Tribal Dawn: Blood-and-Shadow (Volume One)

by Cassie Wolf

  Tribal Dawn:

  Blood-and-Shadow

  By Cassie Wolf

  Publishers note: This novel is aimed for those aged eighteen and above. The following pages contain strong language, violence, nudity and situations which some may feel uncomfortable reading. If such scenes offend you, please do not purchase or continue to read the following.

  © Copyright 2016, Cassie Wolf, All Rights Reserved.

  TRIBAL DAWN

  Tribal Dawn: Blood-and-Shadow (Volume One)

  Tribal Dawn: Descendants (Volume Two)

  Tribal Dawn: Mordufa (Volume Three, Autumn 2017)

  - CHAPTER ONE -

  She had waited outside the hut every night since he left. Sitting on the chair, she peered around the village. Everything was silent. There were no sounds except for the insects in the dry grasses and the marching of the warriors on night patrol.

  Each night was the same. There was nothing new. He must have died. When their mother and father perished in a hut fire, the two of them were left alone. She was six and her brother only eight when he had to look after her. After the tragic event happened, they were moved into the hut with the village witch doctor, Inari. He taught them the basics of living as well helping them build their own new place of shelter.

  Masika was now sixteen and had been dreading the coming of these weeks for years. Her brother was yet to earn his name. It wasn’t until the Chieftain picked him to be led blindfolded into the jungle to survive and find his way back that he could get one. But the Chief, Chieftess, their daughters and their only son despised their family. Most males in the tribe were twelve when they earnt their name, but not her brother. Their rulers were trying to mock them but the siblings wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

  The hatred for her relatives came from the day their father was approached by the Chieftain, offering a cow in exchange for their mother, to bind her soul to him as a spare wife. Their father refused and even confessed he loved the bearer of his children. The entire tribe saw him as a weak male from that day on and thought him cursed with a madness to refuse such a proposal. But it didn’t end there. A couple of years later the Chieftain returned with three cows and asked for Masika to be bound to his son as well as their mother bound to him. The young parents declined his offer.

  Shortly after, Masika, her brother and four other younger siblings were sleeping when thick black smoke poured into the room. Her brother was the first to react. She would never forget the weight on her eyes and how heavy her head felt. No matter how many times he called her name, she couldn’t respond. Her throat felt like it had swollen to a point were no words could escape.

  The next thing she remembered was opening her eyes to the wooden painted mask of the witch doctor. She was terrified and didn’t understand she should be grateful that he’d saved her life. Masika just wanted her mother. But she was never to come.

  Her brother was in the next room. She could hear his shrill cries and, strangely, they reassured her. Masika hopped out of the straw bed and let herself sob into the night beside him. His hands were severely burnt, but over the years the scars didn’t remain as thick as they should have. He still had the nightmares of the fire and males would call him pathetic for fear of it. Quietly, he would seethe and train each hour of the day for the time that he would become a warrior.

  It was the fourth week he had been out there. The Chief had sent him with the worst spear that was available and a leather flask full of holes. Masika dreaded to think of the hell he had sent him to. If he didn’t return by the end of this week, she was the Chief’s property by law.

  Grasping the colourful beads around her neck, she closed her eyes and whispered to herself, “Brother, come home. Please come back. Let the stars guide your way, let the Gods give you the fight to survive.”

  “Your brother has still not returned?” a dark, hoarse voice said.

  Masika’s eyes flickered open and she glanced in the speaker’s direction. Her knuckles bared white on her beads with anger. Dia, the Chieftain’s son, stood in all his silver: dual swords, necklaces and piercings, along with some thick pieces of armour. His dark eyes were beady, just like his father’s, and his nose looked like a greasy hook.

  “He will, Dia. He is strong,” Masika calmly responded. She placed her hands together on her knees and sat up straight, staring ahead at the wooden gates.

  “I don’t know why you would want him to return.” Dia eyed the small hut behind her with a look of disgust. “You could become a Chieftess and have my children. Surely you would want your kin to grow up in something better than this?”

  Masika stood up and glanced back at the hut her brother had built. It was less impressive than the others in the tribe but he had told her it was for their safety. They wouldn’t stay here forever, he said. She smiled with pride on her face as she turned back to Dia. “No. I will join my brother by soul and I shall bear his children and his alone. If it’s in this hut, so be it. That will be how it shall be.”

  Dia gave her a smirk and flicked away a crumbled leaf from his chest. “And what if he doesn’t return?”

  “Then I shall die before I become yours.” Masika swiftly made her way inside the hut and locked the door.

  She would not let him see her weak. If the worst was to happen, she still held onto her pride. Dia and his family had treated her like the dirt beneath their boots for so long, she never wanted anything to do with them.

  Masika sat on the pile of gathered straw and gazed at the empty space opposite. It was down to the laws she couldn’t join her brother in soul. They would not share a bed until he had become a man to provide. It was the same for every tribe member. Every family joined their brothers or sisters to keep the blood thick and strong. If a child was born with deformities, they would be thrown out into the jungle to feed the predators and the siblings would try once more. It was a rarity to have children with someone who you weren’t directly related to, but it did happen. If a family didn’t have both sexes of child, they were granted permission to bring in someone else. The same went for the Chieftain’s family. He could bind to any woman he wanted and had chosen Masika and her mother because of the history in the maternal line of being fruitful women who would carry strong sons, as well as their attractive looks.

  Masika had the gift of appeal passed to her. Her eyes were cat-like in shape and shone copper brown in the moonlight. Her heart-shaped face made many a male call out to her as she walked down the path with her wide hips and narrow waist. With a straight nose and bowed lips, she had grown sick of the taunts and offers that would come to her.

  Every male born within her family had been an incredibly fierce warrior, born with the same midnight locks, slim, with strong and masculine jaws, strong, straight noses and the magnetic aura of a true fighter. Before the fire, Masika’s mother owned miniature statues of their most historic ancestors. It was one of the greatest gifts a worker of the tribe could ever receive. Masika’s favourite was one named Nuru, a long-haired male with two shivs for weapons. He had a feminine look about him and at first she thought he was a girl. One day Masika became curious enough to ask her mother about her new “doll”.

  Her mother smiled at her sweetly and brushed her wavy midnight curls to her hips before lying beside her younger sister to tell the story. She told them how Nuru was part of an old war for nearby land. Raiders came in the night and killed most of the Blood-and-Shadow’s men while they slept. Nuru, though, with his quick reactions, managed to wake up. He roused the rest of his tribe with a simple throat call. The armies fought for four nights and took their enemies’ weapons as trophies. By the end of the battle, Nuru had the most.

  Masika d
idn’t have many memories of her mother and even fewer of her father. The ones she did have were all the kind to make her feel warm inside. Remembering what it was like to sit on her father’s knee while he tried to teach her about animals, or her mother grooming the locks of her and her sisters. Hardly anything made her feel like that anymore. Her brother was the only one who made her feel the same safety.

  After he had trained and hunted during the day, he would tell her of his latest plans for escaping the place. Each time he went out, he would scour the walls for a new route, but it was near impossible. Few had ever done so and survived. The only ones who could leave where those who were bound to other tribes, either through the Chieftain’s say so or to honour past pacts. But there was no way Masika or her brother could get out like that. The only way for them would be to run.

  As her eyes drew to the pile of clothing on the floor, she found her thoughts begin to wander. What if he had taken the opportunity to run away? She couldn’t blame him if he had; she would be tempted too if she had the chance. But surely he wouldn’t have left her here? Even with freedom in sight, he wouldn’t leave her to become Dia’s.

  Masika whispered a couple more prayers under her breath while clinging onto her brother’s rags. She was near the point of begging the Gods to help him. Even to the point of contemplating a human sacrifice of some kind. The witch doctor would surely know of another blessing she could perform.

  Inari was an old man, full of stories of fables and myths. No one knew much about him. The day he arrived, he was wearing deep purple robes and a wooden mask adorned with feathers. The face he’d painted on it was blue-eyed and had a huge crimson toothy grin. The Chief would have killed him on the spot if he hadn’t been short on healers at the time.

  Masika stretched across the straw and pulled over the striped animal blanket. Closing her eyes, she prayed to the Gods once more to respond for her pleas.

  “Please bring my brother home.”

  - CHAPTER TWO -

  When the Chief called him up to the hut, he knew it was time for his trial. Masika was cooking over the stove when the warriors arrived. How he despised the warriors. Each one wore a spiked helmet with a bulky scarf below the eyes and two miniature curved horns decorating either side. The shoulders were studded with teeth from different animals to create the illusion of an open jaw. Overall, their appearance was intended to intimidate the workers and all those they deemed below them.

  The day he was born, his father had called him Zaki. This was going to be his name growing into adulthood but the Chieftain had stripped him of it. He said that he was never to use a name that represented an animal as strong and fierce as a lion. He would never be worthy of it. So until his naming ceremony came, he had only ever been known as “Brother”, with only Inari and his sister using his given name.

  The day the warriors finally escorted him to the Chieftain’s hut, relief came over him. He would probably never see the day that he would earn his actual name but at least when he returned he would be eligible. Maybe if a guest Chief visited the tribe, he could win it that way.

  The pair which came for him kept quiet on the dry path up the hill. Zaki was already seething inside as they walked. There was a woman chained to her mate, being dragged across the ground. She was pretty and young but was covered in bruises and cuts. From the looks of it, they had been at the hand of the brawny mate. He could see the emptiness in her eyes; she didn’t want to live another day of this life.

  As they passed the winding alleys formed between the huts, he saw the men and women of the tribe publicly mating all over. This was extremely common amongst them, but when guest Chiefs arrived, they would be ordered to stop or be killed by drowning. This death was the worst punishment to receive. The person who had committed the crime wouldn’t get a swift demise with one dip of his head. The warriors would prolong it for days or sometimes weeks on end until the person was begging to be released to the spirit world.

  As they approached the large hut, the guards patted him down for weapons before leading him inside. The hut was one of the oldest structures within the village. It was said to be the biggest of all the tribes in the region. The most unusual part of it were the broken stairs leading out from the back to smaller homes dotted around as if in a higher class of community in itself. This was where the richest lived and served. It was completely secure, surrounded by metal fences made from scrap they had found in the jungle and by warriors with spears at the ready.

  Zaki was nodded into the building and checked once more for weapons. The heat blasted through the halls from the fires within. The moment he felt the humidity on his skin, the panic hit. His mouth had gone dry. The burning hut came to his mind in a flash. Luckily, the sounds of the women in the rooms soon distracted him before it took over. It was known that the four sisters of Dia slept with whoever they wished. If anyone else did so, of course it would be worthy of death.

  The walls were covered in animal bones, skins and different types of pointed and blunt weapons. Each was stretched out onto a hide and pinned for all to see, whether they be known enemies or allies. Either way, the effect was clear: this was not a tribe to mess with, or so they would have their visitors believe.

  Right at the centre of the hall - or the ‘trokhosi room’ as it was known - was the Chieftain’s pride and joy: the trokhosi seat. Any male who sat on it would appear crowded and lost within the skeleton. The bones had stained a little yellow over the years but it still stood as strong as the day it was created. It was styled to appear as if the “ribs” of the chair were closing around the occupant, ribs covered in black squiggles and lines, numerous glyphs of those who’d made it. Over the years, various witch doctors, elders and teachers had attempted to decipher their origins but never came to a conclusion. Along with the bones, there were also various patchworks made from different fabrics, each square bearing the depiction of the Chieftain of the period. So far, there were twenty-nine different Chiefs, all standing proudly with their sons.

  There, right in the centre of the cushioned seat, was the Chieftain, Jasari. The beady eyes that ran through his lineage was strong; his glance was that of a slimy reptile, slithering through the grasses. Even his sister-mate had the exact same look. She was the first in history to have been born blind but not thrown out into the wilds to feed the cats. Both of them had the same stocky build but no muscles. Their flesh was plumped out and stretched by nothing but pure gluttony. Their hair was styled the same as well, frizzy black curls down to their shoulders, his sister having a dull silver flower clipped at the top of her unusually large head.

  Zaki couldn’t keep the smirk off his face when he was led before the pair. There was a certain type of irony in seeing them both looking as hideous as they did. Their tribe was known for its physical perfection, both as warriors and for child-bearing. If someone was deemed ugly by one of those in power, they would be killed.

  The relief was the presence of the jingling beads within the wooden rattles of the witch doctor, Inari. He was lost behind his painted mask and the sweet smell of the incense sticks in a clouded circle around him while he hummed his prayers and chanted his blessings.

  “Brother,” Jasari said as he approached.

  The two warriors standing beside Zaki urged him to the front while they stepped aside, albeit only slightly so their presence would still be known. He took reluctant steps forward and quickly spun when he heard the steel weapons clash behind him. The ringing echoed in his head, but all they were doing was standing in line.

  “Chieftain Jasari,” he calmly said and knelt to the ground. Don’t give them any satisfaction, Zaki heard the voice of his father.

  “It appears that you have reached the point in time where you must go out for your trial.”

  “I was more than ready years ago, Chief,” Zaki said behind gritted teeth. He raised his head to meet the beady eyes of the enemy. How he would have loved for one of those bones to rip through his organs and spill his guts on his own floor.

/>   “That was never for you to decide, Brother,” the Chieftain hissed while his lips curved into a horrid grin. “Stand.”

  He pushed himself up from the ground and dusted the dirt from his knees. He stood up straight and confident with his hands behind his back, waiting for the order.

  “You know how this works. You know the hardships you will face out there and the time you have to do it. If you don’t come back before a moon has passed, everything you own will belong to me.”

  “Yes, Chief.” Zaki turned towards Inari in preparation to receive the meagre items given to survive as well as the blindfold he would wear while he was taken out.

  “Brother.” The Chief idly rolled coins depicting animals between his fingers as he eyed the worker before him up and down. “We will escort you momentarily to your place of training… You know we are the ones chosen to guide you.”

  “Yes, Chief?”

  “Your training could be made a lot easier.” The Chief dived down and picked up the ivory cup, taking a swig of the crimson liquid.

  Zaki glared at him in utter disgust as the dribbles of alcohol matted his dark, bushy beard. He knew what was coming, he just couldn’t believe they would stoop to these levels. “The training is what it is. I accept it as that. I don’t want an easy way out.”

  The smirk was near breaking his cheeks as it curled at the corners. “Are you sure? Because… Brother, I can guarantee you that you will earn your name the moment you return. Not only that, but I will grant you more land to build on, to create a home worth living in. After all, your bloodline has been a part of this tribe for generations and has brought us many incredible, naturally-gifted warriors. It would be a shame to see it wiped out.” There was a wicked gleam in his eye, which he shared with his warriors. Zaki even thought he caught him glancing towards a flaming torch nearby.