Greenhaven

A tale.

Introduction

Was the old man still alive? I watched carefully for thorns as I began picking my way into thick underbrush, and I had to wonder. Even though, for some reason I could never explain, I always know when it’s time to visit him; the seer, the dreamer, teller of stories. Like the last time and the time before that, I had looked at the wall of trees, the twisted vines, brush and mountainside before me and very nearly thought better of it. Even hikers and hunters avoid this mountain. In warmer weather there are too many rattlesnakes, in cold weather there’s no way in the world to cross the ice-encrusted rocks on this north side. Then, year-round there’s this, described loosely, “access” at the edge of a desolate, boulder-strewn hollow. It’s all but impenetrable, even for deer.

Whenever I seek out the remote mountain home of Jonas, my concerns are two. Whether he’ll still be in the land of the living is the first. His wraith-like existence is the reason for the other; after each visit, the surreal, almost unbelievable experience almost makes me question if I was even there. I’ve worried I wouldn’t ever find him again. I’ve imagined looking for him for days with no luck. This hyper-aged man and his humble place of abode would simply be gone, and then I’d wonder if it had ever been there at all.

The steep mountainside folds into a narrow “bench” about two-thirds of the way up, a long divot in the side of this geologic upheaval that stretches for miles. It looks like a scallop in the side of a huge green Buick. I’d never be able to make a map to his place. I just know about where I should enter the brush, and at about the point where the brush begins to thin, the mountain also gets much steeper. I take about a forty-five-degree angle up the side, just so I can do it without climbing gear.

Never ask me how I found him the first time. I can’t tell you.

Such that it is, his means of sustenance has been a complete mystery to me. He lives alone, he has no garden, of course no electricity or plumbing, and he’s far too old to hunt game, even if there was any there to be found. Other than the rattlers. Obviously if he has family, either they don’t know where to find him or they don’t care about him. I have no idea why he lives this way. He’s never given me the opportunity to ask.

But you could hardly call him homeless; his house is built right into the hillside, a bit like a hobbit hutch. It’s simple but neat. You could walk by it and miss it easily, it blends into its surroundings that completely. An unpainted, cracked and weathered door and a single four-paned window with wavy glass are the only things showing to suggest there might be some sort of human dwelling there.

In fact I had walked right past his home. When I heard his coarse voice, it came from behind me, and after a handshake, we retraced my steps back to his door. It was late in spring after a particularly hard winter. No wonder I’d missed it. Jonas pushed back a young bush honeysuckle to expose the door to his home.

“Y’come right ‘round lunchtime,” he remarked, as he looked skyward through the trees, his furrowed face exhibiting concern. “I got no food t’ share.”

“That’s fine,” I answered, “I don’t come here to eat. I did bring you some food though.”

“Don’t need it.” Jonas shook his head, then leaned and reached for the door-pull, but stopped. “You here for the same reason? You want a tale?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Ben, right?”

“Yep.”

“Well I’m ready for ya, son. Let’s go on in.” The door creaked open, we entered and it clunked shut behind us.

It was late in May, but Jonas had a small fire going in his fireplace. I thought it strange that I’d smelled no smoke while I was outside. It’s just more of the surreal nature of the place that I mentioned before. I know he keeps a low fire going just to keep his home dry, and it sure wasn’t throwing much light. As before, we sat down across from each other at his hand-hewn table on hand-made chairs, right in front of the small window. The daylight that made it through the dirty glass cast shadows across his ancient features, then vanished into the deeper darkness of the cave-like single room.

Jonas regarded me with one eye closed to emphasize his question. “Tell me, son, how long d’ya think you’ll fool folks inta thinkin’ this stuff ain’t real?”

“I’m not trying to fool anyone, Jonas. Some of the things you’ve given me are too ‘far out’ to be believed, and so I call it fiction. I also get some of the stuff I write from my own insights. It isn’t all yours.”

“Do tell,” he responded, grimacing slightly. He paused and seemed to be studying me. “You a wizard?”

I didn’t take that as a serious question, and I laughed. My laugh brought a frown, and I stopped short.

“I’m sorry, Jonas. Of course I’m not.”

There was a long pause while Jonas, his chin tipped down and his eyes turned up, again searched my face.

“Y’ sure?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Okay. If you got to do anything soon, do it now. This’n will take a while. I want to tell you ‘bout a place called Greenhaven. ”

Jonas settled back into his chair, then leaned forward and placed leathery, weathered arms on the table. Here was part of the reason for his survival in this place. Though aged, the limbs poking out of his ragged gray tunic were obviously strong. I thought, maybe he eats the rattlesnakes.

“Y’re right.”

“What?”

“Never mind, Ben. This tale is a picture of the future. All Creation, that’s with a ‘capital C,’ had all but failed.”

“Jonas, you know I put your tales into my own words, don’t you?”

“Well, sure. So?”

“So I can’t use a word like “Creation.” With a capital C.”

“Why not?”

“These days, most people who even believe in a god don’t believe in ‘Creation.’ That’s because the evidence of evolution is clear. It’s obvious. Irrefutable.”

“Well, crap!” Jonas jumped up and began pacing, his movements obviously quicker and more limber than his appearance had suggested was possible. I did notice for the first, a slight limp as he paced. He stopped and looked down at me.

“That’s right, I got a bad hip. Gettin’ old. You might’s well go home!”

I leaned back in my chair and raised my palms. “Why?”

“’Cause there ain’t any way to tell this story, that’s why! What part of “Creation” don’t people understand?”

“I don’t get that.”

“Yeah, I know! An’ it astounds me! So evolution happened, I read the book! There’re two possibilities, Ben! One is, evolution itself was created! The other is, it’s how the Creator made life what it is! Iffen you can’t work with that, then g’wan home!”

I folded my arms in front of my chest and shook my head. “It’s always a struggle to get up here to see you, Jonas. Please tell me the story. Tell it your way. Please.”

That quickly, Jonas had dropped back into his chair, but now, his eyes were blazing. I knew I was in for something. For sure I didn’t know what.

I also don’t know what time of day I had arrived, except for his remark about it being around noon. But it was well past nightfall when he finished his tale, so I had to wait until daylight to leave. I slept with no blanket on a hard earth floor in front of a dying fire. When I awakened, Jonas was nowhere about. I ate some of the food I’d intended for him and waited a half hour for his return. I realized he wouldn’t be back until after I’d left, he’s done that before. So finally I ventured out for home, my mind awash in visions of annihilation, new life, kings, valor, and the ultimate fate of humanity.

Greenhaven

Benjamin Trayne

Creation on earth had apparently failed. Nearly all biological existence on the planet had been extinguished. The bit of life that remained teetered on the edge of collapse, like a war-torn, unguided sailing ship about to topple from the edge of a flat world.

The long-feared nuclear annihilation might never have occurred if people hadn’t stopped taking the possibility of it seriously. A seemingly well-intentioned, non-nuclear "surgical bombing" had brought a retaliatory strike from a concealed missile location. That retaliation was but a single ICBM, but it breached the nuclear threshold as well as the defenses that might have stopped it. The response to it had been massive, leveling an entire region of the planet. And then, the real war started. It was the last war.
The Creator expressed the closest thing possible to a spiritual grimace. Now it was necessary to decide whether to allow the situation to progress, or to start over. Permitting free-will at any cost may have been a mistake. But they had been so close, about to turn the corner. Perhaps, just perhaps, another chance would be in order. There were, after all, some survivors.
With a wave of a hand, the spirits of the dead were swept up like autumn leaves on an evening breeze. With another, one man would be born on the earth who possessed all of the positive qualities of humanity; he would be no more than a man, nonetheless.

The Creator would observe his actions before making a decision.

*******************

Amos Calder was a good man. He was a big man, a simple man, a hard-working tiller of earth and grower of crops. It was all he’d ever known or aspired to be.
During the single hour of the Last War, horror had battled dismay and denial for supremacy over Amos’ fluttering thoughts, as his ordinarily firm grip on reality threatened to take flight and leave him forever. Far off to the northeast, two monstrous dark mushroom clouds arose over the skyline in the direction of New York City. Then another, and another, one to the west and two more to the southeast. Pittsburgh. Philadelphia. Baltimore, or Washington D.C., perhaps both. Amos didn't need a radio to tell him that life as he had known it was completely over, and honestly, if there was anything on the radio to hear, he hadn't wanted to hear it.

Now, well below the ash-covered surface, the deeply distraught farmer prepared with his family to emerge, at last, from the root cellar and natural cave to which they had fled. It had been thirty-one days since the single hour of horror, and Amos, his wife Clara and their young son James would wait no longer. Live or die, they were coming out. A makeshift air filtration system had worked fairly well and they hadn't been without food and water. Nevertheless, it had taken a month to emotionally prepare themselves to see what was left of the world outside.
But they could not have been prepared. In fact the nuclear winter that was just underway had already caused temperatures to plummet far below zero, and it would kill many more than had the war itself. It was a harder freeze than had ever occurred anywhere on the planet before. Both crops and livestock were dead, much of the ash-covered surface, encased in ice. The nearby river was frozen solid, as was the mud beneath it.

Conflagration followed by inundation; fire and ice. Why were they still alive? Turning his eyes to the blackened sky, Amos asked, "Lord, what should I do?"

“Live.”

Amos was unsure if he'd heard a single word of response or if he'd only thought it, in that moment of deepest stress.

**********************

Two years passed. The nuclear winter was finally over, but there were no new buds on shrubs or trees, nothing was coming out in leaf. The extended deep-freeze had been much too hard, even for the hardiest trees in this northeastern valley. The formerly rich brown loam of the fields had turned grayish with the inclusion of ash from the skies. Amos and Clara, like most farm couples, had stored home-canned goods of their own to last for a while, but certainly not enough to last beyond two years. They needed to grow or to find something for food, and quickly. Amos thought of the seed grain he had moved to the safety of the root cellar.

He did dare to hope there was still some governmental infrastructure left that might permit them to get some help, if only they could make their location known. He broke out new batteries for their small radio. Tuning slowly and repeatedly across the dial, he received no more than static from a distant thunderstorm. Amos checked for a broadcast each day for nearly two years thereafter, but as even the shortwave bands were silent, he knew in his heart they were now completely on their own.

The formerly contested "global warming" was a known reality to farmers long before political conservatives had been willing to admit it. Even before the Last War, winters in Pennsylvania had become little more than rainy seasons. The effective growing season had become shortened enough to sometimes prevent wheat, corn or oats from maturing enough to complete a harvest. In response to the problem, Amos had decided to try planting barley and rice instead of wheat and corn. Rice could grow in water, and barley should mature within a shortened growing season.

So he broke out the sacks of grain from the several sealed barrels and worked up a garden plot near the house. Seed does eventually get too old to germinate. After two years, the germination rate was only about sixty percent, but the seeds did sprout. The Calders watched and waited, hoping to get at least some grain to add to the larder.

Alas, cold rains came even sooner than before, and the little crop was destroyed. Perhaps the next spring Amos could start some grain earlier, under some cover. The summer sun had been so hot, it had been necessary to shade the garden with netting, anyway. He would try again. Based on the likely rate of germination a year hence, he laid back a substantial portion of the barley and rice for spring. The rest of the seed was now their only food supply. Amos knew the preserved goods in the market of the nearby town would have been destroyed, the containers split or smashed by the extreme cold. And he was unwilling, as yet, to venture where he would no doubt find bodies of the dead. They would remain at the farm and do their best to provide for themselves there.

The next spring, it seemed the earth's torment had at last abated. Nature began to reawaken. Although they were but few, some of the roots that had been frozen began to put forth new shoots. Best of all, the growing of grains to maturity was a comparative success. Having rationed what they had, all three of the Calders had become gaunt and frail. But now there was food. Each kernel of grain was treasured, and new seed was carefully set aside. There would now be plenty of bread and rice at least for the year, along with some reserves.

Amos and his son set out at last for the town, wondering if they might find others alive. It was the first time they had left the farm since the war. They were met with an eerie scene, broken and heaved roads and damage to buildings wreaked by the ice; rusted, crashed and abandoned vehicles on the highway; grisly human or animal remains here and there; and worst of all, a complete, heavy, pervasive silence.

The reason for the trip was to find anything that might help to increase the size of future harvests. The local farm store yielded several large rolls of netting. They would be making trips back to it over the coming years, collecting shovels, rakes, fertilizers, and clothing. But Amos decided to stay out of the town itself. There would be too many of the dead there, with none left to bury the bodies, and the bodies were not even decomposing as might ordinarily have been expected. But then, nothing was ordinary, anymore.

The Calder family had better luck at finding other survivors from the opposite direction. A farm a few kilometers to the west had gone through similar times, but without protected seed in reserve, they had no hope of growing new crops. Grain stored above-ground had been rendered lifeless by the cold. The farmer, his wife and their own son had set out on foot toward the town in search of food when they came upon the Calders.

Finding others alive was a joyous experience for all, and Amos of course offered to share their food, and extended an invitation to stay. That kindness netted the farm a pair of goats, an extremely fortuitous contribution. The family had a cave on their property into which they had brought the animals, and sacks of ground feed that had fed them all. There was now enough browse from the recovering vegetation, and the goats had been turned loose. They understood the value of living animals, and despite their limited diet, they could not bring themselves to fall back on them as a source of meat. The men went back and recovered them. Over time there would be both meat and milk available. And, to the joy of all, the doe was pregnant.

Years passed. The men took turns scouting the valleys. A few more nearly-starved human survivors were found and rescued, two men, two women and a young girl. The farm was soon occupied and operated by eleven people. The original stone farmhouse was quite large, but not enough for all to live comfortably, so Amos moved his family to a small mansion that overlooked the farms and much of the valley.

Everyone venerated Amos Calder. He was a gracious host, a prince of a man, and the source of their continued existence. Amos was approaching a point where he would soon be too old to work the farm. With a promise of bread, milk and meat, they remained at the mansion, naming it Greenhaven. The name would soon be adopted by the remaining residents of the valley, for the valley itself.

Throughout the rest of the world, the horrific effects of nuclear annihilation and the following nuclear winter had been equally devastating from the outset. But across the oceans, the remaining survivors had also contended with an outbreak of sickness. Radiation had modified microbes to generate a short-lived, but extremely virulent plague, and in their weakened conditions the few survivors had mostly succumbed. Only the geographic isolation of the continents of Australia and the Americas had spared some of the world from the disease. But there were no other enclaves of civilization, no gatherings of people, and survivors throughout Eurasia and Africa were few, and widely scattered. Hundreds of years would pass before any hint of civilization would appear in these places.

Planet-wide extinctions of most other species of both plants and animals had occurred as well, in the previously forested areas, across the plains, among the mountains and in the oceans. Most animal species that survived would be forever changed, a few of them quite drastically. For the most part, plant life, when it eventually recovered, would likewise be entirely different in appearance and in nature. Everywhere in the world, weather patterns returned to pre-war semi-stability before any of the biological recovery began, except at Greenhaven. There, the biological recovery began first.

********************

One hundred and sixty years passed. With its now steady supply of food, Greenhaven had gradually grown to more than eight hundred souls. No one alive really knew much of anything about the war. The original survivors that had assembled in this valley soon afterward were long-dead.

Greenhaven was still the only enclave of surviving humans on the continent, the only group anywhere with a stable supply of food, and far and away the largest group of humans worldwide. Thus, by far, the best hope for a future recovery of humanity and for a civilized existence would emanate from this place.

However among the bared mountains and ridges in an area to the southwest, feral hogs had also survived the devastation. The fact that they had survived at all would have been quite a surprise had anyone been present to learn of it. Perhaps they had also resorted to a cave for safety from the extreme cold of the nuclear winter. The animals had not, however, escaped the radiation, and their offspring had mutated. The products of that mutation were less believable than the survival itself, because of the animals' great size, and because of their massive, horrible teeth.

The success of feral hogs in the wild had always been due to their willingness to eat anything at all. Roots, vegetation, carrion or live animals, including others of their kind, they were and had always been, completely indiscriminate. Prior to the war, large feral hogs had been killed weighing up to about a thousand pounds. The mutated variety were easily twice that, although they were gaunt and nowhere close to being filled out. Nearly three meters high at the shoulder, they were from deep gray to black in color, highly aggressive, and in possession of an extra row of incisor-like teeth. Their appearance and demeanor would have been suitable for the making of a horror film. Worse, they were moving in packs. Wherever they stopped, the grunting, roaring beasts went to work, and the roots of plants that now sustained them were quickly depleted. The largest of the packs had been cutting a wide swath, migrating in a zig-zag pattern in an overall northeasterly direction. The pack had been increasing in numbers as it moved gradually closer to an unsuspecting Greenhaven.

Among the eight hundred-plus residents of Greenhaven lived a man known to all as Dainis. Dainis was, to say the least, an uncommon man. At two full meters in height he was blessed with a powerful build and with the strength of two ordinary men. His fair skin was set off by a long mane of fiery red hair, like that of his mother. Dainis was of strong character and seemed at the same time a compassionate and intuitive man, possessing extraordinary sense and leadership capabilities. In so many ways he was unlike anything the earth had seen since long before the Last War. Dainis had never known hunger, was too strong to have ever been sick, his mind was always at work developing solutions to problems, and his spirit! The spirit of Dainis the Red, it was said, soared with the wind.

But the most uncommon thing about him had nothing at all to do with his appearance, strength, startling presence, personal charm, or even his spirit; for Dainis could read and write.

He used that ability to massive advantage, poring through hundreds of books, from the days of his childhood into his adulthood, devouring every sentence he read. A highly intelligent man with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, he most loved to read from two sets of encyclopedias he had taken from the public library in the old town. The roof of the building had caved in perhaps a century earlier, and most of the contents had been damaged by rain. But the biggest and the heaviest of the books were still intact and in readable condition, and Dainis was always amazed to find within them the things that he read.

It had been twenty-seven years since Dainis first opened his eyes in the world. His mother had raised him well, and she taught him all she knew, including how to read and write. Dainis' father, like most of the men in this agrarian society, was a farmer.

Very fortunately for the people of Greenhaven, among the few survivors of the Last War was also a farmer named Calder. Now more than a century and a half later, he was known as their patriarch, Calder of the Earth. The sons of Calder had become the rulers of the kingdom, and their rule spanned four generations to the present. “Calder the Great”, self-named, was their current king, the fifth generation of the house of Calder. Behind the king's back, his detractors called him 'Calder the Vicious'. Very unfortunately, the latter title fit.

From his many long hours of study, Dainis had developed a strong understanding of civilization over the span of recorded history prior to the Last War. He read of the Ottoman Empire, the Roman Empire, the Chinese dynasties. It was quite clear to Dainis that the United States, which had been their part of the old world, had had a deteriorating civilization as well. Perhaps that was why the massive war had happened, because the United States had also been among the most powerful. Everything Dainis had read about nuclear weapons and radioactivity indicated that the Last War had been that kind of war.

In this time, however, the Last War was also history, with no survivors who knew for sure what had happened, or who possessed any means or desire to record it if they had. Dainis decided he would not try to do it either, and there was no reason he could see to try to explain it to the people. At least, not yet. Of far greater and more immediate concern were the livelihoods and the food supplies of the people of Greenhaven. That was in part because it was Dainis' home, and in part because he could already see the degradation that had occurred in their own version of human civilization. That second problem was something he thought about quite a lot. What part of human nature, he wondered, caused his fellows to permit just one man to become their overlord, their ruler, their king?

Aside from the farm buildings, one residence from the old world structures had been chosen and kept by the Calder family, at first for its central location, its height above the river, and its strategic viewpoint. It was perched on a promontory within the valley. Named Greenhaven by Calder of the Earth, it had been expanded and fortified until unrecognizable as the private mansion it had once been. The entire kingdom eventually became known by the name as well, and the structure then became known as Greenhaven Castle. Most of the rest of the population of Greenhaven that were not indentured to work the farms lived in the village that grew up near the castle. The old town had been largely avoided because the bones of the dead were still present, and the people believed their ghosts still lived there.

During the occasional daylight forays into the town, the king's scouts had collected weapons from the museum and from the armory there. No one knew how to use the guns, so they gathered the swords they could find. Dainis understood the more modern weapons from the armory, but he knew the ammunition was likely too old to work. The king had kept the best of the swords for himself, and felt compelled to establish a group of warriors to protect the kingdom, ostensibly from possible human invaders. Dainis carried a heavy forged blade that dated from the American Civil War.

In Greenhaven there were no vehicles of any kind, nor were there horses, so wherever anyone needed to go, they went on foot. It had become the habit of people to run from place to place, rather than to walk. This morning, as usual, Dainis was on his way to Greenhaven Castle, running like the wind, his red hair streaming out behind him, his sword and scabbard gripped in his left hand. The distance he needed to cover was a mere six kilometers. As usual, as he ran, he was also thinking.

Arriving at the castle, Dainis nodded to the guards at the front gate as he passed through. He now felt ready for whatever the day would bring.

Like all young men, Dainis had at first been indentured to work the fields. At that time he was but fourteen years old and not fully grown. As he matured, his uncommon size and strength alone earned him an opportunity to serve as one of several personal bodyguards to the king himself. When it was found that he could also read and write, the king decided it was time to begin to record the laws. And so Dainis held the position of scribe, he protected the king, and because of the things he knew and because of his intuitive intelligence, he often served as the king’s personal advisor as well.

Living in the presence of the king also afforded Dainis other opportunities. Among them was the chance to get to know the officers of the king's warriors, to tour the extensive farms, and to get a better idea than most had of conditions overall within the little kingdom.

He also was occasionally in the presence of the king's several concubines. It was at the castle that he first saw Altamea.

Altamea was the youngest of the concubines. To Dainis she was the very vision of loveliness. It bothered him a great deal that a middle-aged king could select anyone he chose from the young women of the village. One day, as he had entered the king's public chamber, he saw Altamea exiting the chamber from the opposite end of the room. Seeing him enter, she stopped and took a long look at him, and then walked on. Dainis thought about that for a moment. Perhaps she was interested.

The problem of degradation of their monarchical structure had become forefront in the mind of Dainis. The patriarch of their civilization had given them all a chance to live. In fact he did not want to rule, but the people had installed him as their ruler anyway. Many privileges came with the dependence of the people on one man, and when Calder of the Earth passed away, his son of course had no wish for the power and privileges to vanish with him. And so the title of “king” was declared and Calder's son was actually crowned.

With each successive king, the power one man held was taken more for granted. The agrarian society functioned somewhat like a commune, with everyone pitching in to produce food, then distributions of the products of their labors were made to each family. However the portion set aside for the king and his house, always at his command, had grown faster than the production of the farms. Now the residents of the castle discarded food as scraps that the people gathered for themselves and their families.

Learning that the king was still sleeping, Dainis walked out onto the veranda, which overlooked the farms and the river.

Only one month earlier, the king had killed the head farmer in cold blood in the public chamber. The farmer had only come to ask the king for better rations for the workers, because their health was declining on the portions they were given to eat. Calder had been chewing on a haunch of chevon, and he only put it down long enough to rise and to run his sword through the head farmer. Then he returned to eating, leaving the body for others to attend.

It had fallen to Dainis to find a replacement for the man Calder had slain. Had the head farmer died by any means, it would have been considered a tragedy. He was the lone individual who knew everything about the operations of the farms well enough to oversee, and to keep all of the various operations functioning. Dainis soon discovered that without an immediate replacement, the harvest might well be lost and famine would be the result. And yet, there was no one willing to assume the responsibility.

Thus it was that Dainis got his first taste of real leadership. He called to meeting everyone who worked the farms, identified the fifteen people who took care of each operation for the head farmer, and then called a new meeting. When he asked who among them would be interested in becoming the head farmer, none responded. All were afraid for their own lives at the behest of the king. After some thought, Dainis assured them that the person who took the job would have his personal protection, and that he wanted each person to name the one among them that would likely be the best for it. This way they were able to select the most able man who would also be a reasonable overseer. Dainis scheduled regular meetings of the group of fifteen to discuss how things were being done and how they might improve. Then he charged the new leader with the responsibility to train a deputy who would stand in should he fall ill, and he gave him permission to provide more and better food to the workers.

As Dainis got up to leave, one of the men said aloud, “Bless you sir, would that you were king!”

The room fell silent as Dainis turned to look at the speaker. Then he walked out. As he did, another voice came. “Hear, hear!”

Then all of the other voices joined in. "Hear, hear!!" Dainis kept walking.

Dainis knew that he had just initiated and carried out a form of democracy. It had worked well, and the people who worked to feed them all, were satisfied. He wondered how well a democratic process would work for all of the people. It seemed the only reasonable thing to do. Dainis knew of schools, but they did not have one. He understood the fundamentals of medical care, but they had none. Often, injured persons died of infection. He understood sanitation, and water supplies, and infrastructure. He alone knew for what purpose the rusted steel rails seemed to extend forever into the distance. He longed to see commerce, and the trains headed for great cities teeming with people, once again.

Of all these things, democracy needed to be first, and a school immediately after. A currency should be established. The people needed more than food, and more and better reasons to develop their talents. One of the most pressing needs was cloth for clothing. Despite the great flocks of goats that had been bred, there were never quite enough hides to clothe everyone as they needed to be clothed, even for protection from weather.

None of these things would ever be considered as long as Calder remained king.

So Dainis had begun to mentally form a plot to either subdue or to kill the king. He was well aware that he might himself be killed by warriors who were loyal to him, but he had no fear of it. He reasoned, with no leader, things might fall apart. The people knew no other way. Dainis would have to teach them. It was an idea, an unformed plan in-process.

Dainis the Red stood lost in thought on the castle veranda, his huge hands gripping the ancient iron railing, as he gazed down at the busy workers in the fields.

********************

The pack of some forty huge feral hogs, vicious and hungry as ever, had just entered the far end of the valley of Greenhaven from the southwest. Ordinarily they would have stopped when they reached the valley floor, and would have fed on the plant life until the soil was completely uprooted and denuded of vegetation. But they knew there was something very different here. As a group they lifted their snouts high in the air, snuffing the scents that wafted down the valley on the early-summer breeze. They broke into a trot, and then a full gallop as they closed on the fertile farmlands of Greenhaven.

That was the unbelievable sight that Dainis beheld from the castle veranda. The pack of huge animals careening into the fields were unlike anything he had seen pictured in his books. They were running into the farm yards, tearing up the fences that enclosed the goats, and dwarfing the men and women as they attacked, right there beneath him in the sunny fields of barley. The animals emitted a roar that was terrible to the ears. Workers scattered, running and screaming. All hell had broken loose in Greenhaven.

Dainis lost no time. He shouted in his booming voice, jerking the king’s guards to attention. “WAKE THE KING!” he ordered. Then, pointing to the carnage that was occurring at the farm fields and stock yards, he vaulted the railing, dropped down over a steep bank in just two leaps and began running in long strides for the river, and the farms on the other side.

By the time the king's small band of warriors had assembled, Dainis had already crossed the shallow river and had entered the fields. One of the characteristics he was born with was bravery that extended far beyond the bounds of common sense. No other man alive would have considered doing what he was at that moment – running full-bore, alone, to attack a band of huge marauding beasts, any one of them for which it appeared he would be no match. But the king was descended from a farmer, and Dainis was descended from a warrior. This killing of the people and destruction of the food supply had to stop, immediately.

Neither man nor beast could believe what happened next. Dainis grabbed a locust limb from the edge of the river, hard as a rock after a century and a half of weathering. The nearest beast was the biggest, and the leader. It stopped and stood, wondering what was this bellowing creature that was approaching at a full run, like a red-topped devil? Dainis' sword flashed in the summer sun, his powerful legs pounding through the barley at a full sprint. The huge animal lowered its head and charged. Dainis instinctively stepped aside at the last split-second before the beast would have driven its long tusks into him, and as the beast turned, drove his heavy sword deep into the animal's chest just behind its left shoulder. The beast roared in pain, and as its head swung to the left to meet his attacker, Dainis clubbed the animal hard over its snout. The huge beast dropped heavily to the soil, its body bouncing as it quivered in its death-throes.

To the other beasts that were close by, it appeared that the red-topped creature had just killed their leader with but a single blow to the head. All of those who saw it stopped and watched. Dainis didn't miss a beat, as he now tore through the standing green toward the next-closest animal. Unconvinced, that beast charged the same way.

A true warrior is confident, and can therefore be creative. This time Dainis spun out of the way to its right side, the beast's speed no match for his maneuverability. As he spun, the sword again flashed in the sun and a foreleg took the strike. The huge animal went down on its chest and slid, then tried to regain its footing. While the others watched, Dainis thrust the sword several times, meaning to punish the beast before killing it. The ultimate expression of the savagery of his species flashing in his green eyes, he finished it off with a plunging slash to the throat, barely winded and ready for the next. Bellowing forth, it was an enraged human that charged, acting on a primal instinct to kill. Adrenalin coursed through his body, making him as strong as three men and twenty times as dangerous.

The king's warriors stood, entranced and awed by the action in the barley field before them. They had stopped at the end of the bridge and lined up along the stone fence-row. Not all of them would have had even the strength to thrust a sword into the chest of one of the beasts, and none would have thought to try it. But the bravest among them, seeing that there were many beasts and that some were ravaging the livestock in their pens beyond the field, called out to the others to come with him. The group of eighteen warriors and guards streamed across the field behind him, shouting and brandishing their swords.

Dainis felt he had been born for this, his rage building with each kill rather than diminishing. He viciously killed a third beast and a fourth that attacked with it, and the group of animals began to back away. Perhaps he would kill them all, and in fact that was what he had set out to do. The warriors had nearly reached the animals, their own adrenalin beginning to flow, and they were emboldened by Dainis' success. The combination of the ferocity of Dainis' attack and the larger group of humans approaching was finally enough to convince them to turn and run. Taking their cue, the attacking beasts at the stock pens joined them. They had ample reason to run. Dainis gave chase and killed another, then he ran down and killed a sixth.

When the others caught up with him, Dainis was finally winded but not a bit less enraged. As one of them spoke, Dainis whirled about and bellowed exactly as he had during the killing of each beast. The man fell over backward in fear, certain he would be killed. But Dainis, his huge chest heaving, realized that the battle was over and that this man was not his enemy. Still, it took him some time for him to settle down. His left arm had been grazed by a sharp tusk and was bleeding profusely. Realizing it, Dainis clapped a hand over the wound and headed for the farmhouse. The women baked bread daily, and he needed a fire. The warriors followed him in and watched in silence as he heated a kitchen knife in the flames and cauterized the wound without a whimper, his face now expressionless.

Here was a man they had never seen before. Although obviously large and powerful, his manner had always been gentle, and they'd had no fear of him. All was different now.

Dainis the Red was now in charge. He issued orders without hesitation. The group of warriors quietly gathered the dead and buried them. The butchers went out into the fields to cut slabs of meat from the slaughtered beasts, every one of them the work of Dainis. The farm workers set about repairing the fences of the stock pens, and goats that had been killed were also butchered. It was a long, hard day during which no one worked harder than did Dainis.

As evening began to fall, Dainis ordered that bonfires be built outside the stock pens. No one questioned it, although they all wondered why. Firewood from dead trees had been in excessive supply a hundred years earlier, but was in short supply now. They'd had to walk a distance to collect enough to keep the fires going in the bakery.

Finally, the warriors returned to the castle with Dainis in the lead. From the veranda the king had watched the events, first with amazement, then with a degree of fear. He sent the cooks scurrying to get food together for the returning men.

Dainis was the first man to step onto the veranda, with all of the king's guards and warriors filing in behind him. The king, nearly a foot shorter in stature than Dainis, held his head high.

Approaching the king, Dainis bowed slightly and softly intoned, “Your Majesty.” Then he walked past him toward the dining hall.

“Wait!” The king demanded, “Why are there bonfires burning in the valley? Why do we waste the fuel?”

Dainis turned and answered, “Because the beasts will be back. There are dozens more than we killed, and they will return. If at night, there would be no animals left alive in your stock pens. In fact,” he continued, “we can scarcely afford to rely simply on fires. We need to eat and then we should return, to be there when they do come back. They must all be killed, or they will wear away our food supply until we die of famine.”

“And, how do you propose we do that?” the king asked, haughtily.

“Your majesty,” replied Dainis, “if you will, the men are hungry and tired. May I explain over our supper?”

The king did not reply. Dainis turned and led the men on to the dining hall, leaving the king red-faced and angry.

But Dainis did have a plan. Over the meal he explained that in times past, many ways of dealing with large animals had been devised. The people indigenous to their continent had driven running buffalo over a cliff to their deaths. Later, men had chased horses into canyons to capture them.

“We have neither canyons nor cliffs here, so we will have to construct a trap. It will be hard work,” said Dainis.

None knew what the continent, buffalo or horses were, or for that matter, what were cliffs or canyons. But they believed that Dainis could manage whatever it was he was describing.

The warriors did return to the farms that night, although that night, the monstrous feral hogs did not return. Their leader was dead and the selection process had begun with fighting for supremacy among the remaining boars. Before morning, two more of them would be dead because of it.

The arrival of daylight brought with it a new project. Most of the valley was full of sandstone rocks with large patches of iron oxide throughout. It was good because there were no bedrock outcroppings in the fields, and the soil was sandy, excellent for farming. The rocks were unusually heavy, which made for strong walls if you had no mortar. The farm laborers had been piling rocks near the river for more than a century, and now they would be needed.

A dedicated workforce was assembled under Dainis’ direction. They constructed a large rock-walled corral adjoining a near-vertical wall of earth, so that they would only have to construct three walls. An opening was left in the center of the wall on the side toward the farm.

At the same time, a crew was sent to remove oaken logs from the floor of an ancient barn. There were many such barns in the valley, and only those in use were kept in good repair. Salvaged wood from other barns had been saved and stockpiled under roof as building materials, as heating fuel or as kindling for the fires that baked bread.

Sentries were posted to watch for the beasts, signal fires at the ready. The barn logs were used to construct a massive gate, held together with wooden pegs, driven into place in bored holes made with hand-augers.

The plan worked perfectly. After the boars had fought it out to determine which of those remaining was the strongest and meanest, the pack of mutated feral hogs did return. The signal fires were partially snuffed with dampened hides, billows of smoke were spotted, and the flocks were hurriedly moved from their pens to points closer to the river. Soon the pack of beasts met Dainis in the field once again. This time he was joined by the king. To him, it had become clear he would have to prove himself fit to keep his throne. Dainis advised the king to stay at the castle, but he would not hear it. So while Dainis turned the pack by killing the beasts, the king was gored to death by the first animal that saw him. Dainis made comparatively short work of that particular animal.

The beasts were blocked from returning the way they had come by a thirty-foot-long gate, swung wide to open the entrance to the stone corral. Once the animals had run inside, Dainis leaped and shouted at the gate to keep them there, while twenty strong men closed the gate.

Dainis next climbed to the top of the wall. With him he carried four hollowed-out hedge apples, the fruit of one of the shrubs that had survived. Into each he had poured whitewash, made with lime from the farm store near the old town. Dainis selected three of the more docile sows and one boar from the pack, and struck each of them hard with one of the whitewash-filled balls, marking them clearly. These animals were not to be killed. Over time and through selective breeding, he explained, they would generate a more docile, but still large and powerful breed of the captured animals that would be used to pull the plows, possibly even to ride. Some would be used for their meat. How different things would look in another few decades! He was of course correct, and because the animals reproduced so quickly, he would live to see it. Greenhaven would flourish even more, and would expand even more quickly. Most things after the Last War would never be the same, and Dainis had added this development to the list. It had not yet occurred to him to collect methane gas from their droppings and to use it to power engines. But it would.

Of course, the king was dead. There were no children to claim the throne. The residents of Greenhaven wasted no time in crowning mighty Dainis the Red as his successor.

Eight more weeks passed.

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It was a late-summer afternoon, and King Dainis stood once again on the veranda, watching the field workers who were industriously bringing in the harvest. Young Altamea stood behind him, her arms wrapped lovingly around his waist, her cheek pressed firmly against his broad back.

Completely gone were any thoughts of democracy. Eventually he would establish a school, then, perhaps, a system of rewards. King Dainis the Red, known to many of his admiring subjects as Dainis the Magnificent, had read many things. Among them was a statement by an elitist who had written extensively in the times before the Last War. At this moment, that line was going through his mind: “It is not a sign of arrogance for the king to rule. That is what he is there for.”

And Dainis was not arrogant. He was King. The reign of Calder had passed. It was now, the Day of Dainis.

The Creator sighed.

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