Aiyana Redfeather's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Aiyana crept back toward the cliff gaps at dawn. He needed the narrow crack that let his people slip inside the cavern. But the beasts had learned. Three of them prowled the rocks below the gap now, scales shifting to match the stone. He watched one snap up a rabbit near the crack. His only way in had become a trap. He climbed down and told the tribe the truth. They could not reach the cavern. And they were starving. "Then we go where they will not follow," Kaya said. She pointed past the treeline, where the ground turned soft and gray. The swamp. No one hunted there by choice. But the beasts loved dry stone, not black water. They moved that night. Children clung to mothers. Old men leaned on spears. Aiyana carried a sick boy on his back through knee-deep mud. Twice the ground tried to swallow them. Once a strange flower snapped at a girl's hand, its red mouth ringed with white teeth. Kaya hacked it apart with her knife and pulled the girl free. By morning they reached higher ground. A hut stood on thick wooden legs above the water, its roof heavy with moss and vine. Smoke rose from a hole in the thatch. Someone lived here. A huge man stepped onto the platform. He wore armor cut from bone, cracked and yellowed. A club hung across his back. A skull swung from his belt, and a battered crown sat on his head. He looked down at the ragged crowd without pity. "This is my ground," he said. "You want shelter, you pay." Aiyana climbed the muddy steps. "We have no gold. We have hunters. Strong ones." The big man laughed. "Everyone who comes here has lost everything. That is why they come." He tapped the skull at his belt. "I was a chief once too. Now I guard a hut for whoever feeds me." Aiyana pointed to the swamp behind them. "There is game in that water. Big beasts, low to the ground, thick as tree trunks. My people can hunt them. Meat for you. A roof for us." The chief studied him a long moment. Then he nodded. "Bring me the first kill by nightfall. Fail, and you sleep in the mud." They hunted all day. Kaya found tracks in the reeds, four clawed feet the size of shields. The creature was long and armored, an ancient thing that had crawled these wetlands forever. Six men drove it into a bog. Aiyana speared its throat while it thrashed. They dragged the carcass to the hut and dropped it at the chief's feet. He grinned and clapped Aiyana's shoulder hard enough to stagger him. "You have your roof." That night the tribe slept dry for the first time in three seasons. Aiyana lay awake, listening to the swamp breathe. They were safe. But they were farther from the cavern than ever. And now they owed a king who served only those who paid.