Aiken [Ay-ken] was a young boy of the People of the Yellow Grass on Assail. He lived in a hide and pole hut with his mother near his great-aunt Jalia and other aunts and cousins. He hunted birds with a bow.[1]
In Assail[]
While hunting, Aiken noticed an unusual storm cloud approaching from the south. He ran back to his village to discover the elders also observing the cloud. They seemed unusually troubled. His mother hid him in their hut just before, out of dust, hoary shapes arrived who were slaughtering his people. Aiken, spying out of the hut opening, identified them as the demons of dust of which the legends of his people warned that they would one day return.[2]
Aiken's mother returned to the hut, already injured, to defend her son but was killed by one of the demons. The intruder spared Aiken because someone outside the hut judged Aiken's scent to be 'too thin'. Once the killer had left, Aiken crawled to his mother and closed her eyes. [1]
Aiken was with some of the other survivors, neighbours, cousins, aunts, mourning at the funeral biers when a a rider arrived at the village. It was an old woman who asked about how many had been killed to which Aiken's great-aunt Jalia replied that it had been a full third of their people. Then Jalia recoiled and pointed to the woman's waist and Aiken saw the knapped stone knives there. "Demon weapons", his great-aunt identified them as, and was about to attack the old woman when demons arose out of dust between them. The old woman shouted not to harm them (i.e. the villagers, presumably), then looked at Aiken and told him to go, to run, which he did.[3]
Notes and references[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Assail (novel), Chapter 5, UK HB p.200/201
- ↑ Assail (novel), Chapter 5, UK HB p.200
- ↑ Assail (novel), Chapter 5, UK HB p.201/202