Following

The next two days followed a similar pattern. They passed a large village each day and several smaller ones. For the most part, the smaller ones were abandoned. There were still people in the larger villages, though it seemed many of them had either fled or already joined the death march.

At one large village, a group of boats came out to meet them apparently full of armed men. Manueline saw some arrows fly but there were just too many boats in the death march. A few people were killed; there was no obvious reaction from the people in the boats. They just converged on the village and converged on the boats that came from it and they disappeared in a chaos of oars and masts and rigging. Manueline was too far away and could not tell if the men in the boats were killed or just taken up in the crowd. Later, she asked several people but no one seemed to know.

On the third day, they came to the outskirts of the forest. The country quite suddenly changed from open grassland to trees. On the border of the forest was the largest village they had yet come across. It had a wall around it and a fortified harbor. There was a boom made of several massive tree trunks strung across the harbor mouth. They came to the village in the evening and Manueline stopped on a beach upstream and stood a while looking at the village, which she could just see in a slight bend in the river.

There was an immense crowd of people collecting both upstream and downstream of where she stood. She had no idea how many people there were. She though there might be four or five hundred boats, maybe more, and perhaps ten times that number of people. The idea of counting them seemed absurd. She had never known how many people lived in her village, again it seemed an absurd idea to count them but she found herself fascinated by the numbers. She though there were probably no more than a hundred or so people in her village, she knew there were many times that number in the crowd around her but she could not count beyond a hundred and so had no name to give to the number that surrounded her.

Even as she watched, a crowd of boats from the main body on the river detached itself and headed for the harbor. There were shouts and cries up and down the beach and literally hundreds of other boats followed, either from those still on the water or launched from the beach back onto the river to join those converging on the town. Manueline found it hard to describe the events to herself. She could not talk of the boats attacking the village because they were not. There were no, or very few, weapons among them. She could just hear some singing over the water but no shouts or threats. When they got closer, the people of the village shot a flight arrows at the leading boats and Manueline saw many of them strike home. People in the boats slumped over. One or other of the boats suddenly veered off course when a rower was wounded.

It made almost no difference to the progress of the boats as they made for the village. Manueline saw that the only way the people could stop them would be by killing every last one of them and that was impossible, there were just too many of them. They reached the harbor and swarmed up onto the low wall that protected the inner harbor. Manueline had the sense that there was little or no conventional fighting. There seemed to be the odd struggle here and there but mostly the people from the boats just flooded into the village. Even as she watched, many of the people on the beach around her took off for the village following the path made clear for them. Soon the village seemed like the armed boats of the village that tried to defend itself, it was just swamped under a deluge of people.

Manueline looked around seeing the old woman standing nearby. She called to her saying, "I want to be taken over there now, as quickly as possible." She grabbed Wals and the wolf and taking them with her followed the old woman up the beach a little to where there was a long narrow boat, obviously fast with six oars a side. The woman called out as she went and men came clambering into the boat and taking up the oars as Manueline and Wals climbed into the bow the wolf jumping in with them. The old woman came as well and called out to the men telling them to row across to the village as quickly as possible. They rowed fast getting there in a short time, passing through the now open mouth of the harbor. Someone even shot at them but no one paid any attention, though Manueline heard a cry from the shore. She thought someone from one of the boats had seen the bowman and what he was shooting at and put an end to him.

They arrived at the main jetty for the village and got out of the boat. Manueline looked at the chaos around her, briefly, she was overwhelmed by it, the wolf was nervous and angry, she bent to him, calming him. She called to Wals and indicated the twelve men from the boat should follow and walked off into the village. There were people screaming. Fires had been set. Some people were running down to the riverbank their arms full of things they had looted from the village.

Manueline heard a scream from a nearby house and hurried off towards the sound. She was in time to see a woman running with a child in her arms pursued by three men. She turned to the oarsmen, pointed to the three men and said, "Kill them." The woman ran straight through the group of oarsmen standing behind Manueline, the three men, apparently oblivious to everything else, tried to follow. They hardly even seemed to notice when first one, then another and finally the third fell to blows from the oars. The woman stopped, turning to see what had happened. She looked round wild-eyed for a moment and then turned back, following the group of men who had just saved her. Manueline ignored her and walked on up into the village.

They rescued many people, especially women. Those they found attacking others were put to death. One man, seeing them come around a corner, lunged at Manueline and the wolf killed him. Another tried to grab her and Wals took him, finding the life at the point of the jaw and putting an end to it. Manueline walked right round the village up and down the streets; making people put out fires or tear down burning buildings so they wouldn't set fire to others. Where she saw people committing acts of violence against others she unhesitatingly had them put to death. Slowly things settled down; she organized other parties of men and had them drive all the people out of the village. Everyone was made to leave. It was late in the evening before Manueline returned to the main village jetty; she stood looking around her, listening to the village, which was now deathly quiet. She told the old woman to organize guards around the village on the landward side and around the harbor. No one was allowed to enter.

She had them rowed back to the beach where they left their boat. The tents had been set up, a fire lit and food prepared. Manueline felt dirty, her clothes smelt from the smoke in the village. A smell of fear and hopelessness clung to her clothes and even seemed to be on her hands as she covered her face trying to escape from the stink. She walked back down to the water, calling out to the old woman that she needed a clean cloth. She stripped off the one she had been wearing and walked out into the water, finding a rough stone and rubbing herself, thinking she needed to find something better if she was to keep herself clean.

She stayed in a long time and eventually came out, finding two cloths draped over a chair standing by the edge of the water. There was a plain cloth and one woven with an elaborate pattern. She dried herself with the plain cloth and wrapped the patterned one around her. Wals was already eating and she walked up the beach to where he sat and joined him. The wolf had disappeared.

They spent several days camped near the now deserted village. Manueline walked round the camp, berating people for their behavior in the village and telling them there was no need for them to stay. It made no difference whether they were here or not. Her words had some effect as some people started to leave, some in groups, some individually. It had little effect on the size of the crowd on the beach. If anything, the number of people grew as more boats came both upriver and down. One day there was a rumor of a large group of people on the other side of the river and a small flotilla of boats set off and fetched them across.

Later in the day, Manueline spoke to them asking where they had come from and why they had come. They were desert people and they had heard the call from strangers they met in the desert. People were coming from the river, spreading the word that death walked in the world and nothing but death would come to those who stood waiting for him. People came, calling themselves 'the followers' and the gathering around Wals and Manueline was known as 'the following'. Manueline heard it so many times talking to the people round the camp that she started using it as well.

To follow this thread in the story go to: River People

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