hear my former enemy’s next words.
“You fought well. Clever,” he said, looking at me more closely. “You’re just a kid, aren’t you? Impressive.”
“Uh… thanks?” I said, shaking my head slightly. If I were him, I was pretty sure I’d want to kill me, not compliment me.
“Consider making a claim for a spot in our tribe,” the Uli said. “You killed Araq and Modi, and beat me, so our Roba would probably see the potential in you.”
I stared at the Uli who I was still debating killing as an enemy, then glanced back down at my dead father, nearly unable to process the offer to switch sides.
The chief was dead, and Daru was dead. My mothers might get claimed as mates by the Uli who had killed him, in which case they wouldn’t be a reason to stay with the tribe. The Uli who claimed Nadi, Uqar-il Roru’s father, had survived; given his position near the chief in the lineup, there was a good chance he would wind up as the next Roba, and I had no idea what that meant for me here, or my minimal remaining sibling relationship with the only Uli I really cared about left in my tribe.
But I also couldn’t really see myself joining the people who killed my father. This whole fight had been largely unnecessary, in my opinion. We could have come to an agreement about the resources of these tide pools—shared, or engaged in trade—if there was any culture of working together with other tribes instead of everything being so “us versus them” between Uli. I supposed that wasn’t all that different from humans, either, though without the realities of living with Blood, there was more of a reason to avoid killing each other.
Joining up with this roving tribe would likely put me in more conflicts like this, between tribes, which could be good for my Blood development, but was that what I wanted for this life? Was defending and providing for my birth tribe, who I barely had any connection left with, what I wanted either?
As Tovar, I knew I wanted to explore magic, and that clear goal had carried me far enough to find other things to live for. But Blood was different, and it was time I finally asked myself what I was living this life for. It wasn’t the other Uli, if I were being honest—and with my father now dead, that was more true than ever—but so far, it wasn’t for myself, either. Learning to use Blood was just interesting enough to keep me going, but I was just being carried in the flow of life here, hoping something would come from it.
The truth was I just wasn’t enjoying this life. I didn’t think a change in tribe would change that, either.
I couldn’t come up with an answer for the strange Uli, who finally shrugged and walked off, rubbing his ribs where I had stabbed him. I didn’t watch him go, instead looking back down at my dead father, and wondering what I would do next.
*
Technically, I had a claim to any mates of the two Uli I had killed, Araq and Modi. They were still on the younger side of a tribesman so they might not yet have had any, but I didn’t follow up on it anyway, since I actually wasn’t a tribesman yet myself. Not to mention that I had no interest in acquiring mates that way, if at all.
Since a tribe didn’t want to give up any of its breeding capable females, no offers would be made if I didn’t make a claim, so nothing came of that while other claims were made. I watched despondently as Ro-oma Ubul, Nadi’s biological mother and one of my creche mothers, was taken away from our tribe.
Unless things were very different in that tribe, she probably would still be given good care there. The tribe seemed successful enough, so food wouldn’t be an issue, and the males there would have the same relatively low interest in the females outside of breeding season. If she could find friends among the other women and satisfaction in raising children, then life shouldn’t get worse for her on the whole, logically speaking.
The emotional side of being taken from everyone she knew and loved, especially her current creche and children, was a whole other matter, though the way Uli raised children was so different from humans that I wasn’t sure how much or how long that would actually affect her. Losing the bond between the other mothers of her creche might be more of an emotional impact than losing the children, but even that was possible within the tribe anyway, at least until they all rejoined each other as grandmothers.
Frankly, thinking about it further soured me on this whole Uli lifestyle, which was reaching a breaking point.
I debated using the fullness of my situation to grow in strength rapidly, take power, and institute change, but could I even cause lasting change in one lifetime? It was an extension of my earlier thoughts about stone construction, just taken to the next level, in which I tried to actually change Uli lives, not just improve them as they were. Would I even be able to? Or would I just be dealing with rebellion from other powerful Uli for the rest of my life until I finally died, when all my works would be torn down?
That might be worth doing anyway, since I wasn’t sure I could just live in the existing system for the rest of my life in a way that would satisfy me, whether it was with this tribe or the roving one or some other one altogether.
I didn’t want to die, though. There were still things I was curious about in this life and this world. I wanted to hunt a mirulu, the mammoth, which I could now technically do if I became a tribesman. I wanted to explore the land more and see what other creatures there were, and see more of the inland environment, as well as the flora there. Hell, there was an ocean right next to me; what was on the other side of that? The Uli didn’t have boats, of course, since they had no wood, so I couldn’t introduce that to this world.
Except my brain was already starting to churn away at that problem, since there were alternatives to wood for boats on Earth. I would need something for waterproofing, but this world didn’t have mana, so it didn’t have mana decomposition. I probably could find tar, or something like that. And then maybe bones as the ribs, with hide stretched over it…
If I wanted to follow that thread, I’d need to stay by the ocean. And if I wanted to make change, doing it from my weakened tribe might be easier than joining the powerful roving tribe, so I nixed that option entirely and commit to staying with my people. I hoped Ro-oma would find happiness in her new life with them, which was all I could do for her. For now, at least.
But I also decided it was time to take off any limitations I placed on myself. Now that I could become a tribesman, I could challenge adults that I disagreed with, and develop my Blood that way. I wouldn’t hold back in whatever conflict came next. I’d protect the tribe, yes, but I’d protect a future for myself, first and foremost.
A future I would build with my own hands.
Several years later, I finally ran up against the consequences of trying to live outside of the norm and beyond my station.
“Mali-iq Rumi,” the new Roba said to me. “I challenge you.”