"During winter everything that you see is going to be covered by three feet of snow; when spring comes the snow melts, the land turns green and animals from all over come to graze and give birth, it's incredibly beautiful," my father said to me.
"We need to get through winter first," I responded.
"When the Okwari chief comes I'm going to ask for their help, without it we most likely won't survive."
The Okwari chief came to the outpost three days later, accompanied by six members of his tribe. All were riding teewahs. My father was the one who greeted and welcomed them. When my father spoke with them, it was in their own language, a skill I didn't know he possessed. They went into the outpost to talk and the rest of us were told to remain outside. The fear among the others was palpable. I was not afraid. I believed that my father would come through with what we needed, and that's exactly what he did.
"They'll help us, but only this once, as soon as winter's passed it's going to be up to us to fend for ourselves," he said to me after the Okwari had left.
"How did you get him to agree to help us?"
"I let him know that he could trust us, that for as long as we were here we wouldn't do anything to endanger them or their way of life, and because he knows me he trusts that I'm telling him the truth."
The Okwari helped us with food and wood for the duration of the winter months. They brought the provisions to us; they didn't trust us enough yet to let us know the location of their village. The cold that winter was unlike anything we'd experienced before. We spent all of our time inside the outpost bundled up in warm clothing whereas the Okwari that delivered the provisions to us were able to travel a long distance in the cold without any problems. The food they brought us was always meat, which we found strange because my father had told us that they were purely hunter gatherers; obviously they had livestock of some kind.
The assistance that we received from the Okwari allowed us to make it through the winter without losing anybody. When spring arrived, the landscape changed exactly as my father said it would, and we were free to start leaving the outpost and exploring the landscape of our new home. As soon as the snow thawed my father set off on horseback to thank the Okwari personally for the help they gave us during the winter. I begged him to take me with him but he said no, that to bring somebody along with him, even his own daughter, would be a violation of their trust. He returned the next day and informed the rest of us that there was a piece of land further inland that was the perfect location for us to establish a settlement. The piece of land in question was the site of an old Okwari settlement, where there were old structures that could be made habitable with just a few repairs, and it was close to a river. If we wanted to have everything ready in time for the next winter we needed to go there now and begin work immediately, which we did. The trip with the wagons fully loaded took us one day, and when we got there what we found was promising. There were twenty structures on the site, more than we needed. The repairs that were required were minor, but without the proper tools there was a limit to how much we could do. The Okwari built their structures out of stone, with roofs that were made from grass piled on top of animal hide that was stretched across wooden beams. The stone walls were fine, but the roofs had all fallen in.
"The chief told me that they've got hides that we can use, and soon the grass will be tall enough for us to start cutting it and using it to make our roofs; until then we'll be camping out," my father said to me. The initial repairs would be rudimentary; to get the tools that we needed we would have to trade for them with the bandits. My father's main goal, once the structures were repaired, was to build a waterwheel in the river that would power a sawmill and an irrigation system for when we began planting, which was going to be important for when more exiles arrived in the north, of which my father was expecting a steady stream in the months and years ahead. To realize his ambitions for the settlement we needed tools and materials from the capital city, until we managed to procure those tools and materials from the bandits we were just going to make do with what we had, with as much help from the Okwari as they were willing to give us. The amount of help that we were getting from the Okwari baffled me and the others. After everything that had been done to them it made no sense for them to be so helpful to us.
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"That's how things work up here in the Northlands," my father explained to me when I asked him about it, "living here is not easy, so it's important to take advantage of any opportunity to make living here easier; in our case, I told the chief when he visited the outpost about our plans for our settlement and I promised that when everything's up and running they would also get to enjoy the benefits of it all, that's why they're helping us."
With the land now green the animals returned and we could go hunting. Our food concerns were at an end and thanks to the materials that the Okwari shared with us we were able to repair the roofs of the dwellings in relatively short order. Everybody was working incredibly hard, my father especially, but despite that he refused to let up on my training for even a day. Whether he'd been working all day on the settlement or had been out on a long hunt he would unfailingly hand me my wooden sword and tell me that we were going to train. Once while we were training a violent downpour began and I lowered my sword thinking that we would be returning to the settlement, only for my father to correct me.
"What are you doing?" He asked me.
"Aren't we going back? It's raining."
"Do you think that if you're on the battlefield and it starts raining that the battle is going to stop?" He asked rhetorically, "raise your sword, we're not done here."
My father trained me relentlessly every day, always stressing to me the importance of me being ready for any challenges that I would have to deal with in the Northlands. I asked him once if it was really necessary for us to go to such extremes when it came to my training and he answered my question by taking me along on one of the hunts that the men of the settlement went on to procure food for us. Before the hunt began my father told me to find a vantage point where I would be safe from which I would be able to witness the hunt. The main animal that was hunted was the buffalo, large horned herbivores that lived in herds on the plains. When attacked, the buffalo would defend themselves by charging as a herd toward whatever it was that was attacking them; this made hunting them difficult and extremely dangerous. In the weeks since spring had arrived and we'd started hunting two men had returned to the settlement from hunts having sustained injuries that fortunately weren't as bad as they could have been.
Five men participated in the hunt. The method that was used for hunting buffalo was for one man to fire an arrow at the herd and draw their attention, then when the herd is chasing him the other four men would ride alongside the herd, two on each side, firing as many arrows as they could to try and bring down as many buffalo as they could before parts of the herd broke off and turned on them and they had to flee. From my vantage point I watched as my father and the four men that joined him on the hunt took on the herd. My father assumed the responsibility of being the one who fired the first shot and became the primary target of the herd when it stampeded. The arrow that my father launched hit one of the buffalo in its leg and almost immediately the herd began its pursuit of him. The buffalo were fast and it was all my father's horse could do to keep ahead of them. While my father was fleeing the stampeding herd, the other four members of the hunting party flanked the herd and started firing. They managed to bring down three buffalo before they also had to flee. After the herd had broken up they continued chasing my father and the others for only a little longer before they regrouped and moved on. The carcasses were transported back to the settlement using the wagons that we had used on our trek to the Northlands. It was terrifying watching my father and the others having to put their lives at risk for something as basic as procuring food for us; it also put into perspective my father's fanaticism about my training in a way that just hearing about the challenges of living here couldn't have done. I trained diligently every day from then on.