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The Hunt (Part One)

Like the shadows of fast-moving clouds sweep across the land, so too did the hunters sweep across the grassland and slip into the forest, spread out far along the tree line from north to south. Thin sunlight punching through gray cloud cover drifted through broad leaves and drooping fronds to dapple the forest floor in shallow pools. Odessa waded through these pools of scant morning light, relishing the warmth on her skin. It had been more than a year since she and her father had entered these woods and felt the sun splash so brazenly upon their skin. Egende had only let the villagers hunt and forage within the forest for a few scattered weeks in the last five years. As blight gnawed harvests to almost nothing and the ground grew sour, Egende barred their entry into the sacred wood. No matter what goods the village proffered, of which the village had little to give, no sonorous bellow came echoing off the mountainside to invite them in. The peaked archway at the mouth of the forest path remained blocked by a thickening curtain of ivy and vines strung by forest spirits.

Sick trees dotted the outer reaches of the forest, what few leaves remained on the spindly branches were brown and curled. Bare and gnarled branches extended toward holes in the canopy, moth-eaten holes in a tapestry of greenery. Deeper puddles of light accumulated at the base of dead trees.

A high-pitched warble above her head. She jumped at the noise and looked up to see a green paradise bird sitting on a low branch, its plumage like an iridescent emerald in the canopy. It watched her, head cocked, then puffed out its chest and let out another shrill, bubbling call.

She sighed and relaxed the bowstring, the shaft of jungle cedar gliding smoothly against the lacquered bow. The bird shook its head and stared at her, one black eye turned to engulf her, a tiny version of herself captured in the glassy stare. The bird let out another warbling cry and Odessa grimaced. Yes, let the whole forest know I’m here while you’re at it. The bird continued to watch her with placid intensity. She began to turn and then, in a sudden flapping of shimmering emerald wings, the bird was gone, lost in lush greenery.

She continued deeper into the forest, the footfalls of her hide-swaddled feet no more than a whisper in the woods. The occasional bird squawked in the distance and insects chirruped half-heartedly yet the forest was unnervingly quiet, seemingly aware of the hunters’ ill intentions. She passed fewer dead and dying trees as she went deeper into the woods. The undergrowth grew thicker around her feet and she deferred to a game trail cutting through the brush. She paused often, listening intently. Her eyes darted from tree to tree, searching for movement or a break in the pattern of verdant life. Like bugs beneath her skin, anxiety skittered incessantly across her nerves.

Egende’s wrath was swift and brutal. In the stories she had heard since she was young, it appeared without warning despite its great size and brought the forest’s vengeance upon anyone caught threatening the sanctity of the woods. It was nature’s rage incarnate. The forest’s fury made manifest lurking in every shadow.

The sun was at its apex when she stopped beneath a sprawling acacia, a rarity as high as she had climbed in the foothills. In the shade of twisting branches and thick shelves of foliage, she leaned against the furrowed bark and caught her breath. Her fingers massaged a knot from an aching leg. Her eyes still scanned the forest around her. The top of the slope she had just climbed gave her no better vantage than the low ground. Deep within the forest, all she could see were straight trunks of ancient ironwoods and stinkwoods. Down the slope, she could see the purple-tinged leaves of a hard pear tree. Nothing moved other than the bushy tree tops swaying high above. Beneath the canopy, the forest floor was still and that tranquility permeated her body, weighing her down with a numbness she found more disquieting than serene.

A distant whistle, sharp and long, came from the south. Odessa straightened. She listened, unsure if she had really heard it or not. Silence packed her ears like wads of cotton.

Another whistle, also from the south. This whistle was much closer, a subtle melody rising in pitch before it trailed off, swallowed by the silence of trees.

Odessa whistled in reply and padded south, ducking beneath branches and fern fronds and vines, vaulting over fallen trees, rotten and covered in moss. One hand steadying the cumbersome quiver on her back and the other holding her bow, she raced through the dense wood. A swift breeze through the undergrowth.

After a while she paused and panted a bit, her head cocked and ears alert. When she heard nothing she whistled, a short inquiring chirp. Deeper in the forest came a thrilling reply. She followed the reply over a ridge thick with ferns and false violets.

Halfway down the other side of the ridge, her father and Ubiko were crouched beneath a cluster of soapberry bushes with a half dozen of the other hunters. Odessa padded down the hill and drew close to her father’s side. “What is it?”

Her father pointed to wide ruts in the leaf-carpeted ground not far from the bushes. The smell of soft, loamy dirt mingled with the faint vinegary scent of fallen soapberries. “The dirt is freshly torn up. Tracks lead down into the ravine. The two young ones.”

“As big as you, they are,” Ubiko added. “Maybe bigger even.”

“Where’s the sow?” she asked, hesitant to even say the god’s name in such a sacred place. As if her words would cause it to appear. Even still, her hushed words seemed much too loud in the placid forest stillness.

“No sign of it,” her father said.

“We bring it to us then,” Ubiko said.

“What now?” Odessa asked, hoping her jittering nerves had not put a tremble in her words.

Ubiko smiled. “We kill gods.”

The hunters spread out along both sides of the ravine. Creeping along the top of the ridge, her steps deliberate and light and an arrow nocked on a taut bowstring, she caught a glimpse of their prey. Two young boars rooted in loamy dirt. Boarlings almost as tall as she was, their bristling backs coming to a hump at their shoulders that would reach just under her chin. Their tusks were still short nubs poking out from beneath their lips. In the hundreds of years they had lived, they had lost the light-colored striped coats of infancy, their hair starting to grow coarse, taking on a mottled shade of reddish brown. The markings of divinity taking shape in their hair. The glimmering, incandescent lines started in a half-moon shape beneath their eyes and ran down their backs with smaller lines branching off and spiraling down toward their bellies. The shimmering lines of pale yellow were still faint and pale but if allowed a thousand years of maturing they would be beautiful, golden, and bright as the sun.

Odessa and the other archers hid atop the ridge as the spearmen and spearwomen crept along the ravine basin from either end. The hunters’ noose tightened around the twin boarlings snuffling in the dirt for roots and tubers.

Her middle finger played along the eagle feather fletching of the nocked arrow, the arrow pinched between her thumb and the crook of her index finger, as she watched the divine boarlings. One of the boarlings, slightly larger than the other, scampered ahead. The smaller of the two followed, snorting as it bucked and raced after its twin. Odessa’s bowstring remained taut but she did not draw it any further.

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

The first boarlings skidded to a halt. The second ran past it and then stopped, its body tense. They stood staring at the spear hunters crouched in the undergrowth not twenty meters away.

Odessa pulled the bowstring to her cheek. The bow tilted, her eye focused down the shaft of the arrow on the smaller boarling. For a moment the entire forest paused. The young gods were frozen and fascinated and fearful of the strange creatures in the bush. An inquisitive snort. The larger of the two boars took a wary step forward.

Her arrow hissed in the air, quick as a snake bite. The forest’s stillness, so laden with tension, now broke, shattered by a chorus of hissing arrows. A high-pitched squeal of terror. Her arrow buried deep in the smaller boarling’s side. It jumped and turned to run and two more arrows sunk into its flesh.

The boarlings turned and bolted. They were met with spearpoints. The smaller boarling darted toward her father, its eyes wide with panic. With serpentine finesse her father sidestepped and his spear snapped forward and met the charging boar. A terrible squealing. Desperate, pitiful squeals. It bucked and jumped.

Two spears met the larger boarling. One in its throat to the crossbar, the other in its side. It charged into the spear hunters, shoving them to the ground, the handles of their spears ripped from their hands. It dashed past them, trampling a hunter who screamed, clutching a mangled leg turned to meat. Odessa, halfway down the ravine, let another arrow loose, catching the boar in its haunch. Its back leg jerked. It stumbled for a moment and spears came down from all sides and pinned it, squealing and thrashing, to the ground. Its eyes bulged white with fear as it struggled to get up. Its front legs dug in the dirt, trying to pull itself free from the spears holding it down. A spear pulled from its back end and snapped forward to ram the point deep in its rib cage. The boarling expelled a throaty wheeze and its body stiffened and shuddered. Then it relaxed, the vigor draining from its body as it slumped over, bleeding into the dirt.

Beneath her father’s spear, the smaller boarling kicked its legs in pitiful spasms. The pathetic kicks growing weaker and weaker. A plaintive whine as her father put his full weight on the spear. And then its twitching bulk slackened and grew still, the luster already fading from its coat.

Odessa rushed down the rest of the slope, her mouth half-open with shock. We did it, she thought. We really did it. In some way, she still had not believed it possible to bring down gods, even young gods. Iron should not be able to pierce a god’s hide. And yet there they laid, coarse hair wet with blood, the ground beneath them greedily soaking up the pooling ichor.

“Get back!” her father snapped in a sharp whisper. “Do not get close! Do not touch the blood!” The hunters milling around the boarlings, still numbed by their achievement, backed away from the bodies.

“We really did it!” Odessa said, a bit too loudly. Her heart still pounded and her blood was running hot.

Her father turned and smiled as she approached, a soft smile beneath a ghoulish skull, warm eyes peering through the mask. He was wiping his spear head with a thick cloth, sopping up thick blood that had reached all the way to the haft. “So we did. All these years, I never thought it truly possible.” His smile grew. “Yours was the first arrow in the air, I saw.”

A rush of warmth came to her cheeks. “I guess so.”

“Don’t be modest, Odessa. This is too momentous an occasion to be modest.” He finished wiping the dark iron point and then tossed the blood-soaked rag on the ground. Her father’s strong hand laid on her shoulder and squeezed. “The honor of these kills is yours, first and foremost.”

A mixture of pride and love bloomed in her chest, warm and buoyant. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. He hugged her back. Her cheek against his bare chest, she could hear the beating of his heart, the steady thump of a heart so full of love for the daughter that should have been a son. He had never resented her for being born a girl. Had always let her join him on his hunts despite the whispered nattering of others in the village. He raised her as he would a son and allowed her to be both a hunter and a woman. And for that, she loved him more than she could ever put into words.

Their embrace broke, a picturesque moment dissipating and dissolving back into reality. “Now the difficult part,” he said.

As the youngest and, arguably the fastest among them, Odessa was sent to fetch the goats and the butchers in their aprons and thick gloves and lead them to the hunters’ quarry. The hunters melted into the trees at the top of the ravine, watching for Egende, the satisfaction of their victory now loaded with the gravity of what they had done. Tension filled the forest like a flammable gas, settling heaviest in the belly of the ravine where the young gods laid, their bleeding now done and the ground stained dark with ichor.

She raced along the faint game trail that had brought the boarlings to the ravine. Past the copse of soapberries. Descending down the foothills her legs extended, bounding down steep slopes, dodging trees and ducking branches.

They would have to bleed and butcher the boarlings and load up the godlings’ meat in the wagons all before Egende learned of their treachery. Godsblood was poisonous but it would not be as potent in the young boarlings. That was the hope at least. If they could get out of the forest with their quarry without alerting Egende, the village could eat for months. Until the next harvest at least. A harvest that would hopefully be better.

Whipping past her in her flight were more acacias and palms, more bright orchids and trumpet vine. The slopes grew slighter and the descent markedly less breakneck. She slowed to a brisk jog, sweat stippling her skin and beading up beneath the stifling clay of her mask. The sun pouring through thin clouds made the lowland forest sweltering, moisture rising from the lush plant life becoming caught in the thick canopy.

A distant cracking noise. A groan and a heavy thud. Odessa skidded to a stop. Her heart skipped a beat. She turned back, peering back the way she had come, listening intently. Fear tickled her guts. A rumbling far up in the foothills. Something massive crashed through the underbrush. Thoughts of coming back to the ravine to an angry god awash in a bloodbath kept emerging from the back of her mind. Her father’s mangled body crushed beneath gigantic hooves. Everyone she knew ripped to pieces, disemboweled, and turned to gore in the mud.

She took off back up the hill, legs pumping furiously. Barbs of fear dug into her, spurring her on ever faster. Branches whipped her arms and legs and face. Undergrowth reached to trip her but she bounded over it all.

Up in the ravine, one hunter lay wounded with a broken leg, the rest unprepared for such a beast. Spears needed to be mended and arrows replaced. Without the element of surprise and missing two hunters, they stood no chance against a mature god, a wroth, raging god. We never should have done this. No good comes of taking on gods. We got greedy. Got greedy and we pay for it now. The slopes grew steeper. She charged up a hill, pushing off any tree and propelling herself higher. Not we. Them. My father. My uncle. Everyone I know.

A booming bellow rose nearby, echoing through the trees, and shaking the earth itself. Birds took flight in a panicking flutter of wings. She clamped her hands over her ears but the cry reverberated in her bones, in her teeth, and rattled her brain. She squeezed her eyes shut and doubled over. Her legs gave out beneath her and she slumped onto the ground. Her palms pressed tighter against her ears. She could still hear it. Hear the pain and the unbridled rage in that bellowing.

Then it stopped and all that she could hear was her own screaming. She blinked water from her eyes, picked up her bow, and scrambled to her feet. Another crash and thud somewhere up ahead. The whole span of foothills trembled with booming footsteps. As she crested another hill, she reached back to the quiver flopping on her back and took one of her three remaining arrows and nocked it.

Scaling the hill up to the ravine, a massive stitch tearing at the tender flesh of her side, another thunderous squeal split her head. A squeal like the heavens had split open, a squeal like the end times. She continued running, her head ringing and her lungs struggling to draw breath. Her balance wavered and her stumbling feet slid on leaf litter. Staggering forward and cresting the hill, there was nothing to see but two dead boarlings lying at the bottom of the ravine. She stumbled downhill amid the rumbling, searching for any sign of her father or Ubiko or anyone.

The ground shifted, pitching beneath her feet and spilling her down the hill head-first. She tumbled and came to a jarring stop at the bottom of the ravine. The squeal tapered off but a ringing echoed in her head. Crashing footsteps growing closer.

“Odessa!” Her father’s voice came from behind her. She lifted her head and saw him farther down the ravine, frantically waving from the top of the ridge. “Odessa!” He came racing down the slope toward her.

A great crash from the other side of the ravine. She scrambled to her hands and knees and stopped, her heart pausing midbeat.

Above her, the great boar god of the Arabako, Egende, rose above the ridge. It swung its head and shoved a tree aside in a burst of splinters. Its four long, curled tusks, each thicker than her father’s arms were wide, and gored the wood before the beast’s massive frame shoved the falling tree away to come crashing down the ravine.

It stopped at the top of the ridge, its back snapping low-hanging branches. The streaks of light on its coal-black coat was as bright as a sunburst. Odessa blinked and an afterimage remained, floating in the black of her eyelids.

“Odessa!” her father screamed. “Run!”

The god saw its children, lying slain at the bottom of the ravine. Its eyes burned with grief and rage. A blood-chilling, bone-rattling, skull-splitting scream rose toward the heavens.

Egende charged towards Odessa.