The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 10 [Parts 1 to 11] by Natsu Hyuuga

Author:Natsu Hyuuga
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 8: An Old Man’s Ramblings

It was over fifty years ago now, and there were twice as many nomads as there are today. Maybe more. I was one of them, born into a tribe that was—well, you might say more warlike than many of the others. Being martial-minded sounds good and all, but in truth we were little more than brigands. We mostly raised livestock, but if one of us wanted a wife, he would go to one of the neighboring tribes or a settled village and just take one. Theft and even the selling of people were like side hustles for us.

Oh, don’t give me that look. I know it was wrong. But at the time, I didn’t question it—I thought that was how life worked. My grandfather had done it, and his father. My grandmother and mother were both abducted women. It all seemed perfectly natural to me. But I know better than anyone just how bad it was.

Moving on.

I was a young man then, just in my teens, but even the chieftain trusted my bow arm. He always wanted me in raiding parties. I knew that if we won our battles, we ate good food, got more things. If the losers didn’t like it, well, it was their own fault for letting us beat them. An easy pride to muster when you’ve never tasted defeat yourself.

That pride spread, until it had infected the entire tribe.

Then one day, the chieftain’s son, he says he wants a Windreader girl.

The Windreader tribe, they were... Hmm. Something like priests, I guess. They were entrusted with rituals for everyone on the plains. They moved about the land, raising birds and reading the wind. They had a lot of very intelligent people in that tribe—they could tell you what the weather would be each year, and they were never wrong.

There were a lot of hard people among our clans. Violent people. But there was an unspoken understanding—no one touched the Windreader tribe.

Until we broke that rule.

We attacked the Windreader tribe to get a wife for our future chief. The Windreaders were right in the middle of one of their rituals, hardly a bow or sword among them. What did they have? Strange things. Seems the ritual involved domesticated birds, and hoes. The women followed the birds around, while the men worked the ground with their hoes.

Funny stuff, right? But that was the ritual, I guess. I remember the chieftain’s boy laughing. How he sneered, “They look like a bunch of farmers.” And then he said, “Fire.”

I remember how my bow creaked just before I let my arrow loose. The way it twanged, the arc the arrow took. The thwack as it found its mark in one of the Windreaders’ heads.

That was the signal to attack.

They were defenseless as babes. They had no weapons, they were just working the earth. It took no skill to kill them—it was as easy as cornering an injured deer.

The pillaging that took place that day was the worst I had ever seen in my life, although it didn’t sink in until later.

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