Heng II

PA 0 (8th month since arrival)

It was a warm(ish) summer morning that saw Chief Heng out in nature with his pet.

His giant, adolescent, pet mammoth.

“Who’s a good girl?” he cooed, softly dragging his brush through Mohu the Mammoth’s fur. “That’s right, you are! Sitting so calmly for papa, you’re not anything like the hunting dogs, are you? So smart and patient, you don’t bite my hand when I try to pet you~”

Mohu let out a triumphant trumpet, exulting in her own glory as the bestest girl around.

“Yes, that’s right, you are a good girl!” he laughed happily.

It had been months since he’d first brough Mohu back to the tribe. At first, they’d been confused and wary. They complained constantly about the upkeep of taking care of such a massive creature. Many people wanted her gone.

These days, they were still confused and wary. But at least they no longer constantly complained about her.

Her original wound had healed up nicely, allowing her to move around without pain anymore. She’d also grown a good foot and had dramatically increased the amount of food she ate. If it weren’t for the fact she ate grass, they would have had a serious problem on their hands. As it was, the places they left just looked significantly more barren than normal.

“I see you two are having fun.”

Heng blinked in surprise, turning away from Mohu to look at the new arrival.

Šóta, one of the village elders, stood beside him

“Of course we are,” Heng scoffed. “As if being with Mohu could be anything but!”

“I see, I see,” Šóta hummed, staring up at the lounging mammoth. “You have been taking good care of this one. I’ll admit, I was a bit worried at the beginning.”

“Eh, you and everyone else,” Heng shrugged. “Do you have something you want to tell me, though? Normally you guys don’t come get me unless you have something you want me to do. Are Lakota and Wapsha fighting again?”

“If only,” the Medicine Man sighed, shaking his head. “There’s something else we need you to do, something important.”

Heng was instantly wary. “Is there a storm coming? An enemy tribe?”

“No, no nothing that bad,” Šóta assured him.

“Oh,” Heng instantly relaxed, before rolling his eyes at himself. He should have known—they wouldn’t have sent Šóta of all people to get him if it was something really important. Rolling his shoulders, he picked up his brush and returned to brushing Mohu. “So, what is it?” he asked, only half paying attention now.

“You need to get married.”

“Okay, I’ll get to that eventually,” he shrugged, continuing to brush Mohu’s fur.

Then he paused.

“I need to what now!?”

--

Immediately after that surreal surprise, Heng found himself arriving in front of the Elders’ Teepee, all five of the village Elders arrayed in a semi-circle inside. Most were old men, all wrinkly and missing teeth.

As he entered the teepee, they all looked at him with at best pleasant apathy. Much as they technically worked together, they rarely interacted, since Heng left most of the running of the tribe to the more experienced Elders. In return, they left him to do his own thing unmolested. At least, until today.

“Hmph! Chieftain Heng,” the first elder grunted in greeting. “We wondered what was taking you so long.”

“That would by my fault, Elder Hanska,” Šóta cut in. “I was unable to find him quickly. In retrospect, it should have been obvious he was with his Tusk-Beast.”

Heng glanced at the elder, surprised that he’d covered him for his little freak-out. It was… not worrying, exactly, but it was odd. Was he trying to curry favor with him, since he was Chief? Or was it some other reason?

“Hmph,” Hanska grunted. “Very well. Now that you are finally here, Chieftain Heng, we can begin our council. I assume Šóta has told you why we wanted you here?”

Heng swallowed. “Yes. He said you wanted me to get married.”

“Hmph! Yes. You may be our chief, but you’re still a foreigner, after all. You have no ties to our tribe, no stake in our affairs. All you do every day is play with your pet beast! You need to learn some responsibility if you want to keep ruling this tribe!”

“What my coworker is trying to say,” Chaska cut in, glaring lightly at Hanska. “Is that we simply worry about the future of this tribe. After all you must admit that you… have not put in any particular work when it comes to ruling. And while an absent chief isn’t impossible to work with, we are experienced elders. We worry about what happens when our inexperienced sons take over without a chief to pick up the slack.”

Thinking logically, Heng understood what they were talking about. In the eight months since he’d arrived, he’d been… relaxed. The most effort he’d put into anything was ‘domesticating’ Mohu, and while that definitely had some real work as a leader, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d come together with the other Elders to make some important decision for the tribe.

However…

“Why does this require me to get married, though?” Heng asked desperately. Oh, sure, he wouldn’t mind having a girlfriend or even wife, but doing it like this felt… wrong. Like it was just a pantomime of an actual relationship. An empty arranged marriage that he didn’t want to deal with.

“Blood is blood,” Hanska grunted. “You are not of our blood, and yet you lead. This is inexcusable.”

“It is impossible for you to become of our blood,” Elder Hotah continued after Hanska, blowing out smoke from his worn pipe. “However, your children can be of our blood. They must be of our blood, as another part of our family.” Hotah shrugged. “If you one day have other children who are not of our family, then so be it. But your heirs, the ones who will lead when you are gone, must be of our blood. And when the children are of our family, does that not make the father family as well?”

Heng let out a breath, frowning. He still didn’t like this, and yet… he understood their point. Everyone in this tribe was either related to each other or married to someone who had been born in the tribe. There were no ‘outsiders’ in this place. No outsiders, except for him.

It had been an issue he’d known existed. But he’d ignored it, mostly because nobody else seemed to be doing anything about it. The people grumbled and scoffed, but they listened to him when he spoke and the Elders all agreed that he was chief. He’d never given much thought to the idea that they were planning something like this though.

And, in the end, no matter how much he didn’t like it, there wasn’t anything he could do to stop them.

“Alright,” he sighed. “I’ll do it. I’ll get married.”

--

An arranged marriage. It was like something out of a period drama. He’d never expected something like this to happen. Frankly, he didn’t want something like this to happen. If he was going to get married it would be out of love, damn it! Not because a couple old men told him to do it!

But a bunch of old men were telling him to do it. And Heng, who still had a hard time conflating himself with the idea of being a King, was too worried about what would happen if he said no.

So here he was, sitting in front of three of the elders as they introduced their daughters.

The first was a woman with tanned skin—as everyone in the tribe had—and long brown hair that fell down to her waist. She had some sort of black markings on her face, which took attention away from her piercing green eyes.

“Chieftain Heng,” Elder Hotah began. “I’d like to introduce you to my daughter, Ehawee.”

“A pleasure,” Heng in turn nodded politely at her. The woman simply gave him a calm smile back.

Next they turned to Elder Chaska, who had a girl that was way too young for him. With short brown hair and a cherubic face, she looked, like, twelve.

‘What the fuck, Chaska!?’

“Allow me to introduce my granddaughter, Kimimela,” the old man smiled at him.

Heng stared at the Elder for a long moment, before turning to the last woman, standing next to Hanska.

She was young—not as young as Kimimela, thank god—but at least old enough that visible callouses had formed on her hands. Her hair was a dark brown and tied into a tight braid, framing her placid face as she stood diligently by her father’s side.

“Hmph.” Hanska grunted. “This is my daughter. Wachiwi.”

Despite introducing her, the man still glared at him, as if telling bad things would happen if he picked his daughter.

‘What the hell, man!? I thought you were the one who wanted me to get married in the first place!?’

He almost picked Wachiwi out of spite, but managed to reel himself in in time. No, he had a plan, he just needed to implement it.

“It’s nice to meet all of you,” he told them, nodding politely. “I look forward to getting to know you all better.”

“Just get this over with, Chieftain,” Hanska scowled at him. “Pick your woman and let’s get back to more important matters.”

Heng’s eyebrow twitched. “Really? Because you seemed to believe that this was pretty important an hour ago. This is who I’ll spend the rest of my life with, after all. I think I should be able to take my time to choose who I'll be spending the rest of my life with!"

The Elder’s scowl deepened, but he merely grunted in acceptance. Good, good, he was the one he was most worried about.

“Now, obviously, I can’t just choose a wife all willy-nilly,” Heng shook his head, gesturing to the three before him. “I barely know these women, and they’re all equal politically, so it’s not like there’s any advantages or disadvantages to marrying them. So that means, the only way I can decide is to get to know them personally.”

Hanska’s scowl, somehow, deepened even further. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Oh, no,” Elder Hotah smirked, crossing his arms. “I want to hear what the Chief has to say. I think he may be on to something.”

“Thank you,” Heng nodded, surprised at the sudden ally. “I think, rather than instantly make such an important decision, I should take my time. For the next, say… three weeks, I’ll spend my days around these three, getting to know them, and the one I like best will get to—to marry me.”

Ugh, even saying that aloud felt awful. He felt like fucking scum just saying that. Why the hell did marriage have to be the one thing these people wanted him to do?

Still, at least he’d bought himself some time. Heng knew that some men would be jumping at the idea of just instantly getting a wife like this, but actually living through it just made it really creepy. Especially the little kid—did people actually get married like this in the past? Or was he just super unlucky?

“Well, Hanska, Chaska, what say you?” Hotah asked, grinning at his fellow Elders. “I believe it’s a reasonable request—it’s not like our Chief is going anywhere, you know? He can take his time picking.”

Chaska glanced at Hotah, then at Heng, then finally at his daughter. “…I …agree. In fact, I think he may need some more time to think on it. Perhaps a year? More?”

“No.” Hanska snarled. “He can have his three weeks. No more. Do not push this.” The Elder then stomped away from the rest of them, dragging his daughter along with him. The placid woman simply followed along, stumbling slightly as her father dragged her.

Heng almost called out to him, to remind him that he was supposed to actually interact with Wachiwi, but stopped himself in time. He’d already pissed off the Elder enough today, no need to completely burn that bridge yet.

Forcing down a grimace, Heng turned back to the other two women. One of which was a girl at least five years younger than him, and the other an actual child.

God, he felt so sleezy. Like, he understood it was something he was more or less being forced to do, but that didn’t change the fact that he was treating these women like someone would pick out an outfit. It felt uncomfortable, to be doing something that he’d so often complained about others doing.

But that was just the way these people lived.

‘…Actually.’

Heng frowned. He was their leader, wasn’t he? Couldn’t he just… make them change their ways? Why was he, the chief, the King, being forced to do something he really didn’t want to do?

His first thought was to get annoyed. To get angry, that these people were subverting his power and making him dance to their tune.

But then he thought about it some more. And he realized something—he had no idea how to actually be king. Even after eight months he only sort of understood these people’s culture. Hell, he barely understood how these people thought—almost every day somebody said something that just completely blindsided him.

He didn’t know these people, he realized. And he hadn’t really even tried to get to know them. And that, more than anything, seemed to be his main problem.

‘I mean, I haven’t really done anything as Chieftain, now that I think about it. I’ve just sort of… sat around, playing with my mammoth and rejoicing about not having to do paperwork. Now that I think about it… am I even really King? Do I want to be King?’

That was… a question he didn’t realize needed to be asked. Did Wang Heng want to be King?

The answer was… no, actually. Wang Heng didn’t want to be King. He wanted to be happy. He wanted financial security and friends and family who loved him, but being King… it didn’t really matter to him. It was a title that up until this moment barely affected him in this world, and one that he was only now feeling the weight of.

…But he couldn’t exactly get rid of the title, either. If he did, he’d probably be banished, or killed, or some other horrible thing. They weren’t forcing him to get married because he was King, but because he was an outsider. And the only reason they tolerated an outsider is because he was King.

Heng felt a cold sweat form on his back. Huh, and here he thought he’d been safe in this world. Of course he wasn’t—he knew his fellow ‘God-Kings’ had been dropping like flies for the past few months. There was no way every single one accepted their offer of Kingship. He wondered if they were killed for that.

If he stopped being King… would that God-Thing kill him? Was his life tied to his position, or was the position secondary to his life?

That… was a question Heng decided he didn’t want answered.

And so, the great King Heng, trapped in his position as ruler of the tribe, began his most perilous task yet.

Getting married.

9,914 God-Kings Remain.