What Mangelo the Wolf Said to Me After He Met the Stone Rings of the Bosska
A short story
I have counted sixteen summers since I saw the settlement of stone rings and met the people who wear them. Mangelo the Wolf was my chief then, as you say. He gave me these rings of metal on my arms, as you ask. I did raid and walk the amber roads with him, as you heard.
You ask me about him, and his fate. You ask of our visit to the settlement of stone rings. You ask of the chiefs there, and of the big chief, Kinlekki. Others have asked. I have told the story many times.
You came a great distance and your visit is welcome. I will tell you the same story as the others. I will tell it again as I always tell it. I will tell you what the Wolf said when he met the stone rings. I will tell you how to wear the stone rings.
The people living there call themselves the Bosska. They call their settlement Houses of Bosska.
The name of the big chief of Bosska is Kinlekki.
The name of the big chief is always Kinlekki.
The Kinlekki that we met had four sons. One of those sons became a new Kinlekki. Travelers tell me that he had a son who is now Kinlekki.
When a big chief of the Bosska dies, the other chiefs of Bosska choose a big chief from the sons of the last one. If a Kinlekki has no son that is suitable, they choose a new Kinlekki from the chiefs of the clans. They say this is the best way of things.
Kinlekki must marry a wife from a different clan than his own mother. The Bosska say this is the best way of things.
To see the settlement of the Bosska and meet the Kinlekki you must sail again from the shore of this island. Take winds into the sunset until you make landfall.
Then you must follow the coast with the star to your back. The land will turn into the sunset. Follow the land on your right. The star will be on your right when you come upon a great gulf with a headland thrust into it like a spearhead.
Trim your sails and make landfall. A red sunset is considered most auspicious. Make sacrifice.
You will be seen and the coast guards will meet you. If you say this name that you call me, they will not know it. If you tell them that the Hand of Mangelo the Wolf has sent you, then they will know and remember me.
They remember the Wolf. They remember his Hand. They remember what the Wolf gave and what the Hand did for Kinlekki.
The chiefs are happy to trade metal for amber. First they will show you their great settlement. They want you to meet the Houses of the Bosska. They want you to meet the stone rings.
They want you to know what the Wolf knew, after he met the stone rings.
The Bosska expect all men who meet the stone rings to decide they cannot raid the Houses of the Bosska.
When you meet the stone rings you will understand.
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Every man who comes from the sea will spend two days being feasted in some village near the shore. The women of the Bosska are all beautiful. The men with the most rings of metal have the most beautiful women, and the most women, but do not touch these women. Wait and do not touch any woman at all.
One woman will come to every man who visits this village from the sea. This is their test to make sure he is a man and not a demon. After you have passed this test the Bosska will give you greater freedom. Do not pursue Bosska women. If you impress the Bosska women very much, they will come to you.
On the third morning you will be taken up a river in boats. They call this river Arjo. They will land you on the left shore at a settlement. You will be feasted again. This settlement is large. It lies under a stone ring, but this is not the Houses of Bosska.
The ring you will see above you is a Guardian of Bosska.
There are four Guardians around the Houses of Bosska. They lie at all four directions from Bosska. The Guardian to the sunrise from Bosska is the smallest and the one that you will see first is the biggest. No man or raid can approach Bosska from any direction without a Guardian that sees him.
A man would need a very large raid just to sack one Guardian of Bosska. When you see a Guardian, you will understand.
I did meet all of the Guardians with the Wolf. Mangelo the Wolf said he would not raid them. I would not raid them. No wise man would raid them. This is what the Wolf said when he saw the Guardians of Bosska, and Mangelo the Wolf was the wisest man ever to lead a raid.
A raid would have to come upon the Guardian like lightning, sweep over the guards like a white storm. Or else this raid would have to camp outside the Guardian for days, or weeks, or even many moons, and all that time the chiefs of Bosska would assemble their own raiders to hold a great battle.
You will know what a very large raid is like if it sits in a place for very long. The chiefs of Bosska will have their battle when the invaders are already weak from sickness and have nothing left to eat. Such a battle would be hard for a raid to win. It would be easy for the Bosska to destroy this invader and make slaves of them.
The chiefs of Bosska have surrounded their stone rings with ditches. You have met wooden rings with ditches like this because you have walked the amber roads. These ditches are wide and dry until it rains. When it rains, the filth of the settlement washes into the ring. When the sky is dry, the ditches are dry.
Stay away from the ditches. If you fall into the ditch when it is wet, it is an omen that you will die. If you fall into the ditch when it is dry, the Bosska will laugh at you. Then they will turn you away from the Settlement of Stone Rings, for it is held to be a sign that you are false in word and faint in action.
If you return after that happens, I think they will kill you. When a man is not liked and found dead, or goes missing and no one can say what has happened to him, the Bosska like to say that this man has fallen into the ditch.
The Wolf said that if a man leads a raid to the Houses of the Bosska, the ditch will be filled with dead men.
Many settlements have rings. You have seen the stone ring around my house. It is strong but not tall. It stood around this house when I became chief. I made it again in the fashion of the Bosska, with a special mud, to be stronger.
The stone rings of the Bosska are so high that a man must stand on the shoulders of a man, and that man must stand on the shoulders of another man, for the first man to reach the top. Three men are necessary to climb one stone ring at the settlement of the Bosska.
A man could use a ladder. This is true. The Wolf remarked that a raid would need many ladders to attack such a stone ring. He said that he would need ladders as long as four men. Three men will carry the ladder. One man will support the ladder while two men climb the ladder, and they would be full of arrows on both sides before they met the top.
A very large raid, coming a very large way, carrying a great many ladders, and many of them would die before they ever met the top of the ring. What kind of men would agree to this?
Every stone ring is like a snake. It slithers, so that if a man comes to the stone ring with a ladder, men on his left and right can fight him with arrows. When the Wolf saw this, he remarked that both sides of a man are filled with arrows before he meets the top.
The Wolf said that he would need at least three great-raids to take such a wall in the way of a sudden storm. He said he could never surprise Kinlekki if any loyal men were awake. I agreed with him.
When you leave the southern Guardian on the fourth morning, you will walk for a full day to reach the settlement of stone rings. A Bosska will come with you to see that you are safe. This Bosska guide will know your tongue better than me, for I did not stay long in your mountains.
The land of the Bosska is very good, full of grain and fruit. Along this way you will see mines and furnaces where the metal is made.
I did go inside them with the Wolf. We had come to ask the chiefs, may we see where the metal is made? We asked our guide to see how they make it, so that we might know how their way is different from the ways of other men making metal, that their metal keeps an edge.
The name of our guide was Issek. He said that if we could learn their secret way from watching with only our eyes, then we deserved to know it. We surmised this was a riddle but we did not solve it.
White metal comes to Bosska, but it comes from places that are very far away across the Sea of Storms. The Bosska mix gray metal with red metal. This makes the metal hard and shine the color of the moon.
Each Guardian has a furnace inside the ring. The chiefs of Bosska have many furnaces inside their rings. We looked at everything in each furnace we met. We watched them make metal. We saw nothing that other men had not done, save some words they said to their god of metals, whom they call Vitkan.
Many of these words are oaths. Others are curses. Everything they touch and do is blessed for the god’s favor. Vitkan is blessed and cursed and sworn more than any god I met in all my travels. It is strange to watch. I do not know another reason to explain why their metal keeps an edge so well except that perhaps Vitkan is pleased.
The Bosska say that Vitkan gives them the metal through the walls of their mines, and this is why their metal is so good. If they play a trick we did not see it, and we tried to see it many times while we were there. Perhaps their Vitkan does favor them. But he asks a great price to take the minds and souls of so many men, often in great agony.
As you know, men who work with gray metal are touched by the god. You will see many of these men in Bosska lands. The men of the Bosska who work the furnaces are as god-touched as any I have met in this world. They say the gray metal takes life away from those who touch it. As much as they can, they make slaves touch it for them. But a man who works with metal must touch it sometime.
The Wolf said that he could not be sure which killed more slaves, the mines or the furnaces. I am sure the god of the furnace kills more Bosska men than the mines do.
If a raid ever did camp outside a Guardian, the Bosska would use the furnace inside it to keep making arrows of metal the whole time. The men inside the Guardian would fill a man’s sides with these arrows all day and still have arrows.
The Wolf asked how many days they could do this. Issek boasted there was a store of metal in every Guardian to make arrows for forty men for twenty days. It was a true boast, not an empty boast. I discovered the truth of it when I met all the Guardians.
Suppose a man led the greatest raid in the world. Suppose they got past the Guardians and reached the stone rings at the Houses of Bosska.
This place lies between two rivers, the Andrax and Wekker, where they marry to become the Arja.
To raid the Bosska, a man must lead his raid from the side facing the land. He must approach the greatest ring of stone and its ditch and be seen.
Or he may cross the Andrax and face a steep climb. His men would still have to carry ladders, no matter the path.
When Mangelo the Wolf stood atop the highest stone ring and looked out over the Andrax, he said no raid of men would ever agree to attempt that way into the Houses of Bosska.
When he looked toward the Wekker he saw the houses of the dead kinlekki. The Wolf said that only a fool would bring a raid out of water and then through the land of the dead. The men of the raid would not follow a man into ill omens like these.
There is no better way into the settlement. A raid must attack the stone ring and many men will die.
Yes, there are three passages into the ring. However, these passages go through stone houses of clever construction. These passages are also set apart a good distance, so that if a raid comes to one passage, the Bosska can use the other passages to come out from behind their stone ring and attack the raid in the sides.
A raid would have its sides full of arrows and the ditch would be filled with dead men. Issek said that the dead men would be cut up and thrown into the Arjo, after.
The Bosska burn their own dead, except for Kinlekki. The Bosska make houses for Kinlekki to sleep forever.
These houses are like mounds, but they are hollow, like a mountain with a mine inside. Each house of the dead Kinlekki is twenty strides across. They are built with rings of stone inside. Each of these houses sleeps one Kinlekki and his wives and his most loyal slaves. The Bosska say that a new Kinlekki needs new servants so that the dead do not rule. It is their law that only the living may rule.
The Bosska have a clever way of making the stone ring hold up a roof made of rings. Each ring of stone is a little smaller than the one underneath it. A passage leads into the room where Kinlekki rests with slaves and weapons and wives. The passage is made in this same clever way. It is sealed and filled with dirt when the last wife dies. If she dies before Kinlekki, the wife awaits him inside the house.
Now I will tell you a story that the women of Bosska told us. They said that long ago, the wives of Kinlekki of their grandmothers’ grandmothers’ grandmothers chose to die whenever their husbands did. She would use poison and be taken into the house of the dead with him. For her son was the new Kinlekki, the greatest dream of any mother.
The wives of the Kinlekki reasoned that if they outlived the father of their son for very long, they might see the son disgraced, or they might disgrace him. Dishonor is worse than death to the Bosska.
The women of the Bosska told us that the wives of Kinlekki stopped this way of things when they saw that their sons were all alone and weak, while the chiefs of the Bosska made themselves into a ring of bad advice around the son, so that he could not escape. Kinlekki would disgrace himself.
Now the story they told me is that Kinlekki grew outraged that his wife would not die with him. Kinlekki made law that all Bosska women must die with their husbands. Instead, the women stopped lying with their husbands at all. They said, if we are forced to lie with you in death as soon as you die, when you work with metal and raid and fight and field and die so young, then we will not lie with you in life anymore. Kinlekki was disgraced and the women of the Bosska won the argument.
The women told us that after this, the Bosska started to make the houses of the dead Kinlekki with passages, so that when the wife died many years after him, she might rest with Kinlekki. After this, the passage is filled with dirt.
Mangelo the Wolf said he met stone houses and passages built this way in other lands. He said that if you sail into the sunrise, all the way to the end of the Great Sea where the grain is very good, you will also find this way of using stone.
When the Wolf said this, Issek told us that those faraway people who live in the sunset had learned this way of using stone from the Bosska. Perhaps he is right. I do not know the truth of it.
I gathered amber and rings of metal with Mangelo for fifteen summers. I was a boy and a slave when I met him. We witnessed the honors given to big chiefs. You have traveled on the amber roads. You have met the ways of honoring great chiefs with feasts and gifts and servants in death. Kinlekki is honored the same way as other tribes honor their chiefs, but for this difference, that the clans of the Bosska honor the houses of their dead Kinlekki every year.
All of the Bosska, every one, must visit the Houses of Bosska three times and be presented to the Bosska. First as boy, then as a man, last as a codger. First as a girl, then as a woman, last as a crone. This way they pick out the best boys and girls to inhabit the Houses of the Bosska, the best men for war and the most beautiful women, the wisest old codgers and the most powerful crones.
Each of the ten Bosska clans has people abiding in the Settlement of the Stone Rings, but they do not abide there in equal numbers. Most of the tribe of Bosska live in settlements throughout the country around the great settlement. Only two of the ten clans abide in the Houses of Bosska.
The first clan to settle there were the Dejeret. They built the first ring at the very top of the hill. Just below this first ring is a second ring of stone where the Hamesh clan abides. The Hamesh say they arrived on the second day, so they got the second choice of land.
Both clans once kept inside their own rings. But this is not how they live, anymore. Things are more confusing. A man who lives at the top may have a mother from any clan. A man who lives at the bottom may have a mother from any clan. A stranger, a man who is not from a mother of Bosska, has a Bosska wife, and his children are Bosska of her clan. This only happens in the Houses of Bosska however. It does not happen in the country. In the country, a man most often marries a cousin in the usual way.
The chiefs of these two clans, Dejeret and Hamesh, marry their sons to women from the other clans. The eight clans that abide in the country revere their sons with the Kinlekki name. Every man in every clan must visit the Houses of the Bosska, as I told you before, and he must do this right when he becomes a man.
He will visit the home of the Kinlekki of his clan, for he is the son of a mother of that clan, and he will serve that clan after he serves Kinlekki. He must perform the tasks appointed by the Bosska for one year. He may wear rings of metal. After this, a man returns to his clan, to marry and serve his chief for ten years.
Kinlekki begins to make his house of death when he is Kinlekki. A new Kinlekki will make his house of death right away. It is the very first task for the young men who serve him in the first new year of Kinlekki.
So now you see how the Houses of the Bosska are the houses of the dead, not the houses of the living. Only the living should rule, but the Bosska live for their dead Kinlekki. They have a mystery about this that is shared in the temple. Of ccourse, I do not speak of it.
The way the Bosska women choose their wisest is also mysterious to me, as such things are mysteries to all men. I tell you this, that a man stands on the shoulders of men, and those men stand on the shoulders of many other men, and those men stand on the shoulders of a great number of men, sometimes a very great way down.
Women all stand side by side. Women arrange themselves in ways men do not see. They wear metal in different ways, they have different magic. What man can understand it? In this way, the Bosska are the same as everyone I meet.
Now I will tell you what Mangelo the Wolf said after he met the stone rings. This is what you walked and sailed from the icy mountains to hear.
He told me that the Houses of Bosska can only be won from inside. He said that the only way to raid the settlement would be to wear the stone rings first, for a number of years, in service to the Bosska.
We told Issek that we would meet Kinlekki and pledge ourselves to his raiding. The Bosska appreciate great warriors and use them to battle with enemies. Kinlekki also fears the ring of chiefs around him. For this reason, men without a clan are useful to Kinlekki.
Issek brought us to meet Kinlekki on the third day we met the Houses of Bosska. Kinlekki abides in his own stone ring. A priestess made us strip naked and wade through a pond to reach Kinlekki. We pledged our service in the words we were told to say. Kinlekki gave us rings of metal. Then we put on wolfskins and there was a feast.
I will tell you later of the enemies of the Bosska and how they raid and how they battle. I will tell you of Mangelo the Wolf, and of his last raid, and his final battle, and of his last words. You see this ring of white metal around my neck. I took it from the man who betrayed Mangelo the Wolf.
But the sun is low, and blood stories should be told in full light of day. Come see the shore and the sunset with me. Feast fires will be lit.
You came all this way with your raid and your ships, to ask me of the Bosska, and now you wish to go see for yourself more than you did before. You want to pledge yourselves to the Kinlekki for his raiding.
The men of Bosska wear their stone rings with pride. Perhaps this pride is arrogance. Perhaps you are thinking that the Bosska, who rely on men like us to fight their battles and run their raids, live in ease and comfort and become soft.
Certainly you know that the son is not always the father, and the son of the son is not always his father, until sometimes, the men of a settlement that has been too happy for too long become feeble. They cannot fight for themselves. They dishonor themselves and then the whole clan dies. Dishonor to women becomes allowed and the whole tribe dies.
When I was in the Houses of Bosska I saw men that would fight any raid. Those men would choose death before dishonor. Even their women would die before giving up the stone rings and the houses. The Bosska women are strong. They make strong men. Maybe the Bosska have withered with age, like me. Perhaps they have welcomed too many men without clans, men like us. Maybe the women are no longer strong and make weaker men, now. Perhaps Vitkan has cursed the Bosska amid his blessings and oaths. Perhaps too many men are touched by him, now.
If you see this is the case, and decide to follow through on your plans to raid the Bosska, then return to the Long Land by following the shore with the star on your left. Do this instead of returning to my island with your boats.
That way, if I see a great many sails coming this way from the Long Land on some morning like this morning, when I saw your sails, I will know you have brought the river tribes to raid the Bosska. I will know you intend to bring me with you.
I doubt that I will meet you again this way. But what a raid that would be, if the Bosska are weak. No raider would want to miss it, if it could be done.
I do not think it can be done. See what you think.
Tell the Bosska that you met the Hand of the Wolf. Tell them that I told you what Mangelo said when he saw their stone rings. Tell them that when you heard of their wonders, you hurt in your heart with need to meet their stone rings yourself.
Ask to watch them make metal in the furnaces. Keep your ears open and learn all you can. Even the lowest slave can whisper truth to your ears. Listen to all you meet, even the chatter of girls. The people who abide in stone rings are made of stone. If they become soft, the rings will become soft.
If you find things as I found them, and are satisfied, come back this way in your journeys to bring tidings. If you do not ever pass this way again, I will know you are wearing the stone rings yourself, wearing a ring of metal like this on my wrist. Or perhaps you will meet Mangelo the Wolf. Share my greetings with his shade if you do.
You are young. Your tribe is young and strong. Good luck to you. The Bosska are right, only the living should rule.
Unidentified Flying Archons: How A Global Religion Reinvented Itself For A 'New Age'
The term ‘New Age’ has always been a false conceit in reference to the 1970s, or any time in the 20th century. American Christianity beheld a world of spiritual ideas during the 19th century. Across the globe, including the United States, new religions were forming around universalizing ideas of humanity. Hegel and Marx presented new revelations to explain
What are you smoking over there and can I get a pound of it?
This is exactly the sort of thing I'm interested in: trying to imagine how people actually lived in pre-history times. Especially incorporating aspects of archeology. I wish you could separate out your fiction somehow. If you published it as a short story somehow, I would buy it. But I can't keep paying for this substack indefinitely to maintain access to this one piece.