Hunters of Hahl

PROLOGUE

F ire arched from building to building, taking great leaps across the night sky like a flaming rainbow of terror. Screams filled the husky night air, and the earth shook, tearing down homes everywhere. The entire village, miles long in every direction, crumbled onto itself. The dirt and stone roads flipped over and buried anything that was previously above it. People ran in all directions, looking desperately for shelter, but they could not see the danger above them. With the moon completely obscured, nobody could see anything around that wasn’t burning down.

A little girl, barely old enough to speak more than a handful of words, was isolated from both her parents, running down the roads looking for her escape. There was smoke everywhere, teeming out of every building around her. The streets were narrow; the buildings, made entirely from wooden logs, stood no chance. People ran across in front of her, almost knocking her down, nobody taking a moment to pick her up or help anyone but themselves. The girl breathed heavily and darted her eyes across the way. A tower above her gave way and fell down, destroying the path in front of her. She turned tail and ran to the other direction; she had to escape.

Anywhere that was safe was not in the halls of their once-perfect village. The lord Kahn had deemed it a golden age, and people from all quadrants of the village sang him praises every night and day. Hundreds of years of work uniting people, building homes, and establishing their own society all added up to a little girl running from a monster they could not see. One so big, its body blanketed the night sky, and its very footsteps shook the foundations. The girl could not stop, though she could feel the vibrations getting stronger. With each step the monster took, more of the village was crushed, and more people would be killed. Four light towers, burning at the peak, stood in all four quadrants, and only a single one was left standing. Like moths to a flame, the people all rushed to it mindlessly.

Amidst the anguish and the adrenaline, something hit the girl as she ran; like it was actually happening before her very eyes, she saw the tower fall and create yet another devastating wildfire, burning everyone and even herself alive. As young as she was, even she knew the dangers. The towers started these fires as they fell to the ground. The beast that shrouded the entire village in eternal darkness would be its undoing. Regaining her senses, the girl changed her direction again, running away from the tower this time, despite working so hard to make it there in the first place; and as she made her distance, sure enough, a colossal crash would send it crumbling to the ground, burning everything.

The girl ran as far away as she could, only to run right into a big pair of hands, which hoisted her and took her as far away from the village as his stumpy legs could. The farther they got away, the easier it became to see the sky again, to catch a silhouette of the monster and its enormity. It was so big, even from this far in the arms of this man; its footsteps rippled across the open landscape.

It roared so loud that the man had to drop the girl to cover his ears in pain, and she did the same, both falling to their knees and tightening a grasp on their heads. It was a deep moan that grew in volume and tone progressively. The girl had heard machinery make similar noises when operated by men in the village, and even they were annoying to hear from day to day, but this noise itself could kill you in your sleep.

It stopped, and finally, everything was quiet; just the footsteps of the beast could be heard as it got slowly farther and farther away. The short strong man lifted the girl once more and made his way as far south of the village as they could go.

ONE

D eep into the forestland, far from any other human contact, was a small clearing surrounded on all angles by greenery so thick that you were unable to see through beyond a couple of feet. It was in this bare patch of land where the grass grew tall, and all the trees were cut down to a stump where Torb’s Hahls resided. The tenth anniversary of their tribe’s creation was only days away when Torb and his partner, Markouski, helped save his people from a terrible disaster and brought them here to live and thrive as a new people. Tonight the people feasted by their own family fires as the night wound down, and all were to rest.

It was this very clearing where Torb was left after his untimely death; a small rock formation at the edge of the grass made it. A collection of large rocks were stacked on top of one another, and there was a small symbol that had been almost entirely covered by grass and plant matter that grew up the stones. Next to it was a similar but taller monument dedicated to Markouski, who took control of the tribe shortly after Torb’s final days. They were almost identical, only Markouski’s was not nearly as well kept. Animals had left their dung on it, and the plants that grew over it were mostly weeds.

Beside these monuments to past leaders were the tribal elders, the current main political system of the tribe, deemed that way by the respect the three of them had built over their long lives. They lived in the comfort of many attendants and were given first priority on food and medicine. Next to them were the general populace of the tribe, mostly made up of gatherers, ironworkers, leather makers, and the sorts. They sat with their families after a long day of work and generally followed the rule of the elders. Next to the working civilian class members of the tribe were hunters, no more than forty of them left now. They all had their own fires for each of them, and their children were also training to be hunters themselves; they followed the direct and unwavering command of the lead hunter—he who was the latest in a long line of successors dating back to Torb, the original.

His name was Aldra, and he stayed out late conducting meetings and delegating daily duties to each of his underlings. When he was to return, it was always late and his dinner always cold. His young son, Jackal, had always tried his best to leave his father a meal, the best the boy could hunt and capture himself. Without trying to wake the boy up, Aldra unclipped the belt on his front and removed it, the sheath holding his dagger attached to it sliding away from his lower back where it sat. He dropped it beside the fire and then untied the three loops on his leather vest that joined at his side. When he removed it, the carved wooden skull of a bird that lived on his shoulder went with it. His undershirt was loose, green, and rolled up to his elbows; his pants weighed heavily down to his ankles.

His mask was a symbol every hunter carried. The showing of the face was heavily frowned on in Hahl culture, something reserved only for those equal or superior to you. This rule was almost always broken between family, however. Aldra pulled the smooth black material off his face before tossing it aside. ‘Stupid sock’, he said.

‘I cooked for you,’ said Jackal, rubbing his eyes as he sat up.

‘What is it?’ his father asked.

‘Gopher’, said Jackal, pointing to the cooked morsel beside the flame.

Aldra reached down to assess it; it was small and barely enough to fill a grown man such as himself, but it would have to do for tonight. ‘Who caught it?’ he asked.

Jackal hesitated. ‘I mean …’

‘You should catch your own food,’ said Aldra as he took a bite from its underbelly. It tasted good, but knowing his son needed help to catch such an easy animal made it bitter and barely edible.

‘I tried,’ said Jackal.

‘Keep trying,’ said Aldra as he swallowed the last of the gopher’s remains. Without another word, the man found a spot to get comfortable and drifted away to sleep.

‘I will,’ said Jackal uneasily. He pulled his wolf pelts around himself to make his small body less cold. Only two was enough to cover him.

Not far from where Jackal and his father slept was another boy, orphaned so young that he never knew his mother’s face. He was much larger than Jackal; his size truly was a gift nobody else his age was privileged to inherit. All night and day, children made fun of him for his giantism. Aldra had recommended to him very early on that he not train to be a hunter but instead train with the metalworkers. His strength would not be wasted there. Though this boy did his training with the old men and their makeshift forges, it was never enough for him. The long loose clothing he wore and the apron around his waist were not and would never truly be him.

Though Aldra dismissed these claims, he knew his father was a hunter; his mother he wasn’t sure, but there were hushed discussions about Duran—the greatest hunter of his generation—fathering a son with his wife, Marion. Duran was almost seven feet tall and had shoulders as wide as a tremboar’s. His armour was leather bound, and his weapon was a legendary sword of unknown origins. The boy always asked Aldra and other hunters about his father, especially his mother, for he knew nothing of her, only that Duran took a liking to a simpler woman over the harder, more abrasive ones.

‘Sàid, is everything all right?’ a feminine and petite voice called from behind him.

Sàid was in the forest away from anyone else, seated with his back against a tree—alone. He didn’t have many friends, Jackal being one of them. He looked around the tree and could see the outline of a human silhouette on the other side of the wood. She was small, no bigger than Jackal; her hair, for a girl, was rather short and curly. ‘Ilana?’ he called back.

‘I saw you walk off. I just wanted to check on you, make sure everything was okay,’ she said, kneeling beside him.

The girl’s clothing was loose, typical of female civilian types. There was no dress requirement, so they were provided with anything. However, Ilana’s outfit was awfully mangled and ripped up in a lot of places. Sàid couldn’t make out her face in the darkness, but he could smell her unmistakable scent. It was the smell of someone who spent a lot of time getting covered in mud, running though tall grass, and leaping between trees twenty feet from the ground below. Very unnatural for girls, many tried to be hunters but never passed in the final trials. Though she had her troubles, Sàid always admired her.

‘I was just … enjoying the night. Good for meditation, you know?’

Ilana rubbed her shoulder as the breeze made her stiffen up and shake. ‘Sàid, it’s really cold out here. You should stay under the fire,’ Ilana pleaded. ‘I know you got upset at the other boys, but that doesn’t mean you gotta sit out here.’

‘The cold builds character.’ Sàid laughed awkwardly.

‘Sàid, come on, you can come sit at my family’s fire.’

At this point, if Sàid were any redder in the face, he might start to glow. He really liked the idea of sitting with Ilana; most boys thought she was weird and a bit boyish looking. Sàid didn’t care, even if it did bother him. He knew that someday she was bound to be a hunter just like him. Sàid thought about reaching hunter status every day; the hunters were the most honoured of the tribe. If his father really was a hunter, then he would be too. Even the lead hunter would get jealous of his strength.

‘Sàid?’

The empty daydreamer felt an ice-cold finger bop him gently on the forehead. ‘Oh, uh, yeah, sure, I’d love to sit with you guys.’ He was getting the shakes in his hands as well now, but it wasn’t from the fast-approaching winter.

Ilana grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to his feet and out from the trees. Her hand was cold as ice. The closer they got to the light of the fires, the more detail he could see in her face. The shadows cast on her accentuated the scars on her hands from the time she was climbing a wall but slipped and slashed them on some sharp rocks, trying to grab hold again. The angle of her nose was slightly off from when she broke it tripping over an animal’s burrow and face-planting on an old oak. There was also a long, thin scar down her right cheek, which she got from the time she borrowed her father’s hunting knife.

Those and many other marks on her body, each with its own accompanying story, made Sàid laugh. He didn’t have any like that; not many kids he knew did. There was no rule against girls becoming hunters. It would be a tremendous honour. It was just never encouraged, and the ones who did try normally couldn’t keep up, and they would quit over the pressure.

Sàid took a moment to remember each of her features as he did every time he saw her. One day they’d both have masks, and he might not see her like this again.

TWO

I n the morning when Ilana woke up, Sàid was already gone. A long black strip of smoke lifted from the ashes of their once-burning fire. Her mother, Margot, was present. ‘You slept late. There was a tribe meeting with the elders earlier.’ She was organising their things into different packs and satchels. ‘We’ll be travelling north to canyon land. Weather is getting cold. Forest will be snowed over.’

Ilana rubbed her eyes and sat up. ‘Where’s Sàid?’ she asked.

‘Your friend left shortly after your father. He has smith training today,’ said Margot. She turned her back to Ilana while digging around one of the bags behind her. ‘Now I need you to help me. There’s a lot to do, and I can’t do it by myself.’ When she turned around, Ilana was off, running through the forests.

‘Ready?’ said Sàid.

‘Yeah, let’s do it,’ Jackal responded.

Sàid stomped the ground as hard as he could, and just in front of the two boys, a buck gopher dashed out of a small burrow, and both boys sprinted after it. They were deep into the forest, and the land was rough and hard to navigate, but Hahls had a natural talent for keeping upright from spending as much time as they did in forestland.

For a moment, Jackal was leading but was quickly overtaken by Sàid and left far behind. Gophers were tricky and fast. Being so small, they were easy to lose under all the shrubbery and fallen oak, but Sàid dived with his hands out in front of him and caught the small animal, trapping it between his fingers like a cage. ‘Aw man’, said Jackal, realising he had lost again.

‘Don’t beat yourself up too much.’ Sàid giggled, holding his award proudly above his head in one hand.

‘It’s all right, I’ll let you have this one,’ said Jackal.

‘I suppose you let me win all of them, huh!’ Sàid bellowed while letting the critter go free. Jackal smiled meekly; he, like Sàid and every other boy in the Hahl clan, was to be trained. Unlike Sàid and every other Hahl, Jackal was to meet expectations.

‘Your dad was going to make Ilana’s dad train you today,’ said Sàid.

‘First I’d heard of it, though I know he’s been asking to for a while,’ Jackal admitted.

‘When they woke me up talking about it, I knew I had to find you. He’s pretty average at best,’ said Sàid.

‘At least he’s a hunter,’ said Jackal.

‘Your dad is the lead hunter, the best hunter in the whole tribe. Sometimes I wonder how he would match against Dahrk warriors.’ Sàid gushed. ‘I’d love to be trained by him.’

‘I’ve spoken to Thul before. He says your dad was better, probably the best,’ said Jackal.

‘I hear a lot of things about my dad,’ said Sàid ‘Wish I could see what he did.’

‘Guys!’ Ilana shouted from up in a tree behind the two of them.

Sàid lit up when he heard her voice and called out to her. ‘Hey! Come down here! We’re playing gopher rush!’

Ilana ran over and hit Sàid on the back of his shoulder. ‘You have smith training today!’ she barked.

Sàid looked at her funny. ‘Why would I go to smith training? I’m a hunter.’ He laughed. He did, in fact, have smithing duty. Ilana recalled running past Blarko, the head smith, on the way here, looking incredibly frustrated. ‘Heck, Jackal had a lesson with your dad, and we all know your dad is way too amateur to train this guy,’ said Sàid, punching Jackal gently on the shoulder.

‘I’m sure you had somewhere to be as well?’ he asked. Ilana recalled her mother saying something about organising supplies for something, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t come to work; she came to have fun.

In a somewhat secluded spot from the rest of the tribe, three elderly tribe members were all seated cross-legged before a much younger man in his prime. He stood tall in front of them with both hands behind his back. It was typical of the lead hunter and the elders to have personal conversations before and after every tribe gathering. His name was Aldra, the fifth leading hunter of the tribe, the last remaining elite hunter from his generation. He kept a wooden pouldron on his shoulder carved into the shape of a ridger’s head, a large bird that patrolled the canyons, swooping anything hiding between the rocks.

‘Braving the winter last time may not have been as bad as the winter before it, but it’s completely unsustainable. We have to go back north again,’ said Aldra.

‘I agree. We can’t stay down here. We’ll just continue to lose people every year,’ said Elder Chastic. While still an old man, he was the youngest of the elders and a former lead hunter himself. He was smoking on a short wooden tube that had herbs of the forestlands burning in its chamber. Chastic never smoked in his younger days but picked it up not long after he removed his mask. The elders, unlike Aldra, were wearing very loose clothing and no mask. Chastic’s head was completely bald with not a single sprout of hair in sight, a common trait among hunters who reached old age.

‘What … uh … is the soonest we could have the tribe ready?’ asked Elder Morrison while looking to his colleagues for approval. Morrison was older than Chastic by about a cycle. He was far wrinklier than his counterpart, looking like a map of the canyon lands, and the top of his head was not nearly as clean and smooth as Chastic’s. It still had sprouts of hair right across the surface. It was so rough and messy that if you rubbed your hand across it, you might even get a rash.

‘I’d run a few meetings over the next couple of days, make sure everyone knows what needs to be done, and then spend four or five days gathering food, water, and wood,’ Aldra explained.

Morrison rubbed the top of his head. He opened his mouth to speak a few times, but no words escaped him. ‘Come on, give it a go,’ said the only female elder, patting the old man on the back. She was Cylast, the oldest of the elders. Nobody ever raised a finger to her; everyone always knelt before her and waited for her approval to speak. It was a courtesy no other elder received.

Standing behind her, watching the move of everyone, was a man around Morrison’s age named Thul, her bondservant. He was tall and wide, well out of his prime, and long since done away with his mask. He still managed to grow a thick white beard to make up for his bald head. He never spoke, only watched on. He was no tribal leader of any kind; his service to the tribe lay only with his lady, Cylast. As a young man, he knelt before her, declaring her something greater than himself under the eyes of Hahl; and ever since, he was never allowed to leave her side, lest he be punished by the god himself.

‘Thul, go stand in the trees. You’re making me uncomfortable,’ Cylast complained. Thul went a shade of red and pouted before walking away between the trees.

‘I tell you all the time not to stand behind me like that, and you keep doing it!’ she called out as he disappeared between the trees.

‘Morrison, darling, please say what you wanted to say,’ she urged.

‘I, uh … I suppose if we gave you four days, that would be enough?’ said Morrison.

Aldra cocked his head at Morrison and looked deep into the old man’s eyes. Morrison looked back feeling increasingly nervous. Aldra’s eyes were a deep red, and the longer Morrison looked into them, the more complex the knot in his stomach would become; but at the same time, he couldn’t look away, feeling trapped. ‘Six days, no less’, said Aldra, shaking his head.

Morrison looked at the dirt and grabbed his leg nervously. He rubbed the stump where his knee was supposed to be. It was a story he never told, the day that changed him for good. It was only by Thul’s hand that Morrison had survived, but he never thanked his saviour. ‘Six days’, Morrison mumbled.

‘Thank you, Elder.’ Aldra bowed. ‘There is something else we need to talk about,’ he said.

‘What would that be?’ Chastic asked, blowing smoke from his lips with each word.

Aldra adjusted the ridger’s head, being very delicate with it. ‘Our tribe is dying,’ he said.

Silence fell across the four of them, and Thul could be heard adjusting himself behind the trees. Chastic squeezed his pipe tightly, and Morrison rubbed his leg a little harder. ‘What do you suggest?’ Cylast asked, unfazed by the comment.

‘Duran is dead. Stojko is dead and Rickick, Cree, and so many of our civilians that we have less than a hundred trainees for this generation, the weakest it’s ever been. Markouski had better numbers as leader, and all the man did was fight,’ Aldra explained. ‘It’s time we start talking to the other tribes again for help.’

‘Never’, Chastic jumped in. ‘The Dahrks would never help us for any reason, the proud fools. The Furies are no better, the savages.’ Chastic stuffed the pipe back in his mouth and chewed on the mouthpiece.

‘You’ve heard the stories, what Markouski had to do to protect us from those animals.’ Morrison sneered, breaking out into a sweat.

‘Elder, please, Markouski has been dead longer than I’ve been alive. Surely, his stories of what the Furies did are a little outdated by now,’ Aldra argued.

‘If you have any respect for us and me, your former teacher, you will keep as far away from the Furies and the Dahrks as possible,’ said Chastic, raising his voice.

‘You know just as well as anyone we can’t keep hiding from that creature.’ Aldra raised a sharp finger at Chastic. ‘We need to unite the tribes.’ He took a moment to calm himself and lowered his hand.

Chastic leaned forwards and looked across Morrison to gauge his and Cylast’s reaction. ‘The elders all respect you as the finest hunter in the tribe.’ Chastic looked back at Aldra, matching his menacing gaze. ‘But Preature owns these lands, you understand that?’

‘Despite all the differences we may share with the other tribes, we have a common enemy, and we are desperate,’ said Aldra.

Of all the students Chastic ever trained, including the previous lead hunter Stojko and the elite hunter Duran, Aldra was the one he spent the most time with and vouched for on many occasions. He made Aldra’s mask himself and presented it to him proudly on his name day. The fit was perfect, tight enough that you could read all of Aldra’s facial expressions under the silky material. Ever since, Aldra kept it as clean as the day he got it, not a single tear, rip, or stain.

‘Teacher, you were so passionate in your time that it brings me great sorrow to see you betray your nature like this.’ Aldra’s tone grew more frustrated and heartbroken every time he spoke. He expected more than smoking herbs and reminiscing.

‘My time has passed,’ said Chastic, rubbing his bald head. He snuffed out the flame in the pipe and packed it into his cloak.

Elder Cylast let out a pondering hum. She was considered the wisest of the three, though she was never a hunter in her younger life. She was the oldest living person alive, old enough to have seen the village be destroyed as a young girl and been caught in the middle of the great tribal divide. ‘Aldra, I love your fighting spirit, son,’ she said with her raspy voice. She breathed heavily as if she had just sung a powerful chorus.

‘Lady Cylast, you’ve lived through every single Dahrk raid, nursed men who were injured in fights with Furies, fed orphans whose fathers died fighting the monster, and ran from it yourself. Wouldn’t you want to see an end to all that?’

Cylast smiled as if she had heard this speech a hundred times before. ‘If only I could forget what I see.’ She giggled weakly. ‘Aldra the Determined—that’s what they’re going to call you one day.’ Cylast looked to both her allies, who refused eye contact. They seemed to have tagged out of the discussions. She then looked back to Aldra. ‘The elders would have no right to tell any hunter what not to kill.’ She looked him dead in the eye. ‘But you are the lead hunter, the last one of the elites and an example to the rest of us. After what happened to your allies’—she shook her head—‘I’d never assert my power for anything else.’

‘My lady,’ Aldra began, his eyes dipped in disappointment, ‘but what if—’

‘Do my fellow elders agree?’ Cylast asked, cutting off Aldra. Both men nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Aldra. Return to your duties, please.’

Aldra turned away reluctantly and