S'aahiri

  Hunger wasn’t a new sensation. Even the younger of the Su’roi’s hunters like S’aahiri, who had grown under the prosperity of Saamu’s leadership, had known it often enough. She knew the vicious stabbing of it, like a blade thrust in her stomach being violently twisted. She remembered the crippling weakness, the haze of delirium that descended over your mind like cobwebs you couldn’t shake loose.

  Once, at the tail end of a brutal winter, her father had sent her for water. The walk was only a few minutes, but she had stumbled and fallen to the ground, and could not get herself to her feet again. She had lied there in the dirt until the sun dipped under the horizon, and the night’s chill left her with no choice. Move or die.

  Not two weeks later, when winter passed into spring and a successful hunt finally returned, she had used the strength of those first few meals to help build funeral pyres for the children too weak to survive. S’aahiri thanked whatever Gods were watching that things were not as bad as that. Yet.

  Still, knowing that it could be worse did not ease the weariness dragging at depleted muscles, making walking feel like wading through mud. Nor did it bring any cheer to the half-dozen hunters slogging through the snow behind her in sullen silence. Failure had stolen the last of it from them, and hours of trekking through barren snowplains with no sign of life beyond themselves had ensured that they all knew they had failed.

  The lake had been a bust. They still had folk on shifts there, guarded by contingents of hunters, but the handful of fish brought back could not feed the tribe. So, despite the fear of the beast and its wolves, S’aahiri had volunteered to lead small hunts out into the wild. Much like the lakes, these too had been fruitless, but it hadn’t stopped her from going. They had to eat.

  In the distance, the looming stone statue that overlooked their camp came into view through the dim, early evening light, the amber campfires sending plumes of smoke trailing into the sky. Fewer people than ever ambled around between the scattered tents, leaving the place looking eerily abandoned.

  She moved towards the hunters’ fire, and the others followed, heads low, avoiding the questioning looks from those tending fires or poking their heads from tents. They didn’t need to see hope fall away into disappointment and despair any more than they already had.

  Around a low-burning fire, sat Kess and Tali with a few of the others, Kess’ eyes twitched upwards and he nodded in her direction as she approached, but none of the others so much as reacted when S’aahiri and her party slumped onto their log-stools beside them.

  “Nothing?” Tali asked, eyes locked on the fire in front of her.

  “Nothing. Its like every damned animal with meat on its bones has vanished. I’ve never seen anything like it outside of winter.”

  “Well… Shit.”

  “No fish today, either,” Kess put in, poking at the fire with a blackened stick. “Few wolf sightings, though. Some tracks, too. They’re definitely still here. Only the Gods know what they’re waiting for. We’re not exactly fighting fit anymore.”

  S’aahiri frowned. After that first night, the plainswolves had been an ever-present danger. They stayed far enough away that you could almost believe the glimpses you got were your mind playing tricks on you—folk had thought that, for the first day or two.

  Then they had found some wolf-sign—tracks and the like—and were forced to accept the ugly truth: the wolves were still out there, watching them. Waiting for something. Most thought they were waiting until the tribe was so thoroughly starved, they’d be an easy meal. S’aahiri’s gut told her differently, though she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why.

  She held numb hands out towards the fire, its warmth hardly touching the deep chill that had laid down its roots beneath her flesh in the last few days. It would only get worse the longer she went without food. Even now, it was nearly all she could think about. Her brain seemed to be stuck, moving back and forth between picturing ways they might get food, and conjuring imagined images of her favourite meals.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “There’s always Kuchisoto,” Tali said suddenly, breaking the silence that had fallen back across them.

  “What?” S’aahiri asked, blinking owlishly.

  “Kuchisoto. We could take the tribe that way—trade for some food. Gods, they might even let us—”

  “Are you mad, girl?” a deep, indignant voice intoned from across the fire.

  The source, an older hunter by the name of Saki, balled his fists and glared in Tali’s direction. The bald man was ill-tempered at the best of times, but now S’aahiri could see that exhaustion alone kept him seated and prevented things from escalating quickly. She shifted on her seat; the movement causing her dagger’s sheath to dig slightly into her thigh, reassuring her it was still there.

  “Just hungry, Saki,” Tali responded, waving a tired, placating hand in the older man’s direction. “Hungry and not wanting to watch my people slow-starved and picked off by wolves.”

  “I don’t like it any more than you, but what you’re talking about—no tribe has requested Kuchisoto’s aid to feed itself in generations! The shame of it—”

  “The shame?” S’aahiri spoke before she could stop herself, an edge to her tone she hadn’t thought she had the energy left for. “The true shame would be for us to let our people starve without exhausting every alternative. We are hunters of the Su’roi. Our duty is to provide for our people by whatever means available to us.”

  Saki’s expression soured, and he rounded on her this time, the bluish-purple tint blooming across his cheeks not entirely down to the cold.

  “I remember a time not so long ago where our hunters had some pride,” he hissed, head shaking as if scolding an ignorant child. “It is a fool move, regardless. To ask Kuchisoto for aid would be to advertise our weakness to the other tribes. Do not allow a few years of peace to deceive you into thinking they wouldn’t take advantage in a heartbeat.”

  “For what gain? We’re half-starved, cowering under a rock in the arse end of nowhere after being forced to leave our home by some freakishly difficult to kill monster. We have nothing. Doesn’t exactly seem worth the effort,” Kess put in.

  S’aahiri couldn’t see him clearly in the low light, but his voice suggested the younger man was halfway through an overly exaggerated eye-roll.

  “The territory, boy. Our hunting grounds are healthy—not that you’d know it of late,” Saki clicked his teeth in frustration, shaking his head. “You are all a half-decade too young to truly understand what it means to be as weak as we are now. Saamu did his all to make us strong enough that you wouldn’t have to.”

  “You think the other tribes will try and take our lands from us?” S’aahiri asked, frowning.

  Saki scoffed. “I don’t think it, girl. I know it. How is that you suppose Saamu actually made us as strong as we are now? The stretches of the Deep waste we hunt for deer, our access to the sea in the east where we take out boats for whales—we paid for them in blood.”

  Saki sighed, the anger and frustration bleeding out of him, even as the other, older hunters that shared their fire nodded in dark agreement. A silence fell that hung so heavily in the air that S’aahiri hardly dared to breathe. Not in any of the histories and tales of their tribe’s greatest victories and triumphs she had been told had she heard this. Judging by Kess and Tali’s widened eyes, neither had they.

  “Our lands are stolen?” Kess asked.

  “Our lands were won, boy,” Saki retorted, an edge to his voice that sent a shiver dancing down S’aahiri’s spine. “All the lands the tribes of Tagaya now hold as their own was won from those who came before them. We are no different.”

  “I’d chance my arm that the other tribes don’t hide it from their children,” S’aahiri interjected, narrowed eyes fixated on the older man.

  “And you would be right, S’aahiri,” a voice behind them, placid as a lake on a windless day, agreed.

  “Alana?” S’aahiri couldn’t help but note that the edge Saki’s held had vanished, replaced by surprise and something more subtle, something S’aahiri couldn’t yet place. Fear seemed the closest guess, but that made no sense to her.

  “Yes, I came to check on S’aahiri after her hunt, but heard the topic of conversation, and thought I might join it,” Alana said, taking a seat beside S’aahiri.

  “After all, if we’re discussing how we came about our land, who better to hear from than the woman who helped Saamu plan its theft.”

  Alana glanced around at the others at the fireside, the shadows its light cast making her already drawn and tired face appear more gaunt than ever. Momentarily, anxiety twisted inside S’aahiri more than the hunger. The older woman had eaten less than even she had, and spent long hours alone inside her tent, often asking to be undisturbed as night fell.

  S’aahiri supposed this was better than doing what the rest of them did, staring into the black after the wolves they all knew were lurking there until heads pounded from the strain of it and dry eyes streamed with tears. Still, the Alana before them now seemed a pale imitation of the vibrant woman she had been even a few weeks prior.

  “Theft is not how I would describe what we did, Alana,” Saki said. “You do yourself and your husband a disservice.”

  Alana smiled faintly, but did not answer, instead choosing to address the other, younger hunters.

  “What do you know of how things were before Saamu became chief?”