Chapter 25 - The Cave of the Gray Stone People part 5

Preparations for a war party consisted of several elements. First, the expedition was planned in detail. Route and tactics were debated and voted on by all the men present. After our plans were hashed out, we feasted. The women of the tribe had stocked our cave, which we called the war lodge, with food enough to last the whole night long. With our bellies full, the young ones were sent away, the entrance of the cave was blocked with hangings and dream weed was placed ceremoniously on the fire. This was done amidst much chanting and stomping of feet, and with a certain degree of gravity, for we were trying to rouse the spirits of our ancestors, to wake them from their slow dreams and draw their attention to us. When the cave was smoky and our spirits enhanced by the psychotropic chemicals in the bluish haze, we disrobed, slathered our bodies in animal fat and commenced with the ritual orgy.

The rituals we performed that night were similar to the sexual ceremonies of the Tantrics. The animal fats we smeared on our bodies contained a carefully mixed recipe of plant juices and powdered herbs. The psychoactive herbs engendered a mildly euphoric state, while the merje further heightened our delirium. The stinking unguents we smeared on our bodies did another thing, too. They dilated the blood vessels. Prehistoric Viagra. After a while, the hangings blocking the entrance of the cave were swept aside and a group of the village's unmarried women marched solemnly inside.

These unattached females, who for this ceremony were called the Stohle, had volunteered for the sacred duty. None were pressed to do it, but they took it upon themselves as a service to the departing warriors. As we were chanting and getting ourselves worked up in the war lodge, they had gathered below at the Siede of Bubbling Waters, where the elder women of the tribe prepared them for the ritual. Their naked flesh was painted and their heads were draped in woven veils so that they could see out but no man could see inside. They were given a bit of framash to calm their nerves, and then, when the echo of our chanting and drumming had reached a fevered pitch, they proceeded one by one to the place of Stohle-Eh-Strochte to perform their sacred duty.

They filed into the cave as we chanted, lithesome and beautiful, their smooth young bodies gleaming in the firelight. A collective groan reverberated through the smoky chamber as they drifted in. They seemed to glide through the haze like ghostly nymphs from some pubescent boy's first sex dream. Each of the Stohle had been painted a different vivid color. Each was a mystery, her identity concealed beneath her veil. Stohle, in our language, meant "keeper". They had come to preserve our seed.

The women placed upon the floor of the cave their finest sleeping furs, and then they reclined upon them, moving with seductive languor to await the first who won their indulgence. They sighed and squirmed, breasts thrust out, legs parted, offering themselves to us, baring without shame or inhibition their moist pink secret selves, the vessels which would preserve our bloodline should we fall in the coming battle.

But it was not without ceremony. The warriors formed a circle around the maidens and began to dance to the beat of the hollow logs. Arm-in-arm, we chanted. We sang to them. We sang of our gratitude, of our devotion to our people. Eyes bulging, flesh slick with sweat and animal grease, hearts pounding, veins bulging, we sang. All the while, the Stohle writhed, moaning and stroking their flesh to enflame us.

The ritual dance grew more and more urgent. Every so often, a pair of men would break from the circle and wrestle. They would grapple and roll around the floor as we shouted encouragement until one man had subjugated the other. The winner would then choose the Stohle he found most pleasing to the eye, and impart his seed to her.

We called the ritual Stohle-Eh-Strochte, the Keeping of the Essence.

As we believed that the insemination of woman by man transmitted the spark of life to the womb, we also believed that the exchange of fluid could preserve a man's spirit within the chambers of a woman's body. Hence, should he die in battle in some faraway country, his strength and, more importantly, his spirit would not be lost to the People.

Oh, don't be so shocked, you prudes! You self-appointed protectors of passionless propriety! I assure you, this type of behavior has been practiced far longer than I've been around. We were going to war. Perchance to our deaths! For several of the young men who were marching to battle with us, this was their last chance of passing down their legacy, of preserving their bloodline. In a culture that worshipped its ancestors, to die without offspring was next of kin to damnation.

And we worshipped. We worshipped hard that night. For hours, we danced and fought and made love until in our exhaustion it seemed that time itself grew pliant and began to stretch out, like a drip of warm pine resin, and the drifting forms of our ancestors, enticed back from the spirit realm, appeared among the clouds of smoke that drifted inside the cavern, caressing our flesh, twining among ours bodies.

It was fearsome and fantastic, violent and tender, painful and ecstatic, all wrapped up in a psychedelic haze of pure sexual abandon.

At one point during the night, I rolled onto my back, momentarily spent, and saw the spirit of my grandfather gliding smoothly through the air above me, his form waxing and waning as it flowed through the currents of merje suspended near the roof of the cavern. Ghostly figures swam through the air all around us, like exotic fish. Our exertions had summoned a great host of our ancestors.

I turned to Brulde and started to say, "Look! Do you see the spirits in the smoke?" I thought it a good omen that there were so many of them, but before I could finish speaking, I was tackled, and I found myself struggling to keep my clansman Hyde from besting me.

I hadn't lost a challenge yet and I wasn't about to let this upstart break my winning streak. But it's hard to fight naked and covered in animal fat. You can't get a grip on any of your opponent's limbs. Also, Hyde was much younger. And I was trying not to get sodomized accidentally. It would have been a terrible embarrassment.

We writhed and bucked upon the earth. He almost pinned me to the ground but I wriggled out of his grip. Heart pounding, I scrambled to my feet. All the other men were shouting, watching with wide, crazed eyes, shaking their fists, stomping their feet. Hyde leapt at me with a gusty snarl. I fell back with him, planted my foot in his belly and threw him up and over me.

"Yaaaahhhh!" the circle bellowed, crying out in their appreciation of my clever move.

"I'm going to beat you, old man!" Hyde declared, grinning, nostrils flaring, coming at me again.

I tried to perform a hip toss, but he was ready for my trickery this time. He hooked an arm around my neck and we both went down in a greasy heap. He punched me a few times, grinning and wheezing. They were not serious blows. He wasn't trying to injure me. But somehow he managed to sneak a chokehold on me and I found myself defeated.

Leaping up and pumping his fists in the air, erection bouncing, he celebrated his victory. Then, as we shouted encouragement to him—I, too, with grudging respect-- he turned and staggered to the Stohle.

Sighing and cooing, they welcomed him into their arms.

Perhaps you're hoping I'll spare you further detail. That would be the proper thing to do in this repressed modern era, wouldn't it? To "cut away" to the next scene, as they say. In these present times, it seems the tradition is to espouse one's high moral standards in public while indulging oneself anonymously on the "world wide web". Am I not correct?

Fear not. I shan't offend your delicate sensibilities. I've done my best to "keep it clean" for you.

I think, however, that some of you understand. You grasp the underpinnings of our ritual: that we were preparing ourselves for death. The orgy before war is a timeless tradition. It was practiced by a thousand ancient and respected cultures over the millennia. We were departing for battle in the morning. Our warrior rites were a way to preserve our essence, so that should one man die-- or all men die-- their bravery would not be lost to our people. A part of them would live on, or have a chance of living on, and that helped to take the sting out of the prospect of mortality.

I was challenged three more times that night, but Hyde was the only man who beat me.

Suffice it to say, I woke the next morning with a sore head and even sorer loins.