The tense silence of the long march was broken by a sharp, brief sound. Bone whistle signals, in a specific pattern of three short blasts, echoed through the woods.
Ubirajara raised his hand, stopping the column instantly. He waited, motionless, until the rustling of vegetation revealed the vanguard scouts returning.
"Ruins ahead, leader," the scout informed him, his breathing controlled. "It looks like it was once a large village, but the forest has taken over."
Ubirajara locked eyes with Moacir for a brief moment. The experienced warrior, usually stoic, had a different tension in his shoulders, a rigidity that did not stem from combat.
Without a word, Ubirajara gestured for the scout to lead them.
As they approached, the smell of the forest changed. The fresh aroma of damp earth and green leaves gave way to a sweet, sickening odor of rotting wood, fungi, and the unmistakable hum of blowflies. It was the scent of abandonment and ancient death.
The palisades had fallen, and the great longhouses, once vibrant centers of community life, were now skeletons of straw and wood being devoured by vines.
Suddenly, Moacir broke formation. He didn't walk; he ran toward the center of the dead village, ignoring all safety protocols. Curious and concerned by the impulsive reaction of his second-in-command, Ubirajara followed him, signaling for the others to maintain the perimeter.
He found Moacir kneeling under the wide canopy of a yellow Ipê tree that, indifferent to the destruction around it, was in full bloom. Moacir was digging frantically into the earth with his bare hands, throwing handfuls of clay soil behind him until he hit something solid.
He stopped, his breathing irregular. With a care that contrasted with the violence of the excavation, he cleared the earth from skeletal remains.
A small skull, already fractured by time and the pressure of the earth, emerged.
Ubirajara stepped forward, feeling the weight of the moment. "Who was it?"
Moacir did not look up. He ran his thumb over the empty orbit of the skull, his voice coming out as a muffled, painful growl. "My mother."
Ubirajara felt a pang pierce his chest. There were no words of comfort that could serve such an ancient pain. He placed his hand on the warrior's shoulder.
"We won't leave her exposed like this," Ubirajara said firmly. "We will give her a proper burial."
Moacir nodded in silence, tears finally cutting through the urucum paint on his face. Ubirajara had never participated in a Tupi funeral and knew his ignorance could be disrespectful.
He decided to step back and observe, letting Moacir and the other warriors lead the rite. They didn't have an igaçaba, the large ceramic burial urn, so they improvised.
With reverent care, the bones were gathered and wrapped in large wild banana leaves, tied with tucum fibers.
As they dug a new, deeper grave at the base of the Ipê, the men began a low chant. It wasn't a melodic song, but a guttural, monochord lament that seemed to vibrate in the chests of everyone present.
Ubirajara felt the vibration a primal connection to the earth and the finitude of life that his previous, aseptic, and urban life had never provided.
They buried the bundle, covered it with earth, and marked the spot with river stones, ensuring that this time, the rest would be permanent.
The departure from the ruins was somber but necessary. The expedition could not stop. They resumed the journey north, following the course of the hematite stream.
The sun was beginning to set again, marking the end of the second week of the journey. As they walked, Ubirajara's mind returned to logistical mode. He observed the stream with the eyes of an engineer.
"This waterway is the key," he thought, watching the current. "It connects directly to the Paraíba do Sul River. We won't need to carry the iron ore on our backs through the mountains. We can build cargo rafts here and sail the hematite straight to the village's future industrial area."
Logistics were taking shape before him, facilitated by geography itself.
The next day, the marching routine was broken again. From the horizon, the scouts emerged, returning in a hurry. "A large village ahead, leader," the scout reported.
Ubirajara felt the tension of the first real contact with a local power. "They speak Tupi, right?"
Moacir, recovered from his mourning, nodded, returning to his role as the pragmatic warrior. "Yes. They are Tupiniquim. They invoke the same ancestor as we do. We are distant cousins."
Ubirajara let out a breath, relieved. "So they will receive us without animosity, right? We can understand each other through diplomacy."
Moacir smiled, but it wasn't a smile of joy. "There are two possibilities. Either we are received as distant cousins, or we become their 'celebrated guests' in a great ritual and are devoured so they can absorb our strength."
Ubirajara stopped, staring fixedly at Moacir. The memory of historical accounts of Tupi ritual anthropophagy hit him like a lightning bolt. "That's not funny, Moacir."
Moacir looked confused by Ubirajara's defensive reaction and simply nodded, muttering, "I wasn't trying to be funny. I was just stating a fact."
The reality of this era was brutal. Ubirajara needed to be cautious. He called Ubiratan, his literate assistant. "Ubiratan, you will be my diplomat. Go ahead, unarmed. Announce our arrival with the formal greetings. Say we are a reconnaissance expedition and that we wish to greet their Morubixaba."
In the history of human diplomacy, sending the messenger ahead didn't always end well, but it was a calculated risk. The time it took for Ubiratan to return felt like an eternity.
When he finally emerged from the woods, he was not alone. Beside him walked Ararê, a large man with a broad chest and an expression that mixed curiosity and cautious kindness.
"Welcome to our lands," Ararê said, his voice resonating. "The Shaman and the Morubixaba have agreed to receive you. Please, follow me."
Ubirajara nodded, ordering his men to maintain marching discipline, demonstrating strength without aggression.
As they entered the settlement, the scale of the place impressed Ubirajara. It was vast, with dozens of large malocas arranged in an imperfect circle.
However, as they walked toward the center, Ubirajara's analytical eyes noticed a disturbing demographic anomaly.
The people coming out to observe the newcomers were, in their overwhelming majority, women, children, and the elderly.
"Why are there so few fighting-age men in the village?" Ubirajara thought, calculating quickly.
The proportion seemed to be nearly four women for every one adult man. Introspectively, he found himself thinking like a warrior: "If I were the leader here, I would have placed every available man at the entrance to receive us, to project strength. Receiving an armed foreign group with so few visible warriors makes the village look weak, vulnerable."
When they reached the central maloca, the largest of all, the situation changed slightly. There were more men there, the chief's elite guard, but still, the number was visibly lower than what a village of that size should have.
An elderly man, with skin wrinkled like parchment and adorned with blue macaw feathers, stepped forward. His eyes were intelligent and piercing.
"My name is Juriti," the old man said, his voice raspy. "I am the Shaman of this village. Who are you and what do you seek so far from your lands?"
Ubirajara stepped forward, projecting authority. "I am Ubirajara. We invoke the Tupi ancestor common to us both. We are an expeditionary group. Our goal is not war, but knowledge. We are mapping the region, the rivers, and the mountains."
Juriti listened, evaluating the strange equipment of Ubirajara's men, the leather helmets, and the rigid discipline. Beside him, a younger man, the Morubixaba Piatã, watched with suspicion.
"Mapping?" Juriti questioned. "Knowledge of the land belongs to those who live on it. Why do you need to draw what the eyes already see?"
"Because the world is changing, wise Juriti," Ubirajara replied. "And to survive the change, we need to know where we stand."
The conversation stretched on. Ubirajara, perceiving the distrust, decided to use his most powerful weapon: information. He took one of his mallow paper rolls and drew a rudimentary map of the region they had traveled, marking the river and the mountain with charcoal.
Then, he wrote some numbers and words in Tupi using the alphabet he was developing.
Juriti and Piatã approached, fascinated. To them, those scratches that kept speech and counted things without using fingers were pure sorcery.
"This..." Juriti touched the paper with reverence. "Does this trap words?"
"This serves to record things," Ubirajara explained.
The demonstration of intellectual power broke the ice of distrust. Juriti invited them to sit and drink cauim. It was then that the truth about the lack of men came to light.
"You noticed our weakness," Piatã, the Morubixaba, said bitterly. "Our longhouses are full of widows and daughters without fathers."
"What happened?" Ubirajara asked.
"Arawaks," Piatã spat. "They come from the north, descending the great rivers like a plague of locusts. They are many, and their weapons are strange."
Juriti added, his eyes showing genuine concern. "They bring technologies we don't understand. Our stone tacapes break against their shields. They use wooden shields that do not break, made of several layers glued together."
Ubirajara immediately recognized the description: laminated wood technology. It was a significant advancement over single-piece shields. The Arawaks were formidable.
"Many of our brave warriors went north to try to stop them and did not return," Piatã concluded. "That is why we accepted you so easily. We need new blood. We need warriors."
The conversation took an unexpected turn. Tupiniquim hospitality had a clear price and goal: repopulation.
"Ubirajara," Juriti said, looking at the twenty strong and healthy men of the expedition. "You are strong cousins. Our village needs this strength. In exchange for our alliance and our knowledge of the north, we offer you the right to take wives among us."
The Shaman gestured, and five young women were brought forward. They were beautiful, strong, and looked at the foreigners with curiosity. "For you, leader Ubirajara, we offer these five as proof of our goodwill."
Ubirajara felt a sense of discomfort. He looked at his men. They had been in the woods for weeks, facing dangers and hardships. Their eyes shone with the possibility.
They were men of their time, and polygamy was an accepted practice, a sign of status and power.
Ubirajara knew that refusing completely would be a serious diplomatic offense, and he needed this alliance to secure the southern flank of his future empire. He needed to be pragmatic.
"Wise Juriti, noble Piatã," Ubirajara began carefully. "The generosity of the Tupiniquim is legendary. We accept the offer of alliance."
He paused, calculating. "However, my position requires focus. Five wives would be a distraction for the work I have ahead. But, to seal our blood pact, I will accept two, if they consent." He looked at the two young women who stood slightly ahead of the others. "The daughter of the Shaman and the daughter of the Morubixaba."
It was a bold political move, uniting himself directly with the two main lineages of power in the village. Juriti and Piatã exchanged glances and nodded, satisfied with the foreigner's cunning.
"And for my brave companions," Ubirajara continued, gesturing to his men who could hardly contain their anxiety. "They are free to accept the honor you grant them."
The agreement was sealed with more cauim and celebration. As he watched his men interacting with the women of the village, Ubirajara reflected coldly on the situation.
Genghis Khan, he thought. "They say a significant percentage of the world's population carries his DNA today. Based on his current situation, he vaguely realized how he did it."
His mind wandered to Europe. The Habsburgs. "Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube."
"Let others wage war; you, happy Austria, marry. They dominated half the known world through strategic marriages, not just cannons."
That wasn't romance; it was geopolitics. Anahi, the Shaman's daughter with the intelligent gaze, and Iara, the Morubixaba's daughter with the haughty posture, were now living guarantees of Tupiniquim loyalty to Tekoá.
The expedition remained in the village for a week. Ubirajara and Ubiratan worked intensely with Juriti and the young local elite.
They didn't teach them to read and write fluently in a week, but they planted the seed.
They introduced about 300 characters to represent goods, numbers, rivers, and key concepts like "ally" and "enemy." Basic arithmetic, addition and subtraction, was received like a divine revelation.
At the end of the week, the expedition was ready to depart. The group, however, had changed drastically. They were no longer just twenty men. Now, they were 50 people. Each of his warriors was returning with one or two Tupiniquim wives, and Ubirajara with two.
The logistics of the return became an immediate nightmare. The provisions they had calculated for the journey back would not be enough for double the mouths.
Standing on the edge of the forest, watching the now swollen and noisy column, Ubirajara felt a twinge of doubt.
He seriously considered ending the mission right then and heading straight back, using the need for resupply as an excuse.
But deep down, he knew there was another reason he wanted to return. The image of Tainá came to his mind. He had left promising a technical, fast, and professional expedition.
Now, he was returning as a tribal warlord, bringing two political wives and a retinue.
"Arriving with two more wives after guaranteeing it was only work..." Ubirajara thought, feeling a knot in his stomach. "This is not going to be an easy conversation."
He sighed, adjusted his backpack, and looked north, where the Arawak threat lurked. He couldn't turn back now.
The mapping expedition had become vital from both a diplomatic and strategic point of view.
"Forward," Ubirajara ordered, deciding to face the dangers of the forest before facing Tainá's fury.