Kee'Ak and Tohona are the male half of the Clan, there is no real rivalry between them for the leadership of the Clan because they are both too lazy to want the responsibility. Ayah and Luana the female half of the clan are quite happy with this state of affairs because they are astute enough to know that they all have strengths and weaknesses and need to work together to survive.
This then is the story of what happens when you go against the natural order of things.
Every season when they leave, we follow the herds north and the next season we follow them back south again, why don’t we just stay here until they return. There must be other herds moving from further south up north to where we are now. This had been the argument put forward by the men of the Shell Clan. They were after all a lazy pair and questioned why they should make the long trek and head north into the colder lands, surely it was better to stay in this place as the days got warmer.
The women argued, “it’s what we’ve always done, it’s what our parents and their parents and their parents parents have done and so it must be the right thing to do, there must be a good reason that they did it for so long”.
“Well there’s the huts”, the men argued back, “we spend a long time building them and each time we go away they fall into disrepair, or we come back to find them occupied by some other Clan and we have to fight to get them back”.
“Well some times we fight and sometimes we have to move elsewhere when there’s too many of them to fight” they finished lamely, remembering the last fiasco.
Finally they’d all agreed not to go.
The sun had stayed long in the sky, longer each day that passed, it got hotter and then hotter still, finally there was no rain. The grass disappeared and the land shrivelled, there were no herds coming from the south, food was scarce and then got scarcer. The Shell Clan were getting desperate, their food supplies had dwindled to virtually nothing and they knew they must make a sacrifice to their Gods to earn favour or they would all die in this parched landscape.
All they had left were a few of the hardier goats, 10,500 years ago they were in the process of turning the wild Bezoar goats into the domesticated Capra Hircus, what you and I would call Billy and Nanny. It wasn’t an easy process, the goats were still semi wild and had to be watched all the time or they would wander off.
The other problem with keeping goats was that they were a strong temptation to any passing predator, and it could be a dangerous job protecting your food source. The Shell Clan were fortunate in that they had a pair of Barkers to help with both tasks, these animals were also still semi wild and we know them as dogs.
The Barkers and Humans had a strange relationship that went back many thousands of years earlier than the one with the goats. It had been a difficult transition before the Wolves stopped eating Humans and turned into Barkers who helped them in their daily life then when times were hard the Humans started eating the Barkers.
Such is life on a Palaeo Diet.
Having made the decision to sacrifice to the Gods they had to decide what or who they should sacrifice. Normally it would be some animal they had caught alive, or for a more serious sacrifice, one of the goats would do, usually the oldest one, maybe even one of the Barkers but none of these would do this time. This time it was serious, they weren’t sacrificing for a good hunt or fertility for the clan, this time it was for survival and it needed a serious sacrifice.
The men eyed up the women and the women eyed up the men, no words were said and it was a huge relief when a stranger, a young woman entered their camp begging for food and shelter. Her Clan had all been killed by a marauding band from the south and she was on her own and needed help.
It was an easy decision, they fed and let her rest overnight and now she was tied to the sacrificial stone awaiting her fate, not quite what she was hoping for when she begged for shelter.
Luana was checking the ropes were still tight as Ayah fed a little more fuel onto the fire, the one they would need to cook all the food that would soon be coming their way once the sacrifice was made and the Gods granted them good hunting.
That was when they heard a low pitched growl from the East as a cave lion caught the scent of either the goats, the Clan or the Sacrifice. They all smelled attractive in a strange way….food has that effect on all of us and he was hungry, the Clan were not the only ones in need of sustenance.
At the same time to the north a small group of humans were also hunting and they were just as hungry as the lion and even if they didn’t have his sense of smell they had good eyesight and even more dangerously had developed a fearsome weapon over 50,000 years ago, the bow and arrow.
You probably don’t remember but the Shell Clan, whilst familiar with the bow had never acquired the skill to make or use them, instead they relied on the ability with a sling that the two women in the clan possessed. The men maintained that a flint tipped spear or a stone axe together with a strong physique was all that was necessary to take down prey or defend themselves.
It also meant that they didn’t have to spend hours and days learning the coordination necessary to use the sling, giving them more time to work on their physique.
Then to make matters worse and also slightly surreal, a pair of large monkey like creatures were moving towards the Clans small settlement from the west, no doubt with evil intent.
They certainly scared the bejazus out of the goats, who ran away.
Looking on the bright side the Clan have plenty of food to choose from, unfortunately for them, they are also on the menu. Perhaps if they’d made the sacrifice earlier, a nice herd of slow defenceless animals might have been all they had to contend with. Who knows, but it’s too late now.
Kee’Ak shows no fear and throws his spear at the monkey’s, he misses but one flees and the other moves away from our intrepid hero.
It’s probably about now that he’s wondering what to do next, as he’s thrown away his only weapon. Maybe learning to use a sling is out of the question at this point in time!
The female members of the Shell Clan are not known to back away from a fight and Ayah skulks forward, trying to get into range of the large monkey without scaring it away. From her point of view it looks to be good eating and she’s not so sure if the idea of the sacrifice will work anyway.
She throws a river pebble from her sling at the animal. It’s a good pebble, hard and round, she’s hit many a creature with it before but not this time, and rather than back off, the monkey charges forward to attack.
Fortunately for her it’s an old silver back male and he soon runs out of breath, pulling up before he can make contact and he glares malevolently at her, breathing heavily and wondering what to do now.
Unfortunately for him it brings him closer to Luana, who is also pretty nifty with her sling and she lobs a couple of river pebbles his way….missing.
Later she maintained that it was because Ayah was in the way and she didn’t want to run the risk of hitting her instead of the monkey. Explanations were necessary because lobbing the stones at the monkey enraged it further and he charged forward again.
Obviously he recovered his breath fairly quickly and in the ensuing fight Ayah was bitten on the arm but help was at hand.
Luana howled a loud piercing howl which unnerved the ape and he backed off, then Luana’s Barker ran forward, growling and barking, as Barkers are prone to do. The monkey roared back and then the Barker backed off…stalemate.
To the north of their encampment the bow armed humans started to advance. Tohona reacted to this by failing to activate which embolden the Cave Lion who advanced out of sight to his right. One of the bow armed humans roared, he wasn’t very good at roaring and instead of retreating Tohana’s Barker ran at him. Not being as brave as the Barker, or not as stupid, the man retreated quickly.
Maybe his descendants would become postmen and have an instinctive fear and dislike of dogs, maybe it’s a DNA thing, who knows!
Meanwhile Ayah slings more river pebbles at the monkey, missing again. Probably the wound to her arm is affecting her aim because she’s usually pretty good with this long range weapon.
For reasons that I can no longer remember the monkey decides to attack Keh’Ak and yet again it runs out of steam and stops short of his intended target. Keh’Ak isn’t the fool I made him out to be earlier. He carries 2 light throwing spears as well as one stout spear for when things get tough and it’s melee time. So he throws his second spear, and yet again, he misses. The good news is that it causes the ape to back off and hopefully Kee’Ak will be able to collect at least one of the lost spears and make another ranged attack because he doesn't want to get too close having seen what happened to Ayah.
Luana has decided that Ayah and Kee’Ak can deal with one monkey on their own and she advances on to the 4 humans. She pelts the nearest with stones hitting him hard and then she roars intending to drive them off, but it has no effect. She’s going to have to work on that roar she realises before commanding her Barker to attack the human.
The other one may have Postmen’s DNA but this one doesn’t, and when attacked he stands his ground and kicks out at the Barker but doesn’t inflict any damage on the animal.
Before you report me to the RSPCA, no animals were harmed in this story. Well….not seriously harmed.
Tohona’s Barker attacks one of the other humans, and receives a wound for his boldness. Oh dear I spoke a little too soon about no animals being harmed. The human howls, a wild feral sound, which pierces the still desert air, and for some reason this enrages Tohona. He advances quickly in their direction, probably to protect his goats but he’s getting very close to four men, all a similar size to him and better armed as well.
Is the man mad or just high on testosterone!
Meanwhile Ayah has pelted one of the apes, she missed again but the animal takes fright and runs off, closely followed by its mate.
Damn she thinks, there goes a good few days worth of food. It looks like the sacrifice is going to be necessary after all.
Things are not going well for the dark skinned humans, bows are fearsome weapons at a distance but no where near as deadly in hand to hand combat as a spear or stone axe, or even teeth, and in the hand to teeth combat both Barkers have killed their opponents. This is good news and bad news, the good news is that they’ve obviously reduced the attacking force by half, the bad news is that they start to eat them, reducing the potential food haul for the Clan.
Tohana on the right has a hard fight, he is wounded but eventually smashes in the skull of his adversary with his stone axe which proves more effective than the bow. Later, around the campfire he will repeatedly tell tales about this daring fight, until eventually everyone in the clan tells him to shut up.
Kee’Ak is not so lucky and is laid low by a blow from the Archer, this is also something that Tohana points out, time and time again, until everyone in the Clan tells him to shut up.
Luana has carefully moved into sling range and she drives the last human away before he can kill Kee’Ak.
The Cave Lion proves to be a timid beast and keeps failing to advance, eventually it slinks off, looking for easier prey. As he goes, both Luana and Ayah consider how fine they would look wearing his skin as a cloak. Each of them wonders how she can persuade the rest of the Clan to hunt down and kill the lion, then having done that how can they ensure the rest of the Clan give her the skin.
This is going to require a lot of careful thought and maybe some negotiation.
Well, in spite of facing three separate opponents the Clan survived and gained some food, the three humans, although 2 were badly chewed by the Barkers. They would have done better to kill a monkey but “food is food” as Luana the philosopher said.
It had been a hard fight though, with three of them being wounded. In the days after the encounter Ayah’s arm healed quickly and she suffers no lasting damage, also for some unknown reason she developed her skill in Gathering which was a bonus.
Luana came through the fight unscathed but with no great deeds done didn’t gain any benefit from it. Due to his wound from the hunter Tohana would have lost any positive traits but as he didn’t have any, he remains a slightly bemused character. Kee’Ak’s wound was more serious because he lost the Alert trait and has become lame in one leg as well.
However, in my book, any escapade in which all the members of the Clan survive is a good result, they have food for the immediate future and their wounds may heal given time so there was a cheerful feeling around the campfire that night.
Tomorrow is another day, is one on the Shell Clans favourite sayings, along with Bugger and Sh*t happens, just don't step in it.
You might be wondering about the young woman, the Sacrifice, or then again you might have forgotten all about her in the excitement of the latest episode in the ongoing saga of the Shell Clan.
There was a lot of discussion that night, they hadn’t sacrificed her and yet the gods had still favoured them, was this a good omen. The men were inclined to think so, there was the ulterior motive in that she was female, not unattractive and so good breeding stock which would increase the size of the Clan, and as everyone knows, size matters. She would be grateful not to be sacrificed and that would be an added advantage in the well being and cohesion of the Clan. They were well aware that Ayah and Luana had a very high opinion of themselves and they hoped that introducing a third female would redress the balance somewhat.
What fools they are.
Ayah and Luana had other reasons for agreeing with their men on this subject and so they let the young woman live and hopefully be a valued member of the Shell Clan, in their fight for survival in a Palaeo world.
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