Arn licked his lips and then delicately puckered the salt off of each finger. He drifted closer to Razaad, though he’d taken a break from the paddling. His stomach moaned happily as it started to digest the slab of cooked and seasoned meat he’d just enjoyed. He’d devised a mix of spice and sea salt on Scoa, to keep his hunting supplies longer. It didn’t taste incredible, but it worked. His body would be burning meat into strength for a few hours he hoped.
He synched sinew string closed on his pack and stood up. He was getting better at balancing on the rise and fall of the waves, he realized.
Razaad awaited him ahead, and it was not far. He could see trees, rocks. He could see the points of the village’s roofs like tiny triangles over the curve of the cliffs. At least a shore of pebbles awaited at the mouth of the lagoon. Arn preferred not to wreck into the cliffs again, and gingerly touched his scarred cheek.
Enough delaying, Arn thought. It was dawn, and he had a lot to do today. From his pack, he withdrew a small clay bowl he’d fashioned. He smeared the mud from it onto both hands and pressed them over his cheeks. He kept dabbing and kept dragging the thick, black paint over his face until a solid layer covered all of his visage.
Then he shoved his maimed guiding pole into the water once again. The plank he’d lodged at the front of the raft continued to plough the water and keep him semi-straight.
It was slow going. Before he neared the mouth of the lagoon, another hour had passed and the sun’s bottom edge had broken the ocean horizon. Arn smiled as he spotted the first fisherman standing on the beach, working away with a spear. The man froze when he saw Arn’s raft drifting along the coast of Razaad.
There were two rafts already bobbing stationary in the lagoon. Fishers working with nets and spears stopped what they were doing when Arn crested the gentle waves in the mouth of the small inlet. A few shouted back at the shore, while some waved.
Arn stared up the cliffs. There were workers on the beach, prepping the village’s third raft for fishing. These crafts were a lot smaller than Arn’s constructions, and would be torn apart by the swelling ocean waves he had overcome all night. Men coming down the gradual point in the cliffs were pausing their progress and pointing. Arn’s entrance stalled all of chief Logern’s workers, as he did something that had never been done before. He returned to Razaad.
“Ho! Arn!” cried one of the fishers as Arn drifted past the first of their small rafts. He looked down from his big boat, peering at the man around the corners of his scarred nostrils. The man gaped at Arn’s blasted face and dark war paint, and didn’t speak again.
Arn braced his feet as his raft drifted toward the shore. He tossed down his wooden pole with a clack that echoed off the cliffs and grabbed the shiny blade he’d found on Scoa from a leather loop in his supply pack. When the raft thudded into the shore, he took a few well-considered steps forward and dropped onto the beach. Though his marred face didn’t break its stern demeanor, his mind reeled—I’ve made it back onto solid ground… His fear of the Deep started to ebb.
“Arn, you made it!” someone said. Another fisher called out, “He’s still alive?!”
Logern stood up from a crouch near the unmanned fishing raft and stepped closer, tentatively. “Did you go to Scoa? Did you… succeed?”
Arn inhaled; air whistled through his rough-shaped nose holes and he licked his lips again. “I survived on Scoa for sixty-seven days,” he said. “And I rafted back, no thanks to your band.”
Logern stammered in reply, but Arn didn’t wait for him. He marched past, blade grazing his leg as he went. News of his arrival had travelled up the cliffs ahead of him. He grabbed a damp vine and hauled himself easily up the first few ledges. It was a gradual rise up rocky layers, and was nothing compared to the cliffs on Scoa’s southern edge.
Each worker he passed reacted differently. Some offered him a pat on the shoulder, or a word of congratulations. Some asked him questions he ignored, others demanded to know if this was some ploy.
Arn practically leapt up the last stair of the cliffs, to arrive amidst a crowd of women and old men. The crafts band. They watched in awe as Arn strode through their presence. An old woman put down her knitting and waved her hands toward him, a sign of awe. Again, some of the them asked questions he didn’t answer. A child ran up, one of the hunter’s sons. “Arn, what happened to your face?”
He kept walking, listening to the hubbub. He spotted a column of smoke a few roads over, and eventually got a glimpse of the ruined ashes of a burned down house. It seemed a few of their hovels had been claimed by the blaze, though nothing like that had happened since Arn was a child.
“I’ll be damned,” a man said, moving with a limp from the east-side of the town. It was Shar, the man who had doubted Arn every step of the way and given him the permanent twist in his finger. Arn had nearly died to Shar, but had splintered the once-hunter’s leg in the same duel.
Arn didn’t really stop walking, but slowed his pace cautiously. “Going to have a problem?” Arn asked, his voice a low growl.
Shar took another limped step. “I’m not picking any fights for a while…” he admitted. His wound had taken him longer to get used to it seemed.
Arn brushed past him and turned right at the broad opening in the center of the town. This didn’t go toward his home, where his brothers lived, or to his mother’s home, where his sisters lived, nor even to Thalla and her sister’s hut. It went up the hill to the home that overlooked them all. Thalla must have known, from the saltwater wave of rumours and words that preceded Arn, for his woman friend came striding out of a side-street, looking up the hill, before finding Arn behind her.
“You’re… you did it,” Thalla whispered. She stepped in his way and lowered her head for an embrace. Arn pressed his cheek to hers, reluctantly. A gesture of closeness and happiness. Her cheek twisted against his scar tissue as she tried to speak. “I can’t believe you came back…” she mumbled, and pulled back to stare at his face in concern. She was sweating—she must have been out on a hunt.
With a leather-clad shoulder, Arn brushed past her. He didn’t have an interest in talking about his time away with her right now. He was joyed and relieved to be back, but his wellbeing truly depended on one more action today. He strode briskly a few more paces up the slope, into the next wide clearing between buildings. The gathering area was already full of the crowd that was trying to keep up with him. Amazed hunters and fishers trickled in amidst the throngs of craftsmen.
Stone Spear waited on the slope at the far side of the gathering space. He stepped downhill and into the opening. “Arn,” he said, smiling. He used his namesake weapon like a walking stick. Arn had done what Stone Spear had urged him. He had proved they could cross the Deep and live to tell the tale. The proud leader took another cautious step forward and spoke loudly for all to hear. “You’ve returned from Scoa?”
A fierce nod was all the reply he received. Arn lifted his shiny blade over his head, twisting his mouth into an angry scowl. The sun gleamed off the blade and drew a sigh of curiosity from all those gathered. “Stone Spear!” he shouted. “I challenge you. I challenge you to the death!”
Duels against Stone Spear could only be to the death. Questioning the leader of the tribe would not be tolerated. If Arn had returned to the tribe under Stone Spear’s leadership, they might persuade some to join their cause. Or the leader could order them, begrudgingly. But this way, this would solidify Arn’s position, his feat of survival, his lesson for the tribe…
If he won.
Stone Spear had grown old, because of his ferocity and brute capability. He had defeated many challengers. The man lowered his square beard until it obstructed his neck from view and regarded Arn with a dark eye. He took another step forward, and Arn respectfully took one back. The crowd’s ear-ringing silence finally broke as everyone started to murmur about what was happening. Keeya and Arn’s mother arrived in the crowd with a hubbub of surprise, while Thalla simply watched Arn quietly.
“You challenge me…” Stone Spear murmured, lowering his ancient stone sceptre toward Arn.
Arn nodded, and spread his arms. “You’ve led our tribe into stagnation,” he declared. He needed this message, and his stand, to ring with a sharp unity. “I will defeat you and lead us into a new age.”
“Or you will die, for such insolence as to think that surviving the wind and waves will allow you,” The big man postured forward, his grey hair catching the light with a gentle glow, “to survive me.” Biceps as thick as Arn’s thighs bulged as the tribal leader brought his spear deeper into his stance. Stone Spear released one hand from its bare-knuckled grip on his spear and smeared some mud onto his finger. He drew lines under his eyes, straight from his nose to his ears. Under each he drew more lines, dragging his fingers down to his jawbone. He donned a fearsome fight mask and then wiped his hand dry on the corner of his fur tunic. With eyes peering over articulate war art, Stone Spear glared at Arn and barked, “Try it.”
Arn lifted his blade in front of him and leaned forward on the balls of his feet. Then, with a deep breath, he stepped forward and brought his sword down overhead as quickly and as aggressively as he could. Stone Spear lifted his namesake weapon over his head to knock Arn’s blade aside, but the overhead blow caught in one of the ancient stone ridges of the sceptre.
The spear broke, shaking Arn’s blade loud enough to cause a ringing blare. The two halves of the rock weapon were yanked downward by the other warrior’s dazed arms, glancing off Stone Spear’s shoulders unbalanced.
The crowd roared in shock and outrage. The Stone Spear that had governed their tribe for generations was split in two by Arn’s mysterious weapon. Arn stepped back a pace—the blade had come out of those dark depths and now done this? What had he done?
But Stone Spear didn’t step back for long. He twisted one end of the broken stone weapon to knock Arn’s shiny blade aside and slam bodily into his enemy. Arn dug in his heels and turned to one side. His burly adversary slid to the right and, depositing the other end of his broken weapon, grabbed a wooden spear from a man near one of the huts. In a smooth move, he drove the point in a jab at Arn’s chest.
Arn swiped his blade to the side, knocking aside the small rock tip. Stone Spear moved in a flurry, peppering him with stabs and distancing his opponent with a wide swipe. Arn readied his strength and focused it in sudden slash against the top of the spear when his enemy next thrust at him. The spear point clunked into the mud underfoot and Arn stepped to the right of his opponent, dragging his weapon up the length of the spear swiftly. Stone Spear stumbled to get out of the way, but the blade skinned his forearm and clipped his bicep.
Stone Spear hurled the broken shaft in his hand at Arn, catching the survivor off balance long enough to grab another weapon from the crowd. When he jabbed again, like the start of one of his might flurries, Arn ducked under the first thrust, grabbed the shaft of the spear under hand and shoved inward, close to Stone Spear’s torso.
The blade slid through the fur tunic and, like it had before, entered the burly man’s torso as smoothly as Arn’s guiding pole in the water. Stone Spear cried out, and stumbled back, as Arn’s blade spilled red splatter across the space between them. The big man grunted and fell to his knees for a moment. With clenched teeth, Stone Spear shoved one knee straight, coming halfway to his feet. As Arn came at him again, the tribe’s leader stabbed at his enemy once more. Arn hacked at the haft of the spear with all his strength, cutting clean through it with his blade. Stone Spear’s jarred hands, weakened by his wounds, dropped the reverberating weapon.
And Arn, victorious, drove his sword into his leader’s ribs once more, this time stepping close. Blood had collected in the corner of Stone Spear’s, but the man nodded once, almost proudly. Arn had done what he had needed to do, and he had done it well. Arn lowered his eyes from the man’s pained face. The sun beat down on Arn’s triumphant moment. The blood on the handle of the sinister blade dripped into the dirt around Arn’s clenched toes, and Arn knew the bittersweet taste of destiny.
“For Razaad,” he whispered.
“For Razaad,” Stone Spear murmured quietly, and slid backwards off of Arn’s arm. His back hit the mud and his eyes rolled back in his head.
The crowd stared at Arn in a daze. Arn lifted his magical blade overhead, its chipped edge blocking the sun from his eyes. He looked at all of them, turning in a circle and letting out his breath. Mumbled comments and disbelieving mutterings surrounded him until he raised his voice and spoke to his tribe as a man. “Jorik the Embalmer, do your duty! Has Stone Spear died?”
Jorik broke through the ranks and dropped to a hunch beside their fallen leader. He looked up at Arn in fear and nodded. “He is, and his spear… it’s broken.”
“It’s broken,” Arn repeated, turning to face the crowd. “The Stone Spear has broken. I lead the tribe now. I survived the Deep, and I survived Scoa Isle. Change is coming to Razaad, and I lead it. If you have otherwise to say, say it now…”
No one spoke. In that moment, Arn could have heard someone drop a pebble. But no one did. They stared at him in silence.
“Thalla,” Arn called out. She stepped forward, a small smile on her lips. She knew this was good for her too. “Will the hunter’s serve me?” he demanded.
“They will,” Thalla said.
Arn nodded. “Keeya!” A moment passed before his sister had the courage to step forward into the eyes of her entire tribe. Arn asked, for all to hear, “Will the craftsmen serve me?”
“They will,” Keeya whispered. Then, louder, she said, “They will.”
“And Logern,” Arn intoned, his voice low. If Logern or his skilled supporter, Taran, stepped up to challenge the new order, Arn might face a real challenge. He watched as the sturdily built fisherman paced out of the crowd, into the circle where the tribe’s leadership stood. Over one arm he slung an object, dressed in a fur blanket. “Will the fishermen serve me?”
Logern bobbed his head. “They will,” he said. He brandished the object in his hands, letting the fur slide off. It was a guiding pole as long as a spear, with a smoothly carved wide flap at the bottom, much like Arn’s makeshift tool had been. He held it horizontally and lowered his posture to bestow it into Arn’s hands. “We call this an oar,” he said.
“Why did you conceal this from me when I first constructed my own raft?” Arn asked, staring at the paddle.
“We never learned how to straighten the turning of the raft, and, to be honest,” Logern said, his voice dropping low, “I didn’t want you to succeed. But you have, despite all that. And I will play my part, as you see fit.”
Arn ran his tongue across his teeth. His face might not have been ruined by the cursed rocks of Scoa if Logern had been more forthcoming. But to pick a second fight today… Arn knew his leadership secured a delicate peace. Logern could easily head an opposition. He held the oar at his side and bobbed his head. “See that you do,” he said, and watched as Logern took a step back from him.
“With the leadership of the bands, I will begin a new task for our tribe,” Arn said. “We will learn how to safely cross the Deep, and we will prosper.”
Thalla nodded and gave him a wordless cheer. Her cry brought out others, though the general populace of the tribe was not a joyous audience. A few of the older hunters scowled at Arn’s claims, seeing him still as a scrawny child that had tagged along with them during their prime. But everyone looked at him and his shiny blade in awe.
He raised it overhead again. “We will defeat the Deep!” he cried, and a few more cheers sounded. Then he lowered his arm, and his voice, and said, “Thalla, Logern, Keeya… I’d like you three to come to my hut—old Stone Spear’s hut—with me. I have something to show you.”
Thalla’s smile matched the way Arn felt inside, but she respectfully fell in with the others and climbed the hill with Arn. He had done it, at last. He would hunt again, he knew. He would not rule as Stone Spear had. He would lead his tribe to hunt on the shores of unknown islands. Arn could barely keep contained his victory as he led the schemers, friend and foe, up the hill to his new home.