Spoiler
Yes, I've decided to rework my Munera project from the ground up. This is the first half of the prologue, which I invite you to tear apart. One of things I'm really keen to know is whether you were confused at any points. I hate infodumps and try to avoid them as much as possible, but I also don't want to completely disorient readers within the first 2000 words. So speak up! That way I know what I ought to change and fix.
MUNERA
VOLUME ONE
Prologue
Kutho awoke at dawn, like he always did. His body responded to the slow upward creep of the father-sun, and one by one his senses snapped into full alertness. First was temperature: the warmth of the hollow he was sleeping in. Then touch: the soft, slightly damp loam rubbing against his skin. Then the scents of the forest, the pungent richness of the soil mingled with the sharp spice of growing leaves and the whiff of blood from distant animals. And sounds, from the scrapings of insects to the wind rustling through branches to the rumble of the Athlan River, so low he felt more than heard it. And suffusing it all, weaving everything together, the soft thrum of the forest’s energy.
Finally, his eyes flickered open. The morning was still dark: at this point, the father-sun was nothing but a bleeding of red above the mountains. But Kutho saw well enough in the silvery glow of night. He could count every leaf, every tiny branch, in the canopy spreading protectively above him like a mother’s blanket.
For moment, he allowed himself to join the softly rustling leaves. He floated amongst them, enjoying the feeling of the breeze turning him back and forth—but he had to return soon.
With a grunt, he sat upright. His body was a little stiff like it always was after sleep, but still he moved with the silent grace shared by all of the Ifali tribe. Distractedly, he brushed off the dirt and dried leaves that had clung to his golden skin during the night, and threw a glance behind him. He didn’t need to look to know what was there: his fellow tribe members, thirteen in number, curled up fast asleep in their own hollows in the forest floor. He could sense them, the heat of their bodies and the pulse of their energy—but it felt better to confirm their presences with his eyes. To make sure that everybody was still there. That they’d made it to another sunrise intact.
But one of the hollows was empty. The one in front of Kutho. Kutho wasn’t worried; he could still sense its inhabitant’s energy. A musky scent with a dash of sweet-tartness, like that of hawthorn fruit. So he stood up and began walking, padding silently across the forest floor, until he approached a fallen log dividing their little clearing into two. Especially in recent years, the forest teemed with fallen trees—slashed down, their pale insides gaping like wounds. The tribe tried to avoid such trees, since they were usually clouded with bitter human energy and smelled of humans too, sweat and oil. But this tree had been felled long ago during a lightning-dance: it was pockmarked and scarred and a shiny black where it had burned, and still hummed with lightning’s cold presence.
Sazuk perched upon the log.
Sazuk was their leader—but not chief, for he had not undergone the proper rites—and Kutho’s bond-brother, a brother who went beyond blood and bone, who had been tied Kutho’s energy and Kutho to his before they had been born and would be tied after they died. Kutho approached Sazuk, heart swelling in a combination of relief and joy. Sazuk was there as he always would be, there to lead the tribe, and more specifically, there by Kutho’s side.
“Oh, you’re awake,” Sazuk said, turning in Kutho’s direction. Like Kutho, like all Ifali men, he was lean yet well-muscled, and he bore large, elegantly slanted eyes that gradated from new-leaf pale on the outside to pine-needle dark inside. But the similarities ended there: Sazuk was taller than Kutho, and unlike the golden-skinned, golden-haired Kutho, his skin gleamed almost midnight black in the faint light, with the spiky mess of his hair only a few shades darker.
Kutho hopped up on the log beside Sazuk, resting on his haunches with his elbows on his knees. This close, he acutely felt Sazuk’s comforting warmth. “You expected me not to be? I always wake at this time.”
“Ahhh…I know.” Sazuk shrugged, a movement that rippled through his muscles. “Maybe we ought to change it around every now and then—to keep us from becoming complacent. I take the first watch, you take second.”
Kutho nodded dutifully. Sazuk was almost obsessed with the idea of complacency, or rather, avoiding complacency. He kept drilling it into the Ifali’s heads. Never stick to the same campsites, never grow too used to eating one type of berry, never become too attached to their few possessions. It had helped them survive for this long.
“Maybe…we could let Yana take a watch too. He’s been begging for it,” Kutho said.
Sazuk snorted. “Yana’s a little brat. He’d fall asleep and piss all over himself.”
“He’s almost thirteen winters—old enough to take the makhorre rites—”
“That means nothing. Whether or not he can fight has no bearing on whether he’d be a good night watchman. And he can barely win take down sparrows, anyhow, so in all regards Yana is a useless child.”
Kutho said nothing more on the subject, even though Sazuk’s occasionally abrasive attitude upset him. Chiefs shouldn’t speak in such a cavalier manner…but Sazuk wasn’t a chief. And Ifali was barely a tribe.
They remained in silence for a while, perching back-to-back, feeling the father-sun rise and watching the light grow. At length, as the others began to mumble and stir, Sazuk spoke.
“I think we ought to forage along the Zranetha Rocks this morning. Get some gooseberries, maybe catch some lizards.”
The tribe’s old legends spoke of men, of brave makhorre warriors, journeying long and far to chase prey: stags, antelopes, wild boar. The warriors fought harrying battles against the wily prey, but would always triumphed in the end because of their strength. There were no legends about warriors gathering berries and killing lizards.
Kutho didn’t say so much as growl, “That sounds fine.”
The Zranetha Rocks had once been a holy site, where the entire Ifali tribe gathered to receive blessings from their shaman. Now the only sign of the Rocks’ glorious past were the symbols scratched in the weathered gray stones, depicting makhorre kneeling to the shaman, women performing fertility dances.
Kutho paused to run his hand over the symbols adorning a jutting flat rock, feeling the incised lines brush his skin. He cast a glance around the tumble of rocks, with hardy bushes and grass poking out in the gaps between them and crowded at the base, and tried to picture what such gatherings would be like. The slow, deep energy throbbing in the rocks wouldn’t have changed between then and now…but plenty else had. How did the shamans appear? They were women, he knew…and Derl had said that they wore necklaces of polished beads and had voices like thunder…but Derl had been born after Ifali’s shaman had been killed. What did he know?
Sazuk’s voice snapped Kutho out of his reverie. He stiffened and looked guiltily around, afraid that Sazuk was berating him for spacing out instead of gathering food—it’d happened before—but instead Sazuk was standing at the top of the rocks and talking to two of the younger tribe members. Little Merleth, barely in her fifth winter, and Torlok, in his eighth winter.
“—all right, it’s all right, it isn’t as if Torlok meant to take your berries—“”
“Yeah, she shoulda been guarding them better!”
“Shut up, Torlok, you ought to have known better. But now, now, Merleth, there’s no need to cry…. Look around you! How many bushes do you see?”
Merleth made an attempt at counting them. Sazuk laughed and patted her on the head.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just saying, there are far more berry bushes than there are of us, and each bush has dozens of berries on it. So why don’t you pick some new ones? As many as you like, and don’t share with Torlok.”
Kutho watched Merleth run off, squeaking with renewed happiness, and Sazuk lead Torlok aside, down the other side of the rocks. That was Sazuk…always so good at dealing with the little skirmishes and tussles that always rippled through the tribe. That was why he led them, in addition to being the eldest male.
It wasn’t as if Kutho was jealous, though. He knew his place and it was by Sazuk’s side, as Sazuk’s bond-brother. Besides, he had no patience for calming down squalling children.
It felt almost peaceful like this, him wandering slowly over the rocks, occasionally picking sweet green gooseberries and basking in the sunlight, all while surrounded by his fellow tribe members. But just as he returned to the inscribed shelf to take a better look at its symbols, he sensed a change in the rocks’ energy: it darkened, like the sky before a lightning-dance, and acquired an urging, desperate edge….
It was giving a warning. And only moments later, Kutho sensed the humans.
Their scents drifted towards him across the open grass the far side of the rocks faced. Sweat, smoke, oil. Something harsher and almost bitter, reminiscent of the hempleaf Derl had once enjoyed chewing. He heard their voices, too, speaking the strange guttural words of the human language.
Battle instincts rushed down his veins and he straightened, stiffened his shoulders, held his hands out, fingers now tipped with glowing claws. A growl thrummed in his throat. Let me fight, his warrior’s blood cried. Let me fight and prove my strength as a makhorre!
But that was not to be. Sazuk came racing to their side of the cliff, Torlok in tow. “Come on! What’s the matter? Let’s go!”
I want to fight, he thought desperately. It would be easy. He sensed only three humans, and humans were always slower than Icim since they were weighted down with their strange clothes and weapons. But—they were not to fight humans, the Ifali. Sazuk had decided that long ago. They were to scatter and run, and regroup as soon as they no longer detected human energy.
That had kept them alive over the years, and it was a strategy that worked well: over the past five winters, only three of their number had been captured. Kutho forced down the instinctual blazing in his blood and turned and leaped down the rocks, following the others who were dispersing various directions into the forest undergrowth.
He heard flapping behind him, then a thud and a scream. Despite himself, he whirled around—and horror lanced through him. Torlok was pinned to the rock, pinned by a sticky black net, and Sazuk was slashing and ripping at the net with his claws, and the humans scents’ were growing stronger, their voices louder—
“Sazuk—” Kutho cried, moving closer. He had to help his bond-brother, absolutely had to.
But Sazuk shook his head wildly. “No! What are you doing? Get back! Go! Join the others, if anything happens to me then you must—”
“I won’t leave you! You’re my bond-brother, remember? And bond-brothers stay by each other’s side, no matter what!”
“Kutho, hurry up and run!”
The humans appeared over the crest of the rocks. Red-faced, breathing hard, the very opposite of graceful. Swathed in cloth, laden with weapons, they looked like fat monsters. When they beheld the scene they immediately started jabbering in excited tones, pointing at Sazuk and Torlok and Kutho.
Rage blazed inside Kutho again and he dropped to a crouch and his claws extended. So it’d come down to this. Good. No choice but to fight.
Through the fog of his battle-rage, he saw Sazuk’s eyes widen in horror, then saw Sazuk lift his arm—and pain seared through Kutho’s chest and he stared down and saw a bolt of dark energy sticking from his chest. Sazuk had…attacked him? That couldn’t be right. Bond-brothers didn’t fight one another.
The wound hurt, but it wasn’t fatal. Wasn’t bleeding. That realization alone allowed Kutho to regain his senses. With a rush he returned to his surroundings—to the battlefield. The humans had surrounded Sazuk and Torlok and were aiming weapons at them, and one of the humans was pointing a stick-like weapon at Kutho and Kutho’s lungs tightened and pain spasmed anew through his injury—that weapon, it looked like an innocuous long black stick, but that selfsame weapon had shot balls of fire at his father and mother and they had exploded in a mist of red and white—
Kutho turned and ran.
He ran until it felt like claws were tearing apart his lungs and hacking at his muscles. Then he collapsed. His body thudded against a tree and he scrabbled at it, seeking its comfort, the ancient life throbbing inside . His palms scraped against bark, his claws dug at the crust of grayish lichen, and unbidden he started to chant a prayer, one of the old songs his mother had taught him. A thanks to the trees, to the grass and stones and sky and loam, for loving and nourishing him because he was Icim and rightly belonged to them.
But the pain persisted in his chest, in his heart. A pain that had little to do with the bolt Sazuk had shot at him.
