Reincarnated to the Past 15: Aftermath

Reincarnated to the Past
Chapter 15: Aftermath 

-VB-

Once our victorious triumphant wore off, the dirty work of cleaning the battlefield began. 

In this day and age, any metal that could be looted off of bodies was a reward in and of itself due to how expensive equipment was. 

Everyone got in on the action. Even I did.

Refining my own iron to use was a pain in the ass! Why do that when I can just loot some metal off of dead people who won’t need it anymore?

For a whole day, the dead and metals were shifted through. The Kettins who had died upon the battlefield were given the treatment of honored tribe members. Their bodies were wrapped up and carried to the families. The bodies of the dead, on the other hand, were searched thoroughly, tossed into a pile, and made into a bonfire. 

My 20th century sensibilities didn’t like how they treated the dead of the enemy. I understood that to the Kettins, the Scythians were killers, looters, and rapists all rolled into one; they just didn’t have any pleasant experience in regards to the Scythians. 

Who was I to tell someone how to deal with dead raiders? I mean, I wanted to, but I knew better than to shout it like a self-righteous prick. There was a time and place for everything. My morality wasn’t wanted here.

But … I would be a coward if I didn’t at least mention it.

Ureya let me into her longhouse, but she was a shadow of herself. Dark bags hung underneath her eyes, and she seemed pale. I walked in, hoping to meet with Ghigari, and I did. 

Just not in the way that I expected. I expected to meet a man talking with his son or his lieutenants. I didn’t expect to find him on his bed, writhing in pain. I knelt next to the bed across from his wife and eldest son. 

“Chief.”

Ghigari tilted his head to the side and looked at me. Sweat drenched his face and the rest of the body. There was a pungent smell in the air of rot.

“A-Alan,” he greeted me. “I-I hadn’t expected you…” 

He’d been infected. It’s only been two days since the battle, and he laid in his bed in pain and delirium. 

“Wiseman Alan,” his eldest son called to me, drawing my attention. I looked up and saw a face not unlike that of Ghigari but with the brown hair of his mother’s. “Is there no way for you to save father?” Despite being the heir to the tribe, the man looked no more eager to receive his inheritance, probably not when it meant the death of his father. 

“It will take a week at the very least,” I replied. “And it is not guaranteed to succeed.”

“Please start on it right now, then,” Ureya spoke up, walking into the conversation and room as she flapped the fur curtain-door aside while walking in. “Father is not weak. He will survive until you help him.”

I looked to her and then back to the eldest and then to Ghigari. Ghigari nodded. Sighing, I stood up.

‘I’ve come here to talk about other business, but here I was, getting more work in return,’ I thought as I left. 

The possible cure to Ghigari’s infection that I knew about was penicillin. I hadn’t made one because I had no need for it so far. 

Now, I just needed to find a moldy bread and a vase to store it in…

-VB-

Johaken

“So that is Wiseman Alan,” Johaken hummed as he watched the back of the man who had trained the left flank.

“Yes,” his father agreed, speaking even as his body must be twisting itself in pain. 

Johaken had been infected before when he and his band of Kettin warriors were abroad, serving as mercenaries for the Thracians, and it had been a miracle that he survived. And now, his father laid in illness, suffering from the festering wound that had nearly killed him in the battle. 

He knew that it would be a miracle for father to survive a week in this state; he had already lost too much of his blood and vitality in the battle that he would have used to fight this illness. For Wiseman Alan to save him, he would need to be fast, which was why he asked the man to start working on whatever his cure had been now and not later. 

Johaken felt nervous, however. It was only thanks to the Wiseman that the battle hadn’t ended in favor of the Scythians. Wiseman’s Left, as many were calling his warriors and viragos, stood their ground when his father’s five hundred failed to hold their ground. Wiseman struck down the Scythian chief, and if that wasn’t all, then he pushed back against the Scythian cavalry, ensuring a total victory for the Kettin. 

By the earth mother, if it hadn’t been for Wiseman Alan, their tribe would have suffered far too much. His idea of letting women join the affairs of men hadn’t been popular, but Johaken knew the cause that had tipped the scale of battle in the tribe’s favor when he saw it. Without those archers Wiseman Alan had converted regular women into, they would have lost. 

And instead of declaring him to be the top warrior of the tribe and giving him gifts of women, treasure, and land, Johaken sent him to do more work.

A man as capable as the Wiseman wouldn’t -.

“Don’t worry about Alan,” his father spoke up, rasping a little at the end and ending with a coughing fit. “He is not the type of man to think of power and hierarchy as long as neither stops him from doing his own thing.”

Ureya scoffed but seemed to agree. “He’s not a bad man.”

And that surprised everyone there. 

“That’s the first time you’ve said anything good about a man not of the family.”

Ureya struggled to say something for a moment nasty about the Wiseman, as she did often of other men, before giving up. “He is odd,” she ended.

“... Are you sure you don’t want to be wed to Wiseman Alan? You know that you will be lonely if you continu-” their mother approached the subject. 

Ureya would have none of it. “No,” she spat.

Their mother frowned. “Your brothers have already given me grandchildren. When can I expect them from you?”

“Not for a long time, that’s what.”

“We could just saddle you with Wiseman if we really wished.”

“... You wouldn’t.”

“We can. You’re fast approaching an age limit where men won’t want you.”

Ureya grumbled. “I know that,” she replied. 

“If you are married to the Wiseman, then you won’t have anything for want.”

“It’ll be a man on my bed.”

“So you want a woman instead?”

“Mom!”

-VB-

Back to Alan…

I was with the medicine women, explaining how to grow the most primitive antibiotic known to men.

“I mean, it won’t save your limb. There’s no guarantee. There’s just too other stuff in it for this to be safe, but it’s more likely to save you from certain disease than it’ll do nothing or kill you.”

“So poison.”

“No, it’s less of a poison and more that this substance isn’t pure and I am unsure if the method of purification I know will purify this particular substance. Nevermind if I can make do with the tools I have now.”

And the discussion went on and on as I set up the very basic fermentation tank for penicillin. When I finished, I was left with a skeptical medicine woman. “What?”

“Are you sure you weren't the medicine man of your former tribe?”

“No, no, no. My brother was or was going to be. I was a mathematician.”

“... A what?”

I had to explain math to her, and that took the entire day.

By the time I went back to the tribe to gather more supplies and see if anyone else needed help, I ran into a shocking display.

At the center of the tribe’s town, the prisoners of war were being distributed.

“Ah, Wiseman Alan!” 

I turned to look at a young man who I’d come to know as Huran.

“What’s going on?” I asked him.

“Spoils of war, wiseman. We’ve been looking for you.” Before I could say anything or question the practice, he was pushing me towards the center of the town square. “Come, come. Everyone is waiting for you!”

Flabbergasted and nervous, I tried to stop but to no avail. When people saw me, they cheered for me. 

“Horse killer!” someone shouted.

“The strongest of the tribe!”

“The Wolf! He’s the Wolf of the Kettin!”

Was I getting nicknames thrown my way?

“Wiseman.”

I stopped, hearing a voice I didn’t think I’d hear again. “Hoktim?!” I turned, trying to find where that voice had come from. Hoktim walked out from amongst a group of men. He wore an eyepatch now. “You live!” 

He had been pulled off the battlefield right after he’d been shot, and I went to help the wounded right afterward (after my initial hour of looting). I hadn’t seen him then, so I thought he must’ve died, but nope.

“Wait, why weren’t you at the yard for the wounded?” I asked as I walked up to him. We exchanged a manly embrace before separating. 

“I pulled out the arrow myself, and went to bed.”

I stared at him incredulously. 

“So, you’re here to finally get your prize, eh?”

“Prize?”

“Reward for your service to the tribe! Behold, your new slaves!” 

I slowly turned to look at five men in ropes.

Oh.

Oh.