Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8

by Jacob Falling

  “On the third day of the ceremonials, those Hunters who were so guided by their ancestors would take part in the final ceremonial of the Sun Dance.”

  Preinon hesitated a moment. “Each of them would take two long lengths of cured gut, and tie each to the tree on one end, and to a pair of eagle claws on the other. During the height of the dancing, the Hunters pierced their breast with each claw, threading it under their skin and muscle and then out again.

  “They would dance like this, unclothed, attached by their very flesh to the Black Tree, with their full weight upon these cords, but they would not feel pain.

  “Their ancestors protected them — all those who had known great pain, who in ancient times had themselves been hung from the trees by the first Somanan armies who had invaded their lands.”

  Preinon stopped for a moment to gauge her reaction.

  Adria had already seen enough of the Aesidhe rituals to understand the intensity of their experiences. She had sung among them within the sweat lodge, prayed for healing for a badly wounded boy, and had become a woman under Shísha’s guidance. She had more than once seen Aesidhe Hunters with scars from wounds which might have killed another person.

  Nevertheless, she was a little shocked by the image of Sun Dancers Preinon had painted for her. She glanced around the fire circle quickly to see everyone still silent, heads bowed or eyes looking deeply into the fire or the stars.

  “Why do you tell me of this?” she asked.

  “I think you can see why, Lózha,” Preinon answered. “This was when the Knights of Darkfire truly began their war on the People.”

  Adria nodded and swallowed stiffly, looking back to her uncle.

  He continued, “Taber and the king knew that Fire Heart had convinced many of the northern tribes to hold the rite, and that he would be among them. She knew also that weapons were forbidden at the Sun Dance. Because their ancestors protected the Sun Dancers, they bound and buried their weapons in the earth near the site.

  “The true Hunter lives by his will, not by his weapon,” he said in Aesidhe. “Even those who did not take part in the final rite followed this tradition.”

  He paced himself now, and Adria braced herself for the culmination of the story, fearing already its likely outcome.

  “Few survived,” Preinon continued. “It was a Holy Place, not a place for battle — not a place that could easily be fled or defended. The Knights advanced upon both paths, from the east and the west, and others manned boats. Some of the People made it to the water. Others tried to climb the steep grade around, but nearly all were brought down with arrows. The Knights were... indiscriminate. Women... children... they filled the water at the shore’s edge, littered the stones beneath the cliffs.

  “The Hunters fought as they could — with fists or with stones, against spears, arrows, and swords... against mail and shield. Even the Sun Dancers fought, most still attached to the Black Tree itself. They fell, but not easily. Without a blade or arrow among them, but protected by their ancestors, they took as many lives as they lost.

  “Finally, only Fire Heart remained, and the…” he shook his head, hesitated again. “The king himself claimed the final battle as his own. Fire Heart appealed to the Knights for a weapon, with which to stand against... Ebenhardt... as an equal warrior. But he was refused. These were Aesidhe, after all. They were not human, he said. They lived as animals among the animals. One... need not give a weapon to a hunted animal, he said. It was not natural.

  “And still, Fire Heart fought, with bare hands against the blade of the king. He tore the lengths of gut from the tree. He trailed them as he battled, as his limbs bloodied themselves upon the... reddening sword of Idonea. And still it was not a quick defeat, for Fire Heart would not fall, would not yield.

  “At last, when his arms were no longer recognizable as such, and he had lost any strength to move, and when he could no longer see for the blood in his eyes, when he breathed his own blood... only then did he fail, pinned to the tree itself with the king’s blade.

  “Some say it took an hour, even then, for him to die. Some say his eyes would not close, his breath would not still — that your father could not back away, that the blade would not come free until the last of Fire Heart’s blood had stilled in its course.”

  Long, long silence. Preinon’s eyes were closed now, and Adria’s full of tears, full of hazy imaginings of such a past, of a father she had never really known, and no longer wished to.

  I played in my tower, no doubt, Adria thought. Just learning to speak in sentences, while my father led a massacre.

  A shadow crossed the firelight as a Runner rose to tend the fire, still silent. Sparks flew into the air above his head and vanished beneath the needle hole canopy.

  The spirits of flame once more seek their home in the stars, Adria thought. Then the Runner moved aside, and light again brought her uncle into focus — and her bow, before them, which she had half forgotten.

  “When Taber gave me the bow, she told me... she told me that my father had gathered the wood and the… and the bone himself,” Adria’s eyes were full of tears. “She spoke the truth.”

  Preinon nodded once, slowly. “Yes. She spoke truth.”

  “My father slew Fire Heart, the hero of the People,” she nodded, trying to steady her breath, to measure her thoughts. “And then he destroyed this... Holy tree.”

  “He did this.” He took her shoulder in his hand to steady her.

  “And... they all know this...” Adria stammered, waving her hand towards the silent circle of Runners.

  “We all know this, yes,” he corrected her. The word “they” could not be used to refer to one’s family.

  “You told them this story?”

  Preinon shook his head. “No. The story comes from the few women and children who survived. I was not there, or I would now be dead. There is little that happens to the Aesidhe of Heiland of which we are unaware. And... as you have learned, the wood of your bow is unmistakable to anyone who knows this story.”

  “I thought it a gift...” her tears trickled, and she felt a little sick, and even more foolish, for her pride in archery, and for her words to the others after the pheasant hunt. She touched the bow before her carefully now. She had loved it. Even though it had been given by Taber, in her heart it had come from her father. Her voice broke.

  “It is not a gift, but a curse... a cruel joke.” Now she looked back to the fire, angry that no one would meet her gaze, not even Mateko. “Do they… do the People hate me for this?”

  “No,” he shook his head simply.

  Adria was shaking her head also, but he stilled it with his hands, and leaned to press his lips to her coiled hair, before whispering, “You will understand in time. You cannot learn the ways of the People in so short a time, despite your quick knowledge of their language, their skills.”

  “I will not have this,” Adria whispered, her heart pounding.

  With one swift motion, she swept up the bow, rose, and turned away from her uncle. She crossed the circle of Runners, stopped just where the heat became too intense and its smoke made her eyes tear the more.

  For once, the Aesidhe words came easily to her tongue... she cried out, “I am not a murderer. I am not my father’s child. I am a Hunter of the People and mine is a heart filled with fire...”

  And Adria threw the bow into the flames.

  Many among them stood, and some turned away. As her eyes rose a little from the flames, she saw Mateko on the other side, still seated, watching the bow calmly. Then his eyes rose finally to meet hers.

  They held for a moment as she blinked away more tears, as she took a step backward to lessen the heat. Then he nodded for her to look back into the fire. And she watched, and Mateko watched, and many of the others began to murmur or whisper, to rise to their feet.

  Before long, all the Runners were gathered ab
out the flames, watching the bow of black and bone that would not burn.

  Beside her and a little behind, Preinon now stood, and he placed his hand on her shoulder again, but said nothing. She realized only then that she trembled.

  Finally, Mateko rose to his feet, and he came halfway around the fire. He took up a skin of water and douses his gloved hand, then reached among the flames to pull the bow free once again. He held it carefully in his steaming hand, and with the bare fingers of the other, touched the wood carefully, quickly, and then with more assurance.

  He held the bow in his bare palms now, and turned to stand before Adria, offering the bow, his eyes filled with tears and wide with wonder.

  Adria hesitated. Beside her, Preinon found his voice, though it was rough, with sadness, with awe, with... something Adria had not quite heard before.

  “Take it, Lózha. You cannot refuse.” And then he slipped into Aesidhe. “Put it away again, for as long as you feel you should. But... never make a promise without understanding its depth.”

  Her eyes held Mateko’s as she reached out and took hold of the grip. She could see the tears in his eyes, but could not understand their meaning...

  “You survived,” she whispered.

  Mateko still found no words. They watched each other for a moment, hands still upon the bow, before she took the weight from his hands and turned back to her tent.

  The was no more music or words before sleep. Only darkness and the sound of fire.

  Finally, Adria’s patience was rewarded. A stag elk bugled from the rise in the thicket above the little valley, and then herded his courtiers — or at least, that was how Adria thought of them — down to the water.

  It was a good spot, perhaps two dozen yards from where Adria was perched in one of the trees she and Mateko had been trading off for days. Still, patient, but ready to let fly, Adria knew this to be the penultimate moment of the lesson which had begun with the making of her first bow.

  She raised her bow and reached for an arrow slowly, carefully, as she watched the elk prince and his court of cows test the air for danger.

  “Know that the arrow will follow the path of your eye. As soon as the shaft is loosed, look to your next target, for the last is already dead.”

  She, Mateko, and the other Runners and Hunters had scouted the area for signs, weeks before, then left it to calm. Now Adria well recognized the path of a herd, the prints of their hooves, their spoor, the marks on trees where they had shrugged off their winter fur the spring before, bit by bit. She had seen the shed antlers of the stag and heard its bugle from afar.

  The rest was patience, waiting.

  She had grown accustomed to leaving camp hours before dawn, and she often stayed out until the sun began to dip before heading back.

  Adria knew to move from tree to tree when the fickle wind changed, or to keep her scent fresh. She was used to the dampness of rain or snow, the cold that numbed then burned. She knew how to keep her limbs moving, no matter their reluctance.

  She knew how to gut and skin, how to bag and tie the meat well up out of the reach of bears. She even knew how the leather was cured, how the tendons were stripped into gut, and had once watched as a carver formed a length of bone into a flute.

  She had learned to play a little herself, and had even made her own song she called Elk Dance.

  Still, in the flesh, the elk themselves still left her in awe. Their sheer size, the power and presence of the stag, greater even than a grown man, gave her some pause, and she thanked the Spirit Helpers for bringing her the possibility of a first successful solo hunt.

  Adria watched the elk for any signs of wariness, though the wind felt good. The cows seemed intent on the fresh water of the creek, but the stag was watchful, and waited as his courtiers took their fill.

  His eyes were as good as his nose, she knew, and he towered over the others. He would notice almost any significant movement she made — she was certainly no Runner yet.

  Slowly, without looking away from her prey, Adria readied the arrow and raised her bow. Once she fired the first, she felt certain she could manage two or three more as he bolted, as long as he did not turn just the wrong way. One arrow would very likely not be enough.

  But he wasn’t in her range yet. She could probably hit him, but maybe not well enough. She had improved a good deal, and felt confident she could make nine out of ten shots at about twenty yards. It was a discipline the Hunters maintained, and it had proved itself.

  Just four more steps, she urged the stag silently, and prayed that the wind would not change.

  And then he startled, and turned his head, but not in Adria’s direction. He bugled again, and turned, and ran with a speed which surprised Adria, cows following in his wake.

  How can a Hunter have made it already? Adria sighed, drawing her bow to its length for distance, but holding until she knew what was happening.

  Preinon and Mateko were themselves perched a good distance to either side of her, within listening distance of a bugle or a loud cry, but they would not have been so clumsily, to warn the elk so.

  And she now heard the sounds of passage — far too loud for any Aesidhe, and in a moment a man broke the tree line to her right, opposite the water from where the elk had stood.

  He was Aeman, and obviously no hunter. He stopped and watched the last of them leave, but he did not pull his bow from its carrier on his back. Instead, he knelt down beside the water, took a water skin from his sword belt, and filled it, stopping twice to take a long draw as his eyes only then scanned the creek bed to either side.

  He bore no markings, and his weapons were of typical Aeman design, but nonetheless well-made, if Adria’s eyes could be trusted at such distance. But she was far from any Aeman settlement of which she was aware — the only thing within even a day’s walking distance was a small fort the Knights of Darkfire had built over the summer.

  But why would one of them venture out this far in this season, and not in force? Adria wondered, and then considered, with growing alarm. Perhaps they are in force.

  She watched him, her arrow still strung. But surely we would know by now. The Runners would have been aware, and Preinon would surely not have let me hunt in the path of a contingent of Knights...

  The man rose again, affixing the stopper to his water skin, and adjusted his belt and the small pack on his back between his bow and quiver. He looked about once more, but with little real interest — certainly, he did not look up.

  He’s not looking for anything, or at least not expecting it here, she thought. His pack is small and he is not hunting. He has a well-stocked camp nearby.

  When he turned back on his path, Adria looked to either side of her, hoping to see some sign of Mateko or Preinon approaching.

  They wait for my signal that I’ve made a kill, or perhaps they follow the bugle of the stag. But she could not risk making any kind of sound that would be loud enough for them to hear. Even if the man did mistake her call for the cry of a bird, his eyes would likely search for it, and though she was somewhat hidden among the fir branches, she was by no means invisible.

  Adria sighed, gave a silent prayer to the Spirit Helpers, and descended her perch carefully.

  She followed him in parallel. At first, she did not plan to go far — partially out of caution, and partially because she knew he could not have traveled far himself, but nonetheless she hesitated. It was unwise for her to leave the area without anyone knowing.

  The man’s trail could easily be found and followed later, by any of the Hunters, so Adria allowed herself a few minutes’ pursuit, on the chance that there was some particularly immediate danger.

  Is this a scout? Adria wondered. He does not even bother to conceal his passage. Even I could trace his path later.

  She followed just at his blind point, the space he most often ignored — not directly behind, but behind and to
his right, where his eyes never long strayed.

  Even should he grow wariness or good sense, his eyes would not be as keen as any elk. There was plenty of ground cover. Should Adria still herself, he would likely find her invisible. She kept her bow ready but undrawn, and made enough of a path for any Runner to find and follow quickly, but with little risk that one such as her quarry could easily trace.

  She had learned much from Mateko in recent months. Though not a Runner herself, of course, he had taught her more and more of their skills — those he was particularly adept at — and she was now rather thankful.

  Adria’s confidence and curiosity overwhelmed her caution, and she continued her pursuit after the point she knew she should probably turn back.

  If it is the Knights, surely they have better scouts than this... but then... why should they even bother? She realized. Why should they even care if they are discovered, when the People retreat at every sign of advance? They want the land foremost. And if we simply abandon it, then they might as well march with flag and bugle.

  Unless... She considered after a few more steps. Unless they know of our growing resistance, of Preinon’s new army...

  Now, her imagination began to carry her onward, and then there was a sound of some sort, louder than the man’s passage. As the stag had before, the man startled and turned his head, but he could not seem to find the source of the sound.

  It gave Adria hesitation, as well. It was something large, for certain. A bear? More elk? she wondered. Or another clumsy man? The man picked up his pace, then, and Adria found herself rushed to follow him and yet stay reasonably quiet, to not leave a too obvious path.

  I’m not ready for this, she thought, but even then did not turn back. There was another noise — chopping wood? — and the man moved even faster, his hand on the hilt of his sword to steady it. She could see him from the corner of her eyes as she picked her way quickly through the brush, her eyes now on her own hands and feet.