Aiyana Redfeather's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

The next hunt went wrong. Aiyana drove his spear into an armored beast's flank, and the flint snapped against its plated hide. The creature bucked and dragged two hunters through the mud before it fled. They came back to the huts empty-handed. The chief would want meat by nightfall. Aiyana knelt by the raised wooden floor and studied his broken spear. Sharpened wood and thin flint could not pierce these beasts. He needed a weapon that could bore through their shells. A girl watched him from the shadow of the woven walls. She wore green stones on her brow and gold at her ears. She belonged to the swamp people who had lived here long before his tribe arrived. She crouched beside him without asking and picked up the broken spear. "Your point is flat," she said. "Flat points skid off the plates. You want a point that drills." She spoke plainly, as if teaching a child. "Who are you?" Aiyana asked. "Naia Deeproot. My people carve these beasts every season. You are new. You are loud. And you break spears." She was small, but she held his gaze without blinking. "Come. I will show you the workshop." She led him along a walkway to a low shed built over the water. Bone tools hung from the beams. Half-carved shells lay in piles. Naia handed him a length of hard, straight wood and a jagged piece of flint. "Not a leaf shape," she said. "A cone. Twist it as you drive it. The point turns and it eats through the shell." Aiyana worked the flint with her stone. He chipped it into a rough drilling head, thick at the base and sharp at the tip. He bound it to the shaft with wet cord and set a peg through a hole in the wood. When he tested the weight, it felt like a tool built to bite, not to stab. They found a beast wallowing in the reeds before dusk. It swung its blunt head and hissed. Aiyana braced his feet in the mud and drove the new spear at its shoulder plate. He twisted as it struck. The point bored through the shell with a wet crack and sank deep. The beast thrashed once, then dropped. The hunters dragged the carcass to the huts. The chief looked at the clean hole in the armor and grunted. "Better," he said. "Keep bringing them." Naia wiped her hands and studied Aiyana. "Now you can feed the king," she said. "But the swamp is not empty land. My people hunt these beasts too. There are only so many. Feed him long enough, and there will be none left for either of us." Aiyana looked at the drilling spear in his hand. He could kill now. But the price of his tribe's roof was another people's food, and the man on the platform would keep asking for more.