Skytrails Part One: Skytrails, #1

By Nathan Lee Green

The future of all Brin'aatii hangs in the balance as a handful of individuals struggle to stake out a place for themselves and their people in a world invaded by hordes from other lands and mysterious and powerful spirit beings.

 

And underneath it all... a shocking truth.

 

Like all women of her tribe, Tenka is a hunter and warrior for her people who cares only about feeding her village and keeping the vile Easterlings away, but as the foreigners grow bolder and her village weakens, she will have no choice but to seek outside help.

 

Krii left both his native people in the underground city of legend and his adopted people of the forest long ago to enjoy a solitary and carefree life, but his concern for a friend in trouble and a momentary lapse in judgement lead him on a journey through his past to find answers, belonging, and maybe even redemption.

 

Sharn is the only ambassador between his own people and the never-ending multitudes of Easterners, but he is losing hope for a peaceful future between the two and fears all-out war, which his people seem to want but which he fears they will not survive.

 

Into this tense standoff enters the Sky Spirit, Twe'gotch, who changes everything and promises lasting power to whomever he favors—but is he really who and what he claims to be, and can anyone bring true peace to a land bathed in conflict and turmoil?

• Language: English
• Publisher: NLG
• Release date: Jul 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201013868

Book preview

Map

ONE

SETTLERS

Keten’tenka clawed her way up the dry, rocky edge of the ravine.

That was close, she thought. The broken remains of another warrior lay sprawled across the rocks at the bottom, near the shallow stream.

She pulled herself over the lip of the ravine and rolled onto her back. The enemy had been a worthy one. She had fought and died honorably, but she had been too predictable. Too careless.

Tenka had not been in a battle since before her childbearing years. When her turn had come to stay at the village and have children, she had only gone on small hunts, close to the village. No battles. Now, five summers had gone by and her youngest child had only just stopped nursing. Her people said a mother’s first battle was her greatest test.

They had knocked spears and traded cuts, Tenka and the enemy woman, all the while Tenka corraling the woman closer and closer to the edge of the ravine.

When the other woman had given up enough ground, Tenka planted her spear and pushed her full weight, feet first, into her enemy. The other woman had kept her spear up and sliced a ragged line across Tenka's shoulder.

They had both gone over the edge, but the other woman had flown, while Tenka had merely dropped, skidding down on her back until she could stop herself against a rock.

Tenka stood and retrieved her spear. She massaged her shoulder and stiffened at the pain. She exhaled slowly and looked down at the wound. More serious than she had thought. One of the others would bandage her later.

Tenka’s fellow warriors waved her up to the top of the bluff where the fighting had begun. The raiding band had been foolish to attack Tenka and her hunter sisters there, counting on greater numbers to overcome the downhill advantage. Trying to kill someone standing above you while running uphill? she thought. Foolishness. Even the hairy devil men know that much. Desperation makes people stupid.

Tenka joined the other twelve women, all of them alive and mostly whole. Jii looked to be the worst off, bleeding from a deep gash in her leg, below her hip. The two of them bore the most serious wounds.

'All dead or run off,’ said one of the other women. ‘We took a few things, not much of value. They are a dying tribe.’

'Keten’tenka,' said one of the women, addressing Tenka by her full name, 'Can you run?' The woman was called Ya’raeya, the oldest in the circle. She had seen thirty summers and was a grandmother now. She would not go out with the scouts much longer, maybe a few more seasons, but she was not ready to stay at camp with the men, children, and old women just yet. Until that time, she would continue as Chief of the Hunt.

Tenka nodded. Her shoulder was wounded, not her legs. She could run all day.

'Daer’jii?' asked Ya’raeya.

Jii, face full of anger, shook her head. Daer'jii was still young. Seventeen summers. She had been unable to become pregnant as yet, and worked all the harder to prove herself as a hunter. She would no doubt despise this and complain, being the weakest now due to her injury.

'I will stay with Jii,' Tenka said. ‘We are close enough, now, we can walk home without fear. The rest of you, go. May the rewards of the hunt be great.’

Ya’raeya nodded. A couple of the women made sympathetic or annoyed sounds. The breaking of a hunting party was inauspicious. Ya’raeya had little concern for such things, though, and took off at a run, whooping. The others followed, eleven hunters racing over the barren wilderness of the Kepta’jaera.

Tenka looked at Jii. If the two women stayed at the top of the bluff, they would see the dust cloud made by their sister hunters for some time.

'Bad luck to go on without all thirteen,' said Daer'jii.

‘Mmmm,’ Tenka nodded, 'But worse luck to drag along two cripples. Come, let's go upstream and wash our wounds.' Together they made their way down the bluff and north along the edge of the ravine, Tenka using her good arm to support Jii's weight.

As they neared the place where the ravine shallowed and the stream became easier to reach, the two women stopped. Tenka could not believe her eyes. On the far side of the stream, further on, a settlement had grown along the bank and up the gently sloping hillside above it.

'Do we continue?' Jii asked.

Tenka nodded, but she felt only half sure. The settlement looked large enough to support a full score of people, but she could not see whether any were there. She and her sister warrior were wounded. If any of the Easterlings wanted to fight, Jii and Tenka would not be much of a match.

The two women eased their way down to the close edge of the stream. Tenka lowered Jii onto a flat rock, in the shade of a small tree, then searched alongside the quietly gurgling water. She found a small choo’shii plant, snapped off some of its leaves, stuffed them into her mouth and chewed.

She filled her cupped hands with water from the stream, went back to Jii, and poured the cold water over the bloody gash. Jii winced.

Tenka rinsed the wound a few more times to clean off the blood and dirt, then took the wet wad of leaves from her mouth and pushed it onto the gash.

'Hold your hand over it,’ Tenka said, ‘Tight, like this.’

Jii winced again. ‘Yes, yes, okay.’

Tenka climbed part way up the slope and cut a thick stalk from a spotted green cacti. She returned to Jii and gestured for her to remove the wet leaves. Ignoring Jii’s gasp, Tenka brushed the broken end of the green stalk against the wound, trailing a layer of thick sap over the gash. She squeezed more sap from the cacti stalk onto the wad of chewed leaves, then replaced the green soggy mass on the injury.

Tenka pulled the leather legging off her right leg. Jii opened her mouth to protest. Bare legs brought dishonor to both the owner of the legs and the village. Tenka valued life over honor, but Jii was young and vain. She would have bled to death rather than bare her own leg. Tenka shushed Jii and wrapped the legging twice around Jii's upper thigh before tucking it tight.

'Thank you,' Daer'jii muttered. Tenka nodded.

Jii then treated Tenka's wounded shoulder in the same way, this time using her own leather sleeve to bind the dressing onto the shoulder. Jii would look a little childish with her arm bare, it was true, but there was no dishonor in it. All the same, Tenka saw the nobility of the sacrifice and thanked Jii for it.

A woman screamed.

On the other side of the stream, not a spear's throw away, a pack of little children stood gawking at the two warriors. Behind them, running from the settlement, the screaming woman made the kind of noise you would expect from a person being eaten alive by a wild animal.

Tenka grabbed Jii by the arm and pulled her up, half carrying her away from the stream and up the embankment. Behind them, the woman continued to scream, then a man’s voice shouted. Tenka turned and saw the man holding a bow, nocking an arrow.

Oh Great Spirit, Tenka thought.

She did something then she would not have believed she could do with her wounded shoulder. She grabbed Jii under the legs and picked her up off the ground, forcing the young woman to hold onto Tenka like a child holding onto her mother. Then Tenka moved in something between a walk and a run the rest of the way up the embankment. As they cleared the top, her legs gave out and both women fell hard.

Tenka heard the arrow flit past. She rolled onto her stomach and saw the man run across the stream, calf deep in water, pulling another arrow from a quiver on his belt. The woman scurried the children back toward the settlement.

These women, Keten'tenka thought, these daughters of the east, had they not borne their own children? If they could cross that desert of blood and pain, and in the end hold a child in their arms, the fruit of