There were only nine of us Uncarved Maulers left. If the Great Khun-Taa, the glorious Fifth Leader of the Tribe, did us the favor of falling dead in two winters from that moment, not before and not after, one of the nine would become Khun in his place.
And soon we were eight.
One cold autumn morning, we found Anak hanging upside down from a tree, as the older Wolves had told us we would find him someday. They had always had it in for him. He was the ugliest, stockiest, and the first the older kids would tease and beat. He wasn’t dead, and hadn’t been torn apart. The dogs hadn’t gotten to him yet, though they were jumping all around him. If somebody could shit upside down, he would have. He was very much alive, maybe even better looking, with his long hair falling back toward the ground.
The ninestar Guide, Bera, approached and took out his blade. He didn’t go for his neck. Anak’s wailing was the same hanging upside down. Bera sliced two deep carvings on Anak’s left arm. With one more movement, he cut the ropes and took him down.
“Don’t take anything with you from your hut, Anak. Not even your bow. Just get lost! You will go on foot to the end of the camp until you find the tents where the Archers are trained, and you will tell them that you have come from the Uncarved.”
Anak started to say something but got his answer from Bera before he even had a chance to speak.
“If you make a sound, I will carve you two more times until you stink of fish guts every night. Now get out of here.”
Anak left running, with jeers and flying stones following him.
“Anak was the best archer,” I said to Bera that night.
“Well, at least they won’t throw him out of there, too, and send him to gut the fish,” he answered.
Anak hadn’t done anything wrong. His legs stuck around the saddle better than any of the others. He could gallop without a saddle, lying down on one arm. He could turn his body and send his arrow two hundred feet as he galloped away from the targets. I didn’t expect him to be carved so easily.
“We were too late with that half-wit,” Chaka told Bera as if he could read my thoughts. “I told you to carve him on the second day he was here.”
The Ninestar turned to me and said, “Chaka is right. Every Uncarved can master the bow. One might become Khun even if he is second at the bow. But when one becomes the fool we laugh at…then we better carve him early and many times. Each pack of men has its fool, and that much is true, he will never be a Leader.”
The Reghen had another Story about how the light of Enaka blinded the enemies of the Khun. The Khun had to have light, to draw it and to command it. The light had to serve him. It just happened. One was born with it. You couldn’t learn it or master it through any trial.
“The Sun dawns and etches in glorious light the path for the next Leader of the Tribe every morning. The son of Enaka knows. He blinds the enemies of the Leader.” They reminded us at every dawn.
“All of you, remember this one thing,” said the Reghen. “The Guides think they know who the next Khun is. But, in truth, they do not. Only Sah-Ouna knows. But you, the Uncarved, know something else equally important. You know who will never become the One Khun. You know it better than Sah-Ouna.”
On the other side of the fire, Noki was slowly scratching his groin. Malan nailed me with one eye like a searing iron for a girl’s breasts—as if he wanted to remind me that he knew something important.
That I would never become Khun.
XXI.
A Woman
Seventeenth spring. Uncarved—Eagle.
“Noki kissed the Ouna-Ma on the mouth.”
That day I heard this Story, word for word, so many times that my ears started to grow wolf hair. The night before, I was unlucky enough to be sent away on an uncommon chore. It was something the Guides had come up with so that we wouldn’t forget the winter cold. My turn had come.
The trial frightened the Guide more than it did me. We were patrolling on horseback on the borders of the Endless Forest, near the lair of the blood-eating Reekaal. The Guide’s face was white as snow and held a full moon talisman in his hand while whispering continuously to himself. Nothing happened to us, just as nothing had ever happened to anyone else I knew who was afraid of the abominable Reekaal. For demons, Firstborn of Darhul and close neighbors, these Reekaal were a quiet lot.
The only misfortune of that night was that I missed the Story that the Reghen and the Ouna-Ma brought. And even worse, I missed the moment when that hot-blooded Noki got up in the middle of it and took the Ouna-Ma into his arms. With one hand, he took off her crimson veil and kissed her on the mouth—as the others cheered. Even the Guides laughed before they started on him with the whip.
I had seen this rare scene before, man and woman kissing, but had never cared to ask. It just seemed so strange, funny, and disgusting—two people kissing in the mouth. When Balam and Akrani tried to show me what Noki did, I looked at them as if they were stupid. Truth be told, they were stupid—the stupidest of the eight of us left.
And after that night, we were seven.
We waited till dawn for Sah-Ouna’s verdict.
“What will the First Witch order? Do we carve him or nail him to the cross?” wondered the Guides.
He was lucky. They carved Noki three times, each carving deeper than the other. He was smiling.
“What did you do? What Reekaal got into your head, Noki?” I asked as he was taking off the wolf hide of the Uncarved and packed his quivers and blades.
“I was raised with the Blades, the warriors who work only with knives and are the first to raid the villages. And the ones who fuck the most.”
“The ones who what?”
“You still don’t know what is in between your legs, do you? I was raised differently. I am different. When I was a boy, the Blades used to ride slave girls all day, outside, in front of all of us. They rode them until they couldn’t walk on two feet. I know. We’re all still virgins here, and I am in my sixteenth spring. Do you know that the Archers of our age have been riding women on all fours since last spring?”
“Why do they ride women?”
“I don’t have time to pull your pants down and give you a lesson in the ass. Next time I see you, maybe. But now I’m in a hurry. I’m leaving for the Blades.”
He was already covered with the dog hide of the Blades—Darhul’s damnation; a dog hide—but he was smiling and standing tall, not looking down in shame.
I wouldn’t see him again for a long time.
“Noki left because he wanted to ride slave girls with the Blades,” said Bera. “For a woman.” He spat down at the dirt and slowly shook his head in disbelief.
“He said that you keep us like virgins for the Ouna-Mas. We can only jump over them and not the slaves,” I said.
I couldn’t even understand my own words. The words just jumped out of my mouth without any meaning. I had to go back to the first night of the Sieve. That was the last time that I had had so many questions at once. Bera explained a few things, but without having seen what in the Demon’s name he was talking about, it only created more questions for me.
That night, I dreamed of horses jumping over fences.
And before Selene shone full again, we were down to six. The most useless of the seven, Urdan, couldn’t even shoot an ox when he galloped away from the animal. It was what we called “Enaka’s shot.” All the rest of us could turn our bows and aim backward in full gallop, have only our feet in the stirrups holding us on the horse, shoot our arrows, and pierce a standing target, a pumpkin head usually, up to a hundred feet away.
Urdan got not one, not two, but four carvings. They kept him in our camp as a miserable Carrier, hunting rabbits with the Guides. He was good at opening up rabbits—seems that was the only reason he had made it to the Uncarved. He cooked them too. Urdan would come back from the hunt, never raising his eyes to meet ours, with his rabbits and squirrels hanging over his back. One evening, he brought a deer but even then he seemed sad as the rain, lif
eless as his prey. The Uncarved boys didn’t leave any meat for him. He slept with the Carriers and the slave cooks, and we never spoke to him again.
Nobody made fun of Urdan. We were already on our Eagle spring. Come next winter we would be the oldest Uncarved; Wolves. Urdan had endured so much for so long, and his misery was not a laughing matter. It was a nightmare to think that an Uncarved could end up so low after a single night.
“I can’t imagine that. A fate of squirrels,” said Gunna.
“Well, it can be much worse,” said Malan.
Urdan’s Story of skinning rabbits and squirrels didn’t last long. One day, they brought him back—or whatever remained of him. A pack of ravenous wolves had come out of the Forest, searching for warm meat in the frozen mud. The animals chased Urdan, but I don’t think he managed to shoot any arrows behind his back as he ran from them. The wolves kill, but they do leave an honorable sight. They tear, rip, and eat, but the body still looks brave. Like one of a warrior who fought but was defeated. The flesh-eating birds are the worst. They come afterward and clean the carcass to the bone. The cheeks, the lips, the eyes. Urdan left us with a Story and a sight unworthy of Enaka.
“Another one bleeds away. He disgraces me and you,” said Chaka. “I hope the rest of you fare better.”
But it was no surprise. No matter how much crazygrass we could drink, we could never believe that Urdan might rule the Tribe one day. Same for Mad Noki. The truth is that except for me, I could see only Malan and Gunna as Leaders. And most of the time, none of us.
We were gathered around the fire, gulping down snow-watered millet gruel, when Akrani said to Chaka, “Why are we even trying to become Leaders? Gunna will always be first in all of the combat trials.”
Gunna was not first with the blade. He was slow, and I had worn him down in every duel, except for the times he had grabbed me with his hands, which were about as big as my legs. Though I, too, was quite tall and strong for our Tribe.
It was the night Gunna had gone patrolling the Forest border with a Guide, so we talked about him freely.
Chaka answered right away with a roaring voice: “What are you talking about, Akrani, you fool? What is Gunna’s strength next to that of the One Leader? The Khun has hundreds of hands and legs, thousands of horses and eyes, his power spreads over rivers, from the steppe of the east to anywhere we have warriors guarding. At his signal, the Khun lifts all his hands and horses, and they follow him blindly. Sah-Ouna will not choose a Leader for the size of his arms.”
“But then, why did you send Urdan away for failing at the bow?” I asked.
“There is a line. If he can’t even shoot a bow straight, no matter what the Khun commands, no warrior and no horse will follow. Only some sheep, maybe,” said Chaka.
Night fell cold, and we went to sleep close to the fire. I awoke not much later. Gunna was shaking me and yelling, “Help me! Wake up, Da-Ren.”
I held his hand to get up, but my hand slipped. He had blood all over his arm and was dripping on me. We were both shouting now, and everyone got up at once.
“What’s wrong with you? Where is Tzeba, your Guide?” asked Chaka, who came into the hut after Gunna.
For our age, Gunna was the largest beast I had ever seen in all the camp and already as big as a Rod, a Khun’s fearsome guard. He was shivering from cold and mumbling to himself.
“I don’t know…the Reekaal got him.”
At dawn, we followed the trail in the snow and found Tzeba’s body, his guts spilling out of it, at the Forest’s border. Both of his legs were missing, cut high above the knees, as if they had been chopped with a heavy blade.
“Those were not wolves,” said Bera.
Gunna spoke of two giant shadows that moved with the hound’s speed through the branches.
“They were not men, but they were on two legs. They each had a head—”
“Yes?”
“…like Ouna-Mas. One shadow fell on Tzeba. The other ripped me with its claws but couldn’t throw me off my horse. I galloped away.”
“What do you mean? A woman with claws cut him in pieces?”
“It was a giant naked shadow. Tall as me. Man, woman, I don’t know,” mumbled Gunna, shuddering at the sound of his own words. “I looked back. It lifted him up in the air like a baby and threw him to the ground like a puppy.”
“That’s nonsense. Don’t listen to him. A bear, that’s all it was,” said Chaka.
“A bear? This early?”
If it were anyone else, I might have believed that it was nonsense. Gunna was no coward. And he had four large scratches, carvings almost, on his huge arm.
The horrible death of Tzeba was one of fate’s few unexpected gifts for me. In his place came Rouba, the old Guide, the one who had taken me under his wing during the Sieve four winters ago. The first time I saw him at the crack of dawn, I ran to him, cheering and jumping. When I saw him again that first night, my thoughts darkened as the other faces of the Sieve came back with him.
There were fewer of us Uncarved, and Rouba took an interest from the beginning to practice more with me. Chaka didn’t seem to care, and he allowed that.
“You’ve grown strong,” Rouba said after a few days when I showed him my skills with great vigor.
“Chaka seeks only One,” I said.
“You’re strong enough to make a thrice-carved warrior instead of a fisherman or a boot maker. One of these Uncarved boys is going to be the next Khun. Khun-Taa’s time is coming.”
“There is no way I’m letting these fuckers—”
If any one of the other boys was Khun tomorrow, I would find a quick and disgraceful death. That much was certain.
Rouba was not impressed with my fat mouth.
“I spoke to Chaka. He doesn’t think of you as First. Maybe second or third. He said you need practice with the bow,” Rouba said as we were parrying each other’s long blades.
I kept hearing Chaka and Bera and the rest, as they had spoken every day for the past three winters:
“This snake-curved bow is the life of the Tribe.”
“Without Enaka’s gift of victory, we are dead.”
I had never loved the bow. I wanted to see the eyes of my opponent in a blade fight. When they were glimmering with fear, I’d strike fast. When they were shining strong, I’d wait patiently to rip that confidence out of him until he was swinging, desperate. The bow had none of that. An arrow could sneak through from half a thousand feet away and open up a man like a sack.
I did all right with the bow, but I just wasn’t the best. I had become taller, and the shorter, stouter boys were better on the horse. I was quick and better with blades for the same reason. I hit them from above before they even had a chance to touch me. Even Malan. All except Gunna.
“You will grow up to be a Blade,” Rouba said as our irons were clanging against each other.
The Blades were warriors, not helpers, but their Story was not one for the stars. There was no Legend of the Ouna-Mas that ever spoke of brave Blades. Only about Archers. The Blades fought man-to-man with iron and almost never with bows. They usually came in when the battle was dying out. Like the flesh-eating birds.
“The Archers are hawks; the Blades are vultures,” Rouba would say.
“I will be Khun,” I answered him.
At that point, he hit my blade hard. As I took a clumsy step backward, he tripped me with his leg. I fell ass down. It was the last time he managed to do that. I was getting stronger, and he was growing older every dawn.
“You are a ninestar, Da-Ren, and you’re not even First among the Uncarved yet,” Rouba repeated.
Once on every Eagle moon, Chaka spoke with the Reghen and announced the order. He would tell us who was First in rank among our equals in age. The joking around was coming to an end. If our turn was to come that winter, the eighteenth for me, he wanted us to be prepared. The battle among us had simmered for four winters, but it now started to boil. Sah-Ouna was often at our little ceremony. One red ribbon was t
ied around the arm of the one who stood out as First.
But Khun-Taa proved immortal, like Darhul. Soon we would be named Wolves and enter our last spring Uncarved. Gunna was First most of the time, Malan quite a few times, and I fewer. The others, never.
Since we had become Eagles, our training changed, and we began to go out all over Sirol. We saw men, animals, slaves, women, even the orphans’ tents. We had to learn everything fast—about siege machines, battle tactics in the open plain, and techniques of enemy encirclement. We went to the tanneries, the Blacksmiths, and the slaughter yard. We should have stayed at the slaughter yard for a whole moon for training. It would prove useful in our later lives. In mine, for sure.
The one most useful thing we learned was how to count. Up until then, I didn’t know hundreds or thousands. I could count up to a few tens—until forty, a single Pack of warriors—with great effort. Most of the time, I wouldn’t count. I knew by instinct if someone was missing or if something was spare.
“A Khun must know how to count Packs. He must know how many warriors there are in fifty Packs. And distance, feet and paces, thousands of them, or else he cannot ever lead a campaign,” the Reghen told us.
My mind opened quickly when we were let loose to see and to learn in Sirol. I started to wonder. And so did my dick. I was still a virgin, but by now I had seen many warriors and slave girls fucking in the camp outside of the tents in the summer. I even saw Noki once. He was carved, but his calm smile was exactly the same, as if he didn’t care. The rest of them did care. Women looked at us as if they wanted to ride us, men as if they wanted to beat the shit out of us.
So passed our Eagle spring, summer, and fall in training, the last careless, colorless ones. And then came the winter of the Forest.
It was that time before the three-day full-moon Great Feast of my eighteenth spring and the most important day for the Tribe.
Chaka was dead serious and grim when he delivered the news. “Listen, you are the last six Eagles. We are a few days from the Great Feast. After this ceremony, you will become Wolves and enter your final training. Now your turn has come. I’ll carve the four older boys during the Feast in the Wolfhowl. You’ll be there.”
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