Category: Arn

Arn jumped awake.  Part of the grass binding he had made for his face tore as he yanked his face away from the stone he’d been sleeping on.  He cried out, half shriek, half moan—his face throbbed with an agony he’d never known every moment that adrenaline did not blind him to it.  He scrambled back, as his blurry sight clarified, and pressed his back against a tree.  A wooden shaft reached through the nook of his elbow; the stone he had tied to the spear-point rested near his feet, ready to wield.

He was alive, he realized, panting.  He was still alive. Continue reading Arn 23

Stone pebbles and mossy dirt had ground into Arn’s forearms, knees, shins, and one shoulder, as he had wrestled his raft down the slope on the rollers he had made with Thalla.  It had taken nearly two hours, but Arn wiped his skin clean again with a fur rag after hammering a peg in between a few rocks.  A brilliant gleam pierced the air over the island as the sun broke the horizon at last.

He was sitting on a log of driftwood, watching the salt waves lapping his creation against the narrow gravelly beach.  This was the only stretch of coast this side of their lagoon that wasn’t met with jutting boulders or stark cliffs.  Arn knew because he had walked the whole length of it.

As dawn crept across the mathhar forests and saltwater bogs of Razaad, Arn rose from his tree-trunk seat and picked up the enormous guiding pole he had prepared.  It was time. Continue reading Arn 22

Arn raised a short stick over his shoulders and brought the stone fastened to its head beating down.  It took five hits, nearly six, to pulverize the base of the straight mathhar sapling enough for Arn to rip it forth.  He tapped the ax against the thin branches, splintering each finger-wide sprout off of the main trunk, until he was left with an arm-thick pole.  He tossed it in the pile with the others. Continue reading Arn 21

Rain pelted the wall of Jorik’s healing hut, while Arn stretched his hands towards his feet and winced as his torso contracted.  He didn’t stretch far—he’d been told his broken ribs would take up to three months to heal.  He examined the scar on his finger.  Unlike his other scars, this one had seized up some of the skin around it, and, although Arn could still move it, a stiff ache stopped his full use of it. Continue reading Arn 20

“You have another visitor,” Jorik said, quietly.  He only attended the hut where Arn lay recovering twice each day now.  During each visit, he helped Arn slowly walk around the circumference of the hut, once or twice.  This morning was different, he tapped Arn’s forehead until the wounded hunter awoke, and said, “You’ll want to sit up for this one.” Continue reading Arn 19

The smoke—scorched sea-root and sandy grains of ground teba flower—kept Arn in a daze between the dreamworld and the real one.  When he wasn’t chatting with the critters and gods of the world after, he was being moved about by Jorik in a strange assortment of stretches and exercises to prevent his muscles from wilting completely.

“It’s ironic, don’t you think,” Arn mumbled, one day, “That you’re both my healer and my embalmer?” Continue reading Arn 18

The enormous corridor was built by contorted swamp reeds, soft under Arn’s bare feet, and the roof of tree branches obscured the sky from view.  There were three things in the corridor with Arn—his spear, a stream of liquid water than ran along the wall, and a water scale, a reptile that clod along beside him.

Where am I? Arn wondered.  Is this the dreamworld? Continue reading Arn 17

As Arn twisted in the mud to catch the muscular forearm before it broke another of his ribs, he tried to think if there had been another way.  He had summoned all of his hunting band before him to put a stop to their subordinate behavior, their doubts, their questions. And now he fought. Continue reading Arn 16

Shar paid Arn a visit, late one afternoon.  His presence, or that of Onolan, or another hunter named Panatt—they seemed to be around him always now.  On hunts, one of the three was nearby all the time.  And when he left his hut, he spotted them.  There had not been any in-fighting since Thalla and Shar fought, while Arn lay on the sickbed.  But the simmering discontent had almost started to boil. Continue reading Arn 15

Among his many responsibilities gathering herbs, treating the injured and preparing the dead, Jorik the Embalmer collected information and advised Stone Spear and the other chiefs as a sage.  He discerned omens from the old signs, but had once tried to make a better raft.  Did that fit with the old signs?

A storm struck a few days after his conversation with Logern.  The fishermen would not help him reach Scoa, but Arn could do it on his own.  Jorik’s help would speed things up and convince the hunters there was some sense to Arn’s plans.  All Arn wanted was more than Razaad offered him. Continue reading Arn 14