by Kai Widdeson
THE KING'S TRIBE
Kai Widdeson
Copyright © 2020 Kai Widdeson
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
For my parents, without whom I may have never found the creativity, passion, and perseverance needed to make this dream a reality
PROLOGUE
As the breeze gently rolled through the patchwork house bringing with it the first rays of dawn, the room was softly illuminated for the groggy and still sleep encrusted eyes of the day’s first victim. Silently rising from both his slumber and ever-inviting sheets so as not to wake his still dormant wife and child, the fogginess of the man’s mind rapidly cleared, a result of a brain well used to such early hours. Stepping onto the rough cold floor strewn with odd twigs, leaves, and hairs of straw, the man headed for his equipment.
With rough aged fabric against his toughened sun-beaten skin, the man looked down on his sleeping treasures. His beautiful wife, auburn hair draped over the decrepit feather pillows, had her arms wrapped protectively around their son as they shared their heat through the last of the night’s chills. This had been the boy’s ninth winter, he was still small for his age, but this did not concern the man, he had been the same. The boy lay on his side, rapid short breaths escaping from beneath the arms of his mother’s cradle. From here his son appeared both normal and at peace, his unfortunate deformity hidden against the safety of the fabric.
A large mark stretches from his left temple down to his jaw. Birthmarks of this scale were previously unseen in Avlym’s small and superstitious community. Whispers of the boy being possessed by local spirits of the forest or similar evil deities had not taken long to spread throughout the village, a plague as far as the man had been concerned. When born, some had even gone as far as suggesting leaving the babe to die in the surrounding forest, a mercy for the infant they had claimed. Fortunately, the man’s powerful standing in the community had quickly asserted itself and put an end to such nonsense. No son of his would be left to die as a result of the mad ravings of old crones.
Leaving his wife and child to their slumber, he reached for his hunting spear and exited through the creaking rotten door and into the morning light.
The soft squelch of well-worn leather in light mud punctured the silence of the still sleeping village as he made his way past the rows of huts. It had been a rough winter with barely enough supplies to pull them through. Thankfully, protecting his son was getting easier with each passing year. It was not uncommon for the young to fall prey to desperate wolves. Even if a child was kept in the safest of homes, there was little to guarantee that it would not fall victim to the harsh winters that froze the land and stifled the daylight. With each spring that came, the man could breathe a little easier. Whilst the food stores were now empty and wood stacks depleted, the nights were once more beginning to shorten, and the wind was losing its bite. The intensity of the waking sun was already beginning to revive the man’s village and the surrounding forest, thawing the ground and birthing new buds into the tree bark.
Continuing his slow trudge, a wave caught the corner of his eye: the baker opening for the day. He was a pudgy man with a tremendously dry sense of humour, but he was pleasant enough. His wife however, was another matter. She had been one of the main advocates for his son’s dismissal from the village. She slept in and avoided the man’s family wherever possible, her nose always wrinkled from the stench of distrust. This was of course fine enough with the man, she always seemed to have a sharp tongue and an angry mind and any break from her company was always welcome. Unfortunately, the size of Avlym made it extremely challenging to avoid such people, the close-knit community certainly had its perks but also its harsh and superstitious irritations. The man returned the baker’s morning salute and continued onwards.
He strolled past the still faintly smouldering ashes of the previous night’s festivities, the coming of green and melting of snow had brought about a long and well-deserved evening of celebrations. The majority of what remained of the food stores had disappeared, washed down with the last of the hoarded ale beside the gentle crackling of a large hearth. It had certainly been a night to remember.
In the distance Krista could also be spotted on her morning routine, casually gathering the weekly supplies for Ida the village elder, a slightly batty old lady but nevertheless one that should never be underestimated. Ida was fantastically cunning and quick-witted for her age, if not for her apparently random and nonsensical babbling she would surely be the leader and at the forefront of their small community. Regardless, she was a strong advisor who commanded a lot of respect. Everyone knew not to go against Ida unless wanting of the full wrath of Avlym.
Finally, the man passed the last of the houses, or what remained of it at least. The ruin had been the home of one of Avlym’s leaders decades ago, back in the time of unrest and rebellion. The man had been told countless stories of those times by his late grandparents, but their telling had been forbidden except by dim candlelight in hushed tones.
It had been an age of warriors; the man’s grandparents had told him. Fierce men and women who had been unafraid to fight for a better life. The colony had not been so established back then and it had barely been a decade since their ships had arrived on the shores. They had come in numbers, a never-ending tide of worn travellers ready to claim this new land. They brought everything with them, food, weapons, materials for building, even a religion which would later be forced upon the man’s ancestors.
Supposedly, they had been kind at first. Small groups of them would be sent into each village bearing gifts and warm greetings for the village leaders of the time. Their peaceful words hadn’t lasted long. The colony had been biding their time, gaining the people’s trust whilst they infiltrated their communities. On the night of their betrayal, the colony had kicked down the leaders’ doors and silenced the very people who had welcomed them into their homes. By dawn, a new force had established itself as the rulers of the land.
Supplies were stolen, families were torn apart, and a once proud people were forced into submission. The colony had profited from their cruelty and built a home of their own using the villages’ labour. They had begun requesting regular supplies, forcing the villages to work for their people even once their new home had been built. The colony claimed that they were being merciful and what is more, that they were giving the man’s ancestors a new purpose in this life.
But whilst other villagers had knelt, the people of Avlym had refused the demands of the colony and the Avlym rebels would later meet the colony on the battlefield. Of course, everyone knew what had happened next, generations had passed, and the village was still paying for their ancestors’ actions to this day.
The might of the colony had prevailed. Names of Avlym’s champions were still passed around the campfire, disguised in children’s tales to not catch the colony’s ear. Arthur, one of the men in the village, always took the time to join Ida with the quiet storytelling to the children in the long winter nights. He made sure to keep the elder from forgetting any of the champions’ magnificence, with her stories from her time as a maiden and his as a small boy, they gifted the rest of the villagers with such impressive and rich memories that they would feel as if they had all been there themselves. The children would stare wide-eyed at the recounts of the feats of their ancestors, their might,
their ferocity, their greatness, always hungry for more.
But then they would quieten, and Ida and Arthur would tell of the final battle. Ida would get carried away and would have to be hushed before she could reveal all the true horrors of the war to such young ears. There was one description which she would always include however, the image of the demon that was still very much alive today.
King Breyden had been at the battle, not as a king then, only a young prince barely trained in combat. Surrounded by their personal guard, him and his father had waited on horseback as the carnage unfolded before them. There had been no need for them to fight themselves, they had their men to do that for them. Instead, they would talk softly among themselves before giving another command to a fresh group of soldiers at their disposal.
Ida described Breyden’s cruel face with his wholly black eyes which reflected only the murder before him. The only difference between Breyden and his father had been time and the crown resting on the king’s brow. Ida talks of how the pair of them would calmly discuss tactics, the king consulting his son as if the conflict was a teaching opportunity. Despite the man’s ancestors and their strength and bravery, their defiance had become a game for the young royal, an experiment to put taught strategy into practice. Ida would describe the sadistic pleasure that would radiate from Breyden as he watched his men trap and surround clusters of Avlym’s fighters and bring about their execution.
Throughout this, Ida had been peering out of one of the windows, huddling with the children away from the bloodshed. She had been armed, and the man had no doubt that when younger she would have been ferocious.
Avlym had fought well, and they had been closer to victory than they had had any right to be, but eventually they had been overwhelmed by numbers and better strategy. Many had died, and those who had been left had been poorer and more starved than they had ever known. The man had grown up in poverty even by current standards, his parents had barely known a full meal before their passing years after the rebellion.
Sickness had torn through the village as ferociously as any beast, and, try as much as the village healers did, there could be no helping the man’s parents or any of the others that fell victim to the illness. The whole village had been in a state of emergency, forced to bury their loved ones far out into the forest from fear that the plague still lived within them.
Avlym hadn’t been allowed to prosper for the best part of the last hundred years. Despite everything that the man and Avlym were going through, the cold nights, the homes falling into disrepair, the constant threats of starvation and the colony, Avlym was still seeing the best days it had in a long time. It had been a long recovery, and there was still much to be done, but Avlym was finally beginning to improve, not to a point where life would ever be comfortable, but perhaps to a point where it might be possible to enjoy living.
The hunters were already assembled waiting for the man on the edge of the deep forest surrounding Avlym. A miracle really considering Manuel’s infamous laziness. Sure enough, he was on his back balanced on a felled tree with his eyes closed, his muscular arms crossed against a bare chest, but the mere fact that nobody needed to be sent for him was in itself an impressive feat. Perhaps this would be a new year after all. Manuel was something of a gentle giant, a man possessing impressive stature and yet he handled his prey with such care and humanity as he put it out of its misery that you would have thought him a pacifist, had it not been he who had thrown the spear in the first place.
A drastically contrasting figure casually leaned above the slumbering behemoth, his slender frame barely casting a shadow over Manuel’s eyes. Devin was by far the most experienced trapper of the group, ingenious with his snares which could always be relied upon to turn in a considerable portion of a day’s haul. Thin long hair draped sharp features and sharper eyes with the glint of eagerness behind them. Whilst it was normally the larger kills that made any feast, Devin’s never-ending haul was largely responsible each year for allowing the village to survive another winter.
Then there was the man’s brother, not by blood but in all other senses of the word, Randall was his family. Inseparable from the man’s side since he had aided him in a particularly scrappy fight at a young age, the pair complemented each other well, Randall’s temperament and troublesome nature countered by the cool logic of the man, yet there was no denying who the better fighter was. The best way the man could describe his brother’s nature was that he was a tavern brawl waiting to happen. On far too many occasions, before Randall had established his reputation as a fighter, the pair of them would be relaxing with a drink before some offensive nonchalant comment would roll off his tongue, antagonising the largest guy within earshot.
Whilst the village normally got by fine with all residents reasonably well fed, there was no denying that Avlym’s structures were falling into a state of disrepair. Their urgent cry for replacement and refurbishment along with the ever-present shadow of the annual quota for the colony meant that this promised to be a busy year. Therefore, the duty of at least part of the supplies had fallen to the motley crew in front of him.
Kicking Manuel roughly in the side to reintroduce his comrade to the living world, knowing full well that anything less would hardly bother him, weapons were gathered and the crew set off into the dark undergrowth.
First, they went through the usual routine of checking the catch from Devin’s creations, resulting in a fair yield of a basket of small fish and several snared rabbits. Momentary excitement led to brutal disappointment as a trail of hog tracks were lost in the grassland. The sun was high above them before the hunters had proper reason for pause, deer prints they had been tracking for the last few hours had finally yielded a result.
She was magnificent, head bent low with bright speckles around her eyes and trailing down her smooth lean hide. The men’s muscles were tense whilst perfectly still, breathing controlled and shallow, and yet still she perked up, wide eyes roaming until they locked onto the group.
A standoff. Neither party made a move, she would surely comprise the main feast of the evening, a potentially glorious catch. The man’s fingers itched, wrapping around the smooth neck of the spear, ready, his entire body poised in an all too familiar position. The whole group tense with anticipation, waiting for Randall to make his first move.
And then she bolted.
Lightning quick, she disappeared into the shrubbery, the team gave chase, hoping to get a clear shot in before their prey was gone for good. The man leapt nimbly over fallen branches and rocks, ducking under low hanging branches and barrelling through anything else standing between himself and the evening meal.
Deeper into the depths of the forest they ran, the rest of the team, notably slower than the man, were far behind with no hope of aiding him in the chase. If he could just hold on for a little longer, he knew they would emerge into a clearing eventually where he might be able to get a shot in.
Unable to keep up, the deer had long since disappeared from sight and the forest thickened as the man’s pursuit continued now relying on tracks, broken twigs, and finely tuned predatory instincts. Experience and the senses can only get a hunter so far though. Resigned, the man slowed and prepared to acknowledge his defeat. As he halted, the cacophony of the forest invaded his senses. It would be impossible to distinguish the sounds of his fleeing victim and besides, he was sure they had strayed from the clearing he knew of so it would likely just be further lost in the trees.
Then a puncture in the rhythm, a foreign cry, wild and animalistic.
And the man flew.
As he forced heavy eyelids open, colour seemed to slowly fade back into the world. His back lay crumpled against rough bark, some way back from where he had stood moments earlier. His shoulder ached dully and he had landed on his leg poorly, his ankle twisted abnormally. He glanced down to assess the damage, and then mercifully passed back into oblivion.
They found the man sometime later, bloodstained and slumped up against a tree, impa
led by a spearhead with the shaft protruding out from below his collarbone. As he was carefully draped over a broad-shouldered giant, Randall and Devin scanned the area for his attacker. Later the men would swear that the shadowy depths of the forest had warped and twisted before their very eyes.
Living almost.
CHAPTER ONE
“Dale!”
I grunt.
“DALE!”
Sighing I swing my legs of the bed and head into the main room towards mother’s exasperated pleas. The sight that greets me is by no means an unfamiliar one. My sister Alice, barely six winters old, is once again scattering food all over the floor in a frenzy, tiny fists balled and her pudgy face an angry purple.
“I don’t want them!” she screams
“Can you make a trip to the well please?” says my mother, it isn’t a request. Grudgingly I wipe the sleep from my eyes, dress, and embrace the morning breeze, leaving the war zone behind me.
The sun temporarily blinding me, Avlym eventually comes into focus, already bustling with morning activity. Silence is filled by the rustling of leaves and the tips of the distant surrounding trees sway ever so slightly.
I have barely moved down the well-worn track when I am greeted by a slowly shambling hunched figure. The individual grins at me, an effort comprising of only a couple of remaining defiant teeth.
“Morning Ida,” I force myself to return her smile.
“Age is a very high price to pay for maturity,” the elder exclaims, and then continued on her way, resuming her incoherent muttering, a familiar sound to all in the village. She is a brilliant lady and I can’t begin to fathom the amount of knowledge that must be in that head of hers, though if anyone will ever decipher her seemingly random gabble I haven’t the faintest idea. Either way, there is a distinct possibility that she will outlive the lot of us, perhaps future generations will stand a chance.
