Invasion

You are bigots, not just your people, but all of the alliance’s peoples, no better than the invaders. Many of our spiritual leaders are mentally of one sex living in the body of the other, and over the centuries you have burnt many of them alive. To this day it is an offence under your law for them to even exist.

The prime minister of Thorwelt quietly and he thought persuasively put forward his case. He was asking for what was essentially military assistance from a representative of an ethnic minority his government had forbidden to even have a police force of their own never mind a military organisation. His back was up against the wall and he was more than desperate. He explained all he knew. The invaders from the north west who had already conquered most of the continent and in doing so butchered most of the population were at most a few days away from doing the same with the four countries of the south who had always had an alliance against all others. The alliance would be hopelessly out numbered. He was trying to gloss over that the Southern Alliance had for all known history treated the polar peoples appallingly.

The old woman listened carefully to his arguments and her calm detachment discomforted him greatly. She merely nodded and said, “Continue,” when he faltered. When he reached the end of his arguments as to why her folk should help his to survive she said, “I’ll run over how my people see this matter. It is a question of history. Over a thousand years ago your people came south to escape persecution. We gave you land and fed you. You only exist because we helped you then when you were in dire need. Where your capital is now was once at the northern end of our grazing lands. In gratitude bit by bit you stole our lands driving us twelve hundred miles further south towards the pole. You have raped our women and butchered our men and children in front of them before butchering them too. There are thousands of your laws discriminating against us. You do not recognise our government and only unofficially accept our border because it is too cold south of it for you to survive. We have no military by your decree, only hunters, yet you know we are the only people who can deal with the invaders. We can survive in temperatures none others can, and we are the acknowledged world leaders in natural pharmacology and genetic manipulation, which is why I am told you are here. Is that not so?”

He didn’t wish to admit it, but had been reliably told this shaman would be able to see right through any lie or prevarication on his part. “I was told your experts at your university would be able to provide a solution.”

Sourly she said, “No doubt that would be the university you have said for decades is of no academic value or status. The university you still refuse to accept is of sufficient academic standing to confer valid degrees. The university we were forced to create because your universities wouldn’t and still won’t accept any of our young people. Now you are asking me if they can genetically tailor a virus to selectively kill the invaders because your establishments can’t?”

“Yes. I was told they could.”

“It is true. We have the invaders’ genetic signatures and the means to wipe out their entire peoples from every corner of the world, but why should we help you to maintain yourselves so you can continue to steal our land because your greed tells you you ‘need’ it? Why should we enable you to further discriminate against us in your courts and imprison our folk for their honest identity and sexuality issues because they are offensive to your people? You are bigots, not just your people, but all of the alliance’s peoples, no better than the invaders. Many of our spiritual leaders are mentally of one sex living in the body of the other, and over the centuries you have burnt many of them alive. To this day it is an offence under your law for them to even exist. Tell me why should we help you when most of our people find your existence offensive?”

The prime minister pled for the women and children of his people yet again.

“Not six months ago one of your men raped one of our women and her two daughters, one girl was eight the other six, and a crowd of your women cheered him on. Your court fined him a month’s salary. A year ago one of our men stopped a fifteen year old boy of yours for stealing from his home. He will not be released from gaol for another year and a half, the boy walked free. My brother served three years in one of your gaols because when one of your men thought it was acceptable to put his hand up our mother’s skirts my brother stopped him. The man was not hurt anywhere near as badly as your police hurt my brother when arresting him for assault, despite my brother putting up no resistance. Such matters are still happening every day. Despite the willingness of your men to rape our women, girls and boys too, no woman of the alliance has ever had dealings with one of our men for they regard them as filth. Your children are indoctrinated against us from birth. No. We shall not help you, not even your newborn, for we do not lie and would not hide their origins from them. There would be a risk they would eventually turn against us to reclaim what they considered to be theirs. That is too dangerous a risk to subject our young and vulnerable to. We’d rather the invaders slaughtered you, your women and your children down to the newborn too, and they will.

“I suggest you release all our people from your gaols before the invaders arrive. If you do, like all of our people who were on your side of the border have done, they shall return to us, and we shall leave you alone to fight your own battles. If you don’t we’ll facilitate the invaders to reach your cities undetected. The invaders will not be able to affect us. We are ready for them, and all other than our hunters have crossed the water to the polar continental peninsula. Any who cross into our northern territory will not live twenty four hours even at midsummer, and they’ll never see the hunters who kill them. We shall watch as they send your people to oblivion and then we shall obliterate them, all of them, and any of your folk that remain too, but not before. Then we’ll take back all the land the peoples of the Southern Alliance stole from us. You have had over a thousand years to redeem yourselves, but you are beyond redemption. Even now I can see the revulsion in your eyes because you have been told I grew up as a boy. The invaders will relieve you of that.”