Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8

by Jacob Falling

  Adria laughed. “Well, still… let’s pretend it was all for us.”

  What Does Not Bend

  Patience and action each have their own season, Adria would remember from these first lessons in what makes a Meniste, a Hunter. The drawing of the bow and the flight of the arrow are only the last lesson which begins with the making of both, which begins with the birth of a tree, which begins with a seed on the wind, which begins with the breath from the First Great Mountain.

  Unlike Shísha, Preinon Watelomoksho set her upon the path alone, almost out-of-hand, and she was glad of what small knowledge she had to help her on her way.

  “Do you know the tree the Aeman call the White Ash?” her uncle asked, without even his customary morning greeting, as Adria rubbed the sleep from her eyes and stretched after what felt like far too short a sleep.

  “Yes, I know most of the trees of Heiland,” Adria smiled, pleased with herself, and then hesitated before humbling a little. “Well, I know them from description, mainly, and from the engravings in books.”

  He nodded. “It should serve you enough for this. We call it Atutíshte Chonanikshoku, Grandfather White Leaf. The Yew is truly the best tree for making a bow, S’ámnahakutishte, but Atutíshte is far more common, and will be easier for you to work this first time.”

  He seemed to have finished speaking, and Adria half-turned, then hesitated. “Am... I just to find one, or...”

  Preinon, already having turned away to the morning’s other tasks, looked only halfway back to her, and at first frowned, then sighed and allowed himself a smile. “You wish to be a Hunter, Lózha? Hunt.”

  A good deal later, Adria found herself frowning up at one Grandfather White Leaf. She examined its limbs, looking for one long and straight enough for her own purpose, imagining the shape of a bow outlined upon its surface.

  She looked down at the knife in her hand. It was sharp, no doubt, but hardly strong enough to cut the limb from the great ash before her.

  “Well,” she reasoned. “I have hunted my tree, but for each prey its proper tool. And besides, it’s never been said a hunter must hunt unaided and alone.”

  Preinon had apparently taken absence by the time Adria returned, and Shísha, so with a poor mixture of broken words and hand signs of her own desperate invention, Adria managed to ask one of the camp Hunters for an ax.

  He seemed to question her, and so she re-enacted the finding of a great tree, its cutting down, and finally the making of a bow. Gradually her intentions dawned upon him, and he laughed, nodding, then shook his head and waved his hand.

  “Be… be…” He continued with what seemed a detailed instruction, but when he saw she did not understand, he likewise imitated the actions intended, his hand raised to the height of her nose.

  “Oh…” Adria nodded as she understood. “I must hunt a baby tree… a sapling.”

  He nodded and continued, his hands a few inches apart, pointing solidly down, then up near her nose again, then back at her feet.

  “Ah…” she smiled and again nodded her understanding. “Straight, not bent like a bow. That makes sense.”

  Finally he found her an ax appropriate for the task.

  Adria thanked the Hunter for the ax, asking and receiving his name, and continued her hunt.

  At least I am learning more words, she told herself, wondering if Preinon was somehow timing her in her task.

  She stalked trees haphazardly for an hour before she realized that her book knowledge only applied to adult trees. She found many saplings which might have been her quarry, but whose leaves and bark were too young for her to be certain. Her hands and feet grew numb with the cold that still clung to the deep forest at morning.

  As she turned back to return to camp, again frustrated, she finally thought of what should have seemed obvious — a young tree was far more likely to grow beside an elder tree of the same kind.

  Isn’t there an Aeman saying about that? Adria smiled. I was looking only for adults before, and then only for children. But it is the relationship between them that gives them away.

  She returned to where she had found the first Grandfather, and watched how his limbs stretched against the clouds. She watched the clouds move with the wind, hoping it was a typical wind, and imagined their winged seeds spiraling, following them down with her eyes to where they might have landed, nodding at the upstarts she found thereabouts.

  She whispered, hopefully, “This was all really very amusing, but please make this one the right one, an... Atutíshte Chonanikshoku,” and she took a low swipe with the small ax at the nearest sapling.

  When her uncle nodded at her choice, she was pleased, but admitted her confusion, and explained her solution.

  “Yes,” he smiled. “Each time a Hunter hunts, she must use what she has learned before, but also must learn to hunt anew. Each stream you have crossed before carries new water, each branch new wind. Until your arrow finds its wolf or its elk, you and your quarry learn all you can from one another. Otherwise, what use is life? What purpose death?”

  Adria absorbed this as she turned the wood in her hand. “Still… isn’t it going to be too small?” she frowned, “Or is it just meant for practice?”

  Preinon shook his head. “There’s no such thing as practice for our Hunters. Even a child, with his first bow, can bring home a rabbit.”

  “I was hoping for an elk my first trip out,” she grinned and wrinkled her nose. “Are rabbits all I will hunt?”

  “Perhaps, for now,” he smiled. “But you have become more than a child, and I think you will find that this bow will bring down larger beasts, given the right circumstances.”

  She nodded, and he continued, motioning around the camp. “Look at the others. See what they carry. You still think of your Heiland bow, and not a hunting bow. The Heiland bow is made for war, for soldiers in coats of steel with stout painted shields. But ours are smaller, so that they may be carried lightly, and drawn quickly, even on the run — a Hunter must often chase her prey, especially a new Hunter. It will not turn and face you, and draw its sword and spear.”

  She laughed at his joke. “I understand, Uncle. Now...” and she adopted her serious voice of concentration. “...how do I shape it?”

  He blinked and shook his head. “Not so quickly, for one. You have more trips to make.”

  And she sighed, but resigned herself with a smile and a nod. “Tell me what more I need.”

  He described a small list of tools and materials for her to gather, quests which occupied her for many more hours and taught her several more Aesidhe phrases and signs. There wasn’t much light left when she returned with the large leaves, the knives of several sizes, lengths of sinew from the leg of an elk, and a cupful of sap from a rare tree — most fortunately acquirable within the camp.

  After the evening meal, while others joined in song or dance, and the children took to these or to games among themselves, Preinon helped her to strip the bark and limbs from the young tree, to carve out an arc from one side to make the belly of the bow, and then to cover both ends with the sap and leaves, and finally to tie them off with the cord.

  “Now, while it seasons, the ends will not split.”

  Adria blinked. “How long must it season?”

  “A full turn of the moon,” he nodded. “To be certain.”

  With more of the sinew, they tied the rough bow to a long timber in the Hunters’ lodge of the camp, where Adria could see that others were already tied, on several of the posts which held up the wide tenting. He turned it so it was belly out, and put chips of wood under either end, so it began to take its eventual shape.

  She looked up at her would-be bow among all the others, wondering why she hadn’t noticed these before — she’d visited the lodge more than once. “It seems a long time to wait.”

  He shook his head and looked up at the tied shaft, appraising. “A
Hunter’s life is mostly waiting. If you do not leave it long enough, the wood will be too soft, and will bend too far with the string. It will not last long, and not send its arrow well.”

  Adria nodded.

  Preinon tested the hold of the knot in the cord with his hand. “Check it every day, and make sure it stays tight. If you need help tightening it, find someone strong to help you. There is no shame.”

  The cycle of the moon passed with four faces, with Adria’s anticipation for the hunt, and with growing readiness and uneasiness for the Shema Ihaloa Táya and for the Runners.

  Preinon’s new sense of command remained, and he seemed more driven by purpose than Adria had seen before. When it was clear the Knights intended to move early in the season, Preinon sent the Runners out in small groups to deliver messages to all the main tribes, warning them of the treachery that had happened, and asking them to renew their trust in each other.

  Though Mateko was among those sent afar, Shísha remained to help in the coordination of Preinon’s plan — and to aid Adria in her education when possible. She proved to be an excellent teacher of the language, and Adria was able to learn the rules of its grammar as well as what she gained in absorption. She also learned more of her uncle’s plans from the Lichushegi than from Watelomoksho himself.

  “What is the message my uncle sends to the tribes?” Adria asked Shísha when they had a quiet moment alone.

  The Holy Woman told her the message in Aesidhe, then translated in Aeman, more closely to the Aesidhe than she often had before, “We forget love. We fear each other, and so we fail. We fear our brothers, and so the Others destroy us. They believe we forget one another, and so they believe we trust them instead. Understand they will break this trust. They will break us when they break this trust. And we will never trust again, for none of us will remain to once more find love for our brothers, our People.”

  Soon, it proved both a message of peace and a harbinger of war. While most of the Runners were wandering across the wilds of Heiland, Preinon gathered the Hunters of the nearest Aesidhe camps for his own new counsel.

  It did not appear intentional, certainly not at first, as men with red feathers in their hair and beads to match crossed the river and asked for Watelomoksho by name.

  Wars with His Brother, they speak, Adria remembered. His name and his words are no accident.

  They shared a meal with him, and more who followed, and Preinon gave greater and longer speeches as his following grew, a camp beside the Runners own, at further remove from the tribe below.

  “It is said that a terrible season is coming, a season of the Others.” Shísha translated for Adria when a score of them now sat about the fire after the later meal. “It is said that a season is coming when the People cannot retreat. A season is coming when there will be no forest, but only walls of stone and plains of wheat in rows.

  “A season is coming when there will be men in steel clothing on great horses. A season is coming when they will trample or camps and our children, when they will murder our mothers and our wives with their swords, and slaughter all our prey with their spears. It is said that a season is coming of disease and starvation, of war and death as we have never known before.”

  Some took his message with murmurs of dissent or disbelief, others with motions of anxious desperation and righteous anger. But all listened closely.

  “But I see another season,” Preinon nodded, meeting several pairs of eyes in turn as he paused. “I see a season coming when the Others must be met upon the plain, when their horses must be hobbled and their walls broken and their steel clothing pierced by the spear and arrow and blade and will of the People.

  “I see a season coming when the winds of generations of retreat must turn, when the People must make our stand, fields must be sown again into trees. And I say the season is coming when our wives and our mothers will eat their fill, when our children will grow and play beneath the leaves and swim within all the waters without fear.”

  The Hunters grew more divided with his words, as his tone strengthened, his limbs motioned with great strength, his feet stamped the earth as he paced among them.

  “A season is coming when hunting will no longer be enough to drive the Others away. A season is coming when we must stand together as warriors, as if we are each one star in the body of a greater Hunter. A season is coming when we must learn to fight the Others in the only way the Others can be defeated, by a rain of spears and arrows, by rows of Hunters with swords raised in union against the common foe.

  “I remember their ways, Hunters. I remember how they fall. I will join the bravest among the People into one and we will drive the Others from the lands all our ancestors walked in ancient days.”

  The reaction was much as it had been when he had delivered the speech after the attack half a moon cycle before. There was little of the customary discussion. Most of the elder Hunters simply thanked him for his words, but returned at once to their own camps. Still, many of the younger Hunters remained to learn what Watelomoksho would teach them.

  “Lichushegi,” Adria asked Shísha as the young men and a few women gathered around her uncle. “I thought that Hunters of the People are also the warriors, but he uses a different word for Aeman soldiers, for Knights. Doesn’t he?”

  “He did,” Shísha nodded. “He called them ‘Those Who Kill Another,’ but... it most often means ‘Murderers.’”

  Watelomoksho trained his Hunters into soldiers.

  It was all too familiar to Adria, for it mirrored what she had learned from watching Knights of Darkfire training in the inner bailey of the citadel, what she had watched Hafgrim and the young noble sons imitate in their own instruction, and what she had practiced herself, at first with Hafgrim, and later on her own, before she had taken up the bow with more general approval.

  First, Preinon brought forth weapons and armor which he had gathered from fallen enemies, and he showed the Hunters the strengths and weaknesses. He wore the armor himself, and fought with them as a Knight would.

  Slowly, they gained confidence, learned not to fear the warrior cased in metal, the tall bows and the long blades, the high plumes, and the standards of violet and black.

  When the fire was lit within them, he taught them how to stand in group, how to march in columns and to fight in rows, and how to pivot without breaking ranks. He taught them to loose arrows in unison, to rotate lines of spearmen, to stand toe to toe with shielded infantry, and to hold the formation against charging horsemen. He taught them when to pursue a routed enemy, and when to hold when the rout might be proved false.

  There were only two score at first, but Preinon invited them to go back to their tribes and to return with others who might join them. As the moon turned on, some returned and some did not. Some brought brothers and some did not.

  It was slow, scattered work, for the Aesidhe were not arranged easily. They came together for meals and when their Mechushegiya called them to a ceremonial. They gathered for important councils and to break camp and move to better hunting grounds.

  But when they hunted, they hunted as individuals, or in loose circles or half-circles about their prey. But by the full turn of the month and moon, Preinon had two lines of those Adria thought of as his Hunters in Rows.

  Through these four faces of the moon, Adria was emboldened by Preinon’s energy and her own. She gained knowledge and skill swiftly, with the first real purpose she had known among the Aesidhe. She used every opportunity to learn their language, and, at Preinon’s advice, took up tasks that would strengthen her limbs, especially her arms.

  “You will need strength to finish your bow, and to use it,” he explained, and so she bore the packs of others when the Hunters’ camp was moved to more open ground. She chopped and carried wood to camp, and hauled pots of water. She ran through the woods on the wilder side, where her still-clumsy passage would less likely reveal them to particularly
errant or bold scouts of the enemy.

  She pulled herself up and down on the limbs where Mateko sat and tutored her in the language when he returned from his frequent scouting missions.

  They arm-wrestled, and he sometimes let her win, laughing, “Chóli khholu kóne-koali tagli gnu. Hoio kówo chóli-koali chóli unisteya wateko-koali homile gnikche su ohai gnu.”

  You are too strong for a woman. Your husband will have to ask you to carry his kills home. When he translated the parts she did not yet understand, she hit him in the arm, and his exclamation only added to his wry compliment.

  When Adria took up the largest of the knives for the first cut of her seasoned bow, it was lighter than she remembered, and the wood parted better for her efforts.

  She used Mateko’s as a model, for she had his height, and, with Preinon’s help, she carved its rough shape, leaving the handle in the middle almost untouched, and the ends a little long.

  “You will cut the ends down to suit you when you feel how it will draw,” he explained. “And the grip should stay thick, but feel comfortable in your hand. This will be difficult for your small hand, to find the right balance, but... it will get easier as you work, and with each new bow you make as your strength grows.”

  They tied it down upon a stump fashioned for the purpose, almost like an anvil of wood. They carved a little at a time, with smaller and smaller knives, stringing and testing it with each few strokes for the right weight — flex, carve, flex, carve, flex — finally using a rough stone when the smallest knife proved inflexible enough for the task.

  “How does it feel?” he said finally, as the evening meal was about to begin.

  “I think it is good,” she said reluctantly. “But my arms are so tired, it is hard to tell.”

  “It is close enough now to rest,” he nodded. “Now, we will leave it strung overnight, and see what it has to say in the morning, when your arms are fresh.”