The First Tribe Read Online Free Page A

triumph were much too close. Sabra peered through her tears ahead into the distance. The safety of the shifon tree was still far off, and her determination was dissolving into panic.
    How had they known? Sabra wondered fearfully. It was early in first season, and the Vastara tribe should have had plenty of time to gather their food. The elders had told them that the beast riders of the Kirabi never came this far north until the meadow was blistering hot, at the end of second season. There was only one reason that they would ride to the plain so early.
    Like most Vastara… all but the oldest in their tribe when they still posted sentries in the forest by the meadow… Sabra had never seen a Kirabi. By the time the beast riders and the nomadic tribes that had been enslaved by them moved north, her people were safely settled deep within the forested hills. There they would spend the next few months preparing food, clothing, and supplies for the long, harsh winter months.
    Before the first snows, the Kirabi turned their tribe and their wandering followers south again. In this way, the Vastara had successfully avoided contact with them. The passive Vastara were the last to remain free of the slavery and sadistic atrocities the Kirabi enforced on the tribes they had conquered.
    The frightening legends passed down through the elders around the fires at night caused terror through Sabra’s tribe. The Vastara, most only slightly taller than five feet, were no fighters. They depended on the safety of the caves to keep them hidden from danger. Fruits and nuts could be picked in the forest, but the tribe dared not clear gardens and risk discovery.
    For many generations, they had survived on the first season harvested plants from the plains just beyond the hills. When the snows had just melted, the men stayed behind, hunting the old or injured animals for their skins. The anointed meat was left as a tribute for the younger beasts that shared the forest, and it kept the tribe safe. It had been many years since a creature had turned its hunt for food towards the tribe, but their honored ritual could not keep them safe from the beast riders.
    While the older women gathered food from the trees close to their spring homestead, it was the younger women like Sabra who were sent to the meadow to harvest food that grew in the bright sun. The gatherers were left alone to protect themselves, as they had become complacent with the beast riders’ nomadic schedule.
    There had been times when Sabra wondered if the elders’ stories about the Kirabi were even true. How could a man tame a banta to ride? The beasts were powerful predators, with clawed front feet that could rip and tear through forest and flesh. Her own tribe never disturbed a banta, no matter how old or crippled from a battle with one of its own. No other beast would attempt a fight with one of the terrifying animals.
    Sabra continued to hold hope that Felana might be wrong. It had many years… a generation before her grandmother’s… since any Vastara had actually seen a beast rider, so how could she be sure? To try to stay calm while she ran, she tried to convince herself it either was not the Kirabi crossing the field or that they could not possibly be as terrifying as the elders suggested. It had seemed improbable that they could truly be vicious meat eaters, and yet the elders told the tribe that eating meat gave the Kirabi their cruel disposition. Still, the disgusting practice of eating the flesh of another animal seemed unlikely. Sabra’s generation thought the elders exaggerated in an effort to keep them safe.
    The description of the beast riders was also impossible. Sabra used to consider the vision of a man so tall, over six feet, with bronze muscles well honed from days spent practicing attack. She had measured this height on a tree, carving a notch with her harvesting knife. She had stood back and stared up, her eyes opening with uneasy amazement and a measure of