The Lexal Affair
Copyright© 2026 by D M Arnold
Chapter 11: Hunting the Hunter
Nyk joined the band of village men as they headed into the forest. He observed that most of them were carrying metre-long staffs similar to the one carried by the chief, and wearing small baskets of plaited fiber.
“Step quietly,” Bek admonished Nyk. He attempted to modulate his tread.
Bek gave a signal and the troop stopped. He pointed into a tree.
One of the men opened his plaited basket and removed an object that looked to Nyk to be as long as his little finger. It was pointed, with a fiber- wool plug at the end. He slipped it into the end of the staff, brought it to his lips and exhaled.
The dart hit a four-legged bird-like creature. It took wing, flew a short distance and fell to the ground.
“That was a fire plant thorn,” Bek explained. “Very deadly -- one can kill a man.”
“Is that our dinner?” Nyk asked.
“Oh, no. That’s the bait. Today we’re hunting the hunter.”
Bek carried the dead bird into a clearing. Other men in the troop produced lines of fiber cord. They tied the dead bird to a log, and tied lines to the wings and head. Some men climbed trees and together they operated the bird carcass like a marionette, causing it to strut and flap.
One of the men motioned Nyk to take cover behind some brush. They waited as the puppeteers manipulated the dead bird. Another man imitated a call.
The Lexalese blue sun reached its zenith, casting its harsh light onto the clearing. Bek nudged Nyk and pointed in the distance. A large six-legged creature was making its way into the clearing. Nyk glimpsed the animal’s face and assumed it was the carnivore to which Nayva alluded.
Bek grabbed Nyk’s shoulder. “We wait until our prey has seized the bait,” he whispered. “At that point, he is committed and much more vulnerable. Patience is the art of the hunt.”
The animal slunk low to the ground and approached the flapping bird. The puppeteers made the bird stop and appear to look in the direction of the predator. The animal stopped in its tracks. The bird resumed its mating display. Now within striking distance, the predator reared back, grasped the bait with its forepaws and sank fangs into it.
The brush around the clearing erupted with the village men, each loading and shooting darts into the carnivore. The creature dropped the bird, rolled to dislodge the darts and yelped in pain. It turned and began to run, but the fire plant toxin was doing its work. Paralysis spread to its limbs and it fell to the ground. Its eyes clouded over and the beast expired with a groan.
The men stood and whooped. They brought poles, tied up their prey and headed back to the village.
Once there, the men turned their catch over to the women, who skinned and dressed it. A group of women took the hide, laced it on a stretcher and began scraping it with bone and metal tools. Another group impaled the carcass on a pole, placed it over the fire, and supervised youths who took turns rotating it.
One of the village men gestured to Nyk. “Help me to construct a screen,” the man said. “My ward is tending the roast.”
Nyk walked to a spot near a pile of long, thin sticks. The villager picked up a pole and stuck one end in the ground. He grasped a tool made from a hollow log with a rock lashed to one end, slipped it over the end of the pole and hammered it into the ground. He pointed to where he wanted other poles driven and Nyk obliged.
The villager showed Nyk how to weave the sticks around the poles. Nyk picked up sticks and took turns with the man building up a panel of woven twigs. “My name is Gan,” he said.
“Where do you gather these sticks?” Nyk asked.
Gan pointed toward a section of forest near the village. “That’s a coppiced wood,” he replied. “We cull out the sticks to keep the growth straight.”
“What do you use to cut them?” Gan held up a saw. “This looks like bronze.”
Gan nodded. “Deposits of copper and tin are found in the hills.”
“Do you have iron for steel?” Nyk asked.
“I know of iron,” Gan replied. “That blade you gave Kyto is of iron. It’s too much trouble, too difficult to work. Long ago we used it, but not now.”
Nyk continued to weave the sticks onto the poles. He noticed a village girl standing near him. “Hello, Vipsa. Doesn’t Kyto need your services this afternoon?”
“I’ve washed his crockery. Now, he’s busy studying his staffs, so he sent me on my way.”
“Can you read the staffs?” Nyk asked.
“Some -- a little.” She picked up a stick and drew in the dirt. “This means leaf ... this is blue ... blossom ... low ... vine. This means leaf from the low, blue-blossomed vine. Kyto doesn’t know I know this.” She smiled and rubbed the symbol from the dirt with her foot. “I’ve just come from delivering Savi her pills.”
“Who is Savi?”
“She’s an old woman on the far side of the village -- over by the pottery kiln. Years ago, Savi was paired with the chief’s sponsor when he was a youth -- he’s dead now. She’s ornery and cantankerous, but the chief is fond of her. Savi has a weak heart...” Vipsa thumped her chest with her fist. “She must take medicine each and every day. I hate visiting her -- she’s such an old scold.”
“So one of your responsibilities is to deliver pills to her.”
“Yes -- ten days’ supply. I’m happy for it. It means I must endure her questions and scolding only once each ten days. I deliver medicine to others, too. Most are happy to see me but not Savi. I made her pills this morning.”
“You made the pills?” She made a shy smile and nodded. “Kyto trusts you to do that?”
“He watches me, but I make them without his assistance.”
“How do you make pills, Vipsa?”
“I shouldn’t give away Kyto’s secrets.”
“I won’t tell a soul.”
“You do seem to have his confidence already...” Vipsa bit her lip, looked around, smiled and her eyes sparkled. She lowered her voice. “First we must know which herbs and how much. For Savi’s condition, we use three leaves from a blue herb, and one root from a red blossom -- that’s one dose. If we’re making ten days’ worth, we gather thirty leaves and ten roots. Sometimes we add other herbs or some sweet syrup to hide a bitter flavor.” She giggled. “Kyto and I agree that Savi is so bitter already she won’t notice the taste. The leaves and roots we prepare the usual way...”
“By chopping, grinding and steeping in boiling water?” Nyk asked.
“Yes. Then we strain it and reduce it to a third. The resulting liquor we mix with flour from a dried tuber and some sticky gum from a shrub. It makes a thick paste, which we roll on a board until it’s long and narrow. This we cut into twenty equal parts...”
“Twenty?”
“Yes -- two pills for each dose. Each one we then roll into a ball to make it easier to swallow, and these we dry by the fire. Once dry we put them into a small jar, and then I take them to Savi and get my scolding.”
“What does she have to scold YOU for, Vipsa?”
“She complains about the pills -- sometimes they’re too big and hard to swallow, other times they’re too small and hard to pick up. Of course, they’re all the same size ... If it’s not the pills, it’s something else. Sometimes I arrive too late and sometimes too early. Savi always has some complaint...”
“It sounds like a lot of work ... making pills.”
“We started yesterday, after the mid-day meal,” Vipsa replied. “Some pills are easy -- the ones in which we make dried leaves into powder and mix it with the flour. That won’t work for Savi’s pills. The easiest are the bark sticks. We just cut those to length ... and, of course, the tisanes. Kyto has some complicated recipes that use burned stone. I don’t know how to make those, but he said he’d let me help the next time he needs some.”
“I’m amazed at how much you need to know, Vipsa ... at how much you already know.”
She looked into Nyk’s face. “There -- I’ve told you about the pills, Nykkyo. Now, you tell me of your world.”
“Which one?”
“You have more than one?
“I have two. Floran and Earth -- three if you count Lexal.” He bent a twig around the end pole and tucked it among the others. “Lexal is another world right here on this planet.”
“Tell me of your homeworld, then.”
“Floran -- it’s where I was born. Andra was born there, too.”
“Is she the white one?”
Nyk nodded. “It’s very different there. The climate’s warm -- so warm people go around half naked.” He picked up another stick and began weaving it onto the poles. “There are no animals on the land -- only in the sea. And, none of them can we eat.”
Vipsa sat cross-legged on the ground. “What do you do for food, then?”
“We grow the food.”
“Grow it?”
“Yes.” He picked up another stick. “Our food grows under great domes.”
“Domes? What are they?”
Nyk pointed to the lodge. “Like that, only much, much larger. You could fit your entire village, many times over in the corner of one of the domes -- and we have thousands of them. The roof is transparent, like ... like ice. It lets in the sunlight.”
“You can’t go out and gather food?”
Nyk began weaving another stick. “No. We must work very hard to have food for everyone.”
“What is your village like?”
“I grew up in a place called Sudal. It’s a city.”
“A city?”
“A large village, with about a hundred thousand people.”
Vipsa’s eyes widened. “A hundred thousand!”
Nyk picked up another stick. “Sudal’s small. Our biggest is Floran City, with over seven hundred million.”
A village man approached with some boys and youths. “Bek is taking some boys on a training hunt,” Vipsa whispered. “Borryk is among them.”
“Which one is he?”
“The oldest youth. He’s Bek’s ward -- Bek desires him to be the next chief -- instead of Ylak.” Vipsa glanced over her shoulder and whispered. “I’m happy Ylak is healing. I dread the notion of Borryk as our leader.”
“If Ylak were to die, that would leave the chief without a successor,” Nyk observed.
“Exactly,” Vipsa continued in a whisper. “He would need to sponsor another boy, but there are none of age in the village.”
“He would need to wait ‘til one comes of age.”
“Worse -- he would need to wait ‘til it was his turn.”
“As chief, couldn’t he just move to the top of the list?”
“In such matters a chief wields no more power than any villager. And then, there’s no guarantee the boy would be acceptable.”
“Acceptable? To whom?”
“To the village. At least Ylak is. He may be a youth but he’s as good a hunter as Bek himself ... as proficient with the blowgun -- and he has a more agreeable disposition. In the meantime Bek could call him out.”
“Call him out?” Nyk asked. “As in combat?”
“No -- before the council of elders. Any villager could, but with Borryk as his ward, Bek is the one most likely to succeed. He could seize the chieftainship. That can’t happen so long as Ylak lives.”
“This is enlightening, Vipsa -- village politics.”
“You’d have learned soon enough. We’re such a small band, everyone knows the others’ business...” Vipsa glanced over her shoulder. “They’re coming this way...” She turned to conceal her face. “ ... best to ignore them.”
“Vipsa!” Borryk shouted. “Come on the hunt with us. Maybe you can earn the hero’s portion.”
“She could kill it and cook it, too,” another boy called.
“Vipsa doesn’t stain her hands with zang’rafan juice,” Borryk said, laughing. “She has soot from the old man’s crockery under her nails.”
“Come on, it’s getting late,” Bek admonished and herded the boys toward the forest.
Vipsa looked up. “Borryk doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m odd because I’d rather help Kyto than tend the fire or peel tubers. The other boys follow his lead.”
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