The Hunt Part 1

The villagers tie up their catch to poles planted in the great communal circle. Aila Sharpsword, Chief Amazon of the Ein Gheddi, takes them all in with sharp gray eyes: few, too few to replace the losses from the last raid. The men are easy pickings in the fields while her warriors hunt during the day. But if they didn’t hunt they didn’t eat.

This particular hunt had not been for food. It had been for something far more important. She had seen the blank faces on her warriors, even spreading to the little children: too many husbands taken away, too many lost friends, too many daughters buried, her own among them. They feel the tribe is dying. If things didn’t turn around soon, it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As chief, Aila had to quash her own doubts and show them they still had a future. That’s why she had taken her five best warriors beyond their ancestor’s lands, to the forest near the forbidden city. There they set a trap for the humans. After laying in wait for two days, they captured a group of traders on the road to the mountain mines.

Ten men and seven women, they could have taken them all. She could have slaughtered the women and claimed the men, married or not. But that is not the tribe’s way. And what good is it to scrape by if they become the same as their enemies? The chief believed that, proud of her heritage, the identity of her people, even as her warriors trussed up the four bachelors to spirit them away from everything they’d ever known.

The widowed leader passes her gaze over the spoils now, though she knows their faces intimately from the journey: a guard, a miner, a blacksmith, and a foreign slave. The blacksmith is a true prize, a much needed replacement since her husband passed. She caresses the pommel of the blade the man she loved had slaved over. He should have known he couldn’t fight with those beautiful weapons he made, but he wasn’t the kind to sit by and do nothing when his family was in danger and the women were away. That brave heart is why she had loved him so much, and thinks of him every day. Even now, sometimes she’ll wake up in her hut and feel the cold bed beside her, shake her head that he spent all night tinkering again. She’ll call for her daughter to wake up and bring him home from the forge so he can get breakfast started. Then nobody answers, and she remembers.

She blinks away the tears that threaten to spill forth like she does every day, and focuses on the task at hand. She looks at the faces of the new men of her tribe etched in hate and disgust and fear, all the faces but one, the slave. He’s afraid, but he doesn’t carry that ingrained disgust the others do. The others had noticed it too, the stranger staring at the tribe’s breasts and asses as much as their long spadetails and tiny vestigial wings. He obviously finds them attractive, only fearing what they might do to him, not what they are. In her long life, she’s never seen such a thing.

She had questioned the others on his origin while the hunting party dragged them home. “A spy from foreign lands,” one had said. “A madman who speaks only in gibberish,” said another. “A sorcerer,” said the last and handed her a strange box of glass and metal he claimed held a whole city of living people inside. The others scoffed but the guard said he had seen it with his own eyes when the man had been captured without papers on the road to the forbidden city. The blacksmith admitted the metal was not iron or zinc or nickel or tin or chrome or the common silvery metals he’s worked with. Aila had listened to enough of her husband’s lessons to her daughter to come to the same conclusion. It was far too light for a raw unblessed work, perhaps a mineral from far flung lands.

There is no doubt that the dress of the man is very peculiar, the material of his shoes in particular, with thick grooved soles like the bottom of a dragon foot made of some type of something… a plant she would imagine.  But then all foreigners dress strangely to her.

He looks surprised when his bonds are cut with the others. No jails, no guards, no chains. Her people had learned long ago that their husbands and their children could do the job of keeping the new men at home. Only then it was always just a couple new men at a time, and there were once so many more of her people. But such thoughts will not drag her down. For it is a time of celebration. Now is the rite of knowing, before the ceremonial hunt of joining. The tribe’s husbands draw the new captures aside and introduce them into what will be their new way of life: farming, cooking and working with their hands.

She takes charge of the blacksmith herself and shows him the old forge, cleaned but still bearing the scars of the attack that robbed her of her family. She makes a mental note to repair the bellows and secure more casting sand and charcoal to replenish the dwindling supplies. At least their hunt had netted them more than enough mining tools to furnish quality metal for reforging for some time. She will see to it that the new arrival will have a well-stocked workplace he can be proud of. And he will pass the trade on to his daughter and her to her daughter, like it once was…like it is supposed to be.

Memories rise from the place like ghosts as she runs her fingers over the soot-covered mallets and punches and anvil. Feelings stir like the dust under her feet. She can smell the heat of the fire, hear the whoosh of the bellows, the bang of hot steel against cold, the hiss of quenching metal, then it all stops as the man in the leather apron sees her and a firetanned face greets her with a smile.

She’s so enraptured in the past that she nearly misses the sound of a weapon whizzing through the air. Her amazon instincts take over as she rolls forward and draws her blade as she stands, coming up ready to gut any invader.

It’s just the new blacksmith facing her with the cold poker from the firepit. Aila grins and roars with laughter, the first real laugh from her mouth in weeks. Grabbing the makeshift weapon with her free hand, she wrenches it from his grasp. A boot to the chest sends him sprawling into the dirt while he scrambles for anything else at hand. Only holding her blade to his throat ceases his struggles. Sharp brown eyes look up at her, promising to fight against every bit of his new life. Feisty, like her Aaron had been. He will make one of her amazons very happy.

Needing to check on the others, she passes him off to another warrior, her unmarried niece just reaching hunting age, who’s been expressing clear interest in the man. Many of the young amazons would be shopping the men today; if any of them click, possible making plans with the boys to ensure the ceremonial joining goes the way they want it to. Though it’s certain a firebrand like the smith is going to force a traditional hunt, a rare prize indeed.

Heading toward the next man on her checklist, Aila walks down the winding path to the grinding hut where the men are milling the wheat for the feast tonight. The miner rolls his metate without complaint, his thick muscled arms and strong back long used to similar repetitive work.  The room fills with the scent of fresh ground flour and the rhythmic sound of the slow stony grind of the stones. As the tribe’s husbands praise his work, he mentions that his father was a miller and taught him the old fashioned way so he’d appreciate the big stones of the watermill. The initial shock of capture seems to be wearing off and he is adapting more quickly the more he realizes that her people are not quite the monsters they are made out to be. His life might actually be an improvement over the harsh conditions and a slow death from the cinnabar shakes in the mines. He will make good domestic husband, the amazon ideal even, but Aila had always preferred a man with a little more fire and a piercing gaze.

She catches the young warrior Eria trading glances with the man even as the children pile around him and chatter, feeling up his broad shoulders and bulging biceps. Well, she can’t blame them for that. All these men are young and strong, and stoke their little hormones. She has a feeling who his match will be though as Eria pulls a particularly touchy youngster off him. Couples rigging the hunt is as old as the hunt itself after all, not that there’s still not chances to make things interesting.

Satisfied, the graying amazon departs and heads down to the stream where a few men and children are seining the water for fish to add to the feast. A few warriors help man the nets, hands are too few not to these days. The children yell and splash upstream, slapping the water with canes and reeds as they walk through the mud down toward the men. Aila remembers stomping through those same waters, red clay squishing between her toes, laughing at the husbands snaring fish and trying not to lose fingers to the vicious turtles and water snakes who get caught in the stampede of river life. The guard is there, stripped to his waist, right in the thick of the action.

Fighters, guards, knights, paladins…all are a massive pain in the ass to retrain. The only difference between them is the size of their ego. So many are conditioned to fight from so young an age that they have very few other skills, and they are always, always the most bullheaded. Aila’s mother used to call them Dickalps, after the ancient myth of the alp, men that thought they could do a woman’s job. This time they lucked out; this guard is barely more than a miner who had traded his pick for a sword. He’s still useless compared to the first two, but at least he’s not so arrogant as she had feared.

Still, she looks over his thick core and broad shoulders, he’s strong and handsome. Half naked on display like that, she isn’t the least surprised to see the warriors on either side brush against him entirely more than necessary. She can’t help watching the play between them for a moment, to be young like that again. These smiles, this excitement, the anticipation of the hunt and weddings to come, THIS is what she wanted to bring to her people more than anything. The gloom is lifting. Even those who have lost as much as she has are caught up in it.

That only leaves the last one to check on, the square peg who doesn’t fit her experience, the slave. It takes some time to track him down. She eventually finds him with young Cyrtanda in the young warrior’s home library, a relic from her monk father that she has kept alive, putting all the oral traditions of the tribe down in his language. Aila doesn’t like to come here. Several times she’s come close to burning the whole place down. It’s a fear deep down she can’t shake, that these bound stacks of calf vellum might be all that’s left of her people if she fails. It’s a crutch, an admission that one day these traditions and rites will be forgotten without this record because nobody will be left to tell them.

She rubs the pommel of her sword. It will take more than these dusty books to spoil her good mood. The chief amazon takes the time to really get a good look at foreigner now that he’s been scrubbed down and the thick layers of grime removed, likely his first bath in a month.

The stranger’s hands are soft and his skin pale like a noble, features and hair alien to any she has ever seen. Or rather it’s the combination that’s odd: fine nose like red tribes of great desert, eyes like a northerner and hair like a southerner, with skin like the ancient peoples of the holy mountains. The convoluted parentage of such a mutt is beyond her. That doesn’t surprise her, as much as knowing that the other captures feel the same way when people from all over the known world pilgrimage to the forbidden city. He’s truly rare and exotic, but whether that translates to any value to the tribe is yet to be seen. Not being able to speak is a huge barrier for one.

None of this matters to Cyrtanda who beams like a girl half her age with a new toy. She’s completely entranced with the slave, the tough amazon hunter fascinated with the mystery as much as the man. His belongings, taken from the caravan lockbox, lay scattered on the woven area rug. He scratches arcane symbols into the dirt as he jabbers animatedly at the young warrior. He might be a sorcerer after all. Only, he cannot be very powerful, or he would never have been captured by the lowly ragtag trader guards in the first place.

There’s something unsettling about him. She can’t put the instinct into words but she knows he doesn’t belong. For a moment she regrets taking him along at all, then pushes the feeling away. What’s done is done. She couldn’t be rid of him now, not without a full riot of the bachelorettes for losing one quarter of their possible husbands.

Time will tell. All she can do is watch and wait. Right now there is so much more to do. Tonight there will be music and feasting and dancing. Then tomorrow, the hunt begins.