“Stay here! Guard them!” shouted Malan, showing me the other cage. “Don’t let her go!”
Never let her go.
I was all alone with her at my knees and the Dasal in the second cage. She bit my hand. But it didn’t do anything. Never let her go. The fear in her eyes, the only blue shining in a dusky forest. I could hear the Blades shouting; they’d be back soon.
I saw myself at the Great Feast of Spring, only three nights hence, watching the blood running from her long neck on Sah-Ouna’s tree trunk. The eyes of color frozen—torn out. Another sacrifice. The Goddess had quenched her thirst.
Lebo’s throat had emptied on the dry leaves, through the first and only carving he would ever get. I was the only one guarding the cage with the Dasal, and they were repeatedly kicking it to break free.
A few steps ahead, I saw the oak’s hollow.
And I knew.
I held her by the forearms and stared straight into her eyes. O, my long-lost ghost! “Oaks,” I whispered. To her. To myself. “Oaks!” Elbia knew. “Children are oaks, not firs. They live. In spring.”
I finally knew.
I was dragging her by the forearms, and her wailing was becoming more desperate.
I was forever defeated at that moment and chose my own poison. I turned my back that day on the world that had born me, to embrace a new one. I had been born only to die, Malan would say.
I pushed her into the hollow of the oak; she tried to run the moment I let her but I threw her back in. The shouts of the Blades were closer.
“Shhh, shhh!” My finger on my lips, my other palm shutting her mouth. She understood. She stopped screaming. I threw leaves and branches over the hollow, hiding it completely. The Dasal were kicking hard to break the cage. I turned with demon’s speed, took my blade out, and poked them.
“Help us!” yelled one of them in our tongue. My betrayal. They had seen. Rage and surprise, shame and dishonor, weakness and terror. The branches of my mind were strangling me. I pushed my blade, not deep, but enough to make him bleed and shut up.
The Blades returned, and with them were Gunna and Malan, with two of the Dasal who had escaped. Darkness was fast swallowing the hollow oaks. What screamed near us was no pheasant. A wolf? A Reekaal?
“Da-Ren. Da-Ren. Where is the girl?”
“She got away in the wood, there,” I pointed in the opposite direction.
The Ninestar punched me in the face.
I supported myself on one knee, dizzy from the blow.
“They would have gotten away,” I said pointing to the Dasal in the other cage. “I was alone.”
“You all did shit today, useless turds! Load your dead one on his horse, and let’s get out of here.”
“We have to find the girl,” said the Chief of the Blades.
“The night is here. Listen around you. Reekaal. We are not staying here for one more breath. Out, there, away from the trees, all of you, now.”
“Sah-Ouna said—”
“To the snakes with Sah-Ouna! Have you ever seen an Ouna-Ma in the Forest at night? We leave now!” yelled the Ninestar.
“She had blue eyes. Did you see her?” insisted the Chief.
“I don’t care if they’re gold. We leave now! Before we lose all Uncarved Wolves.” Bera was screaming his lungs out. Whatever fear he had in him, he used it to appear angry and determined.
“We have orders,” the Blade said.
“What orders, aye? Kill us all? To leave the Tribe without a single Uncarved? Move out of the dark, in the moonlight. Now!”
I cast a final glance at the hollow oak. I couldn’t see two blue eyes looking back at me. I would see them constantly—whether I wanted to or not—whenever I closed mine. And I shall until the end of my life.
I had betrayed Enaka, Khun-Taa, Rouba, Bera, Chaka, Lebo, Sah-Ouna, the Reghen, Malan, the Uncarved, the Sieve, Khun-Nan, the First Ouna-Ma, the Sun, Selene, the stars, and all but one of the ghosts of my entire Tribe.
“Sah-Ouna will hear of this,” the Chief shouted to Bera.
“So she shall! I am a ninestar Guide. You don’t scare me.”
I spat a glob of blood on the dirt. A warm smile, the joy of guilt, the only things to fill my empty stomach. I whispered of my brave and disgraceful deed to my horse, the only one who would always take my side, no matter what I had done, and trotted into the night. I wanted to gallop and scream with pride but had to stay in pace with the carts and the rest.
We were back in the wide-open valley. My horse knew. The Forest knew. I finally knew. The clouds parted. Selene would be full in three nights. Her light was falling silver on my ninestar destiny.
What did you do, Da-Ren? Enaka knew. She saw.
XXIII.
I Dreamed of Redbreast Robins
Eighteenth spring. Uncarved—Wolf.
I killed a man for the first time a couple of nights later, on the second of the trinight Great Feast of Spring. It was the time when the Tribe, hungry in belly and in spirit, waited to hear Sah-Ouna’s prophecies. An old woman would carve a new fate for thousands of warriors. For many winters now, the arrows had been ready, searching for the next prey like starving hawks. One single command from Sah-Ouna would be enough to set us on a march toward the West to fight the Final Battle.
Sah-Ouna wouldn’t speak until the third night and the first two nights were reserved to honor Enaka who had awoken weak and thirsty. The sacrificial blood was the sacred elixir that would lift her from a deep winter’s sleep to welcome us into her bosom. Many animals were slaughtered on the first night: the heads of horses, goats, rams, and sheep stood dripping from the stakes around the Wolfhowl. Their dead eyes kept away the evil spirits of the Forest. More than ten thousand warriors sat around the Wolfhowl on the surrounding mound that was encircling the arena. It had been raised high and inclined steeply to seat many rows of men so that all could be there for the Great Feast.
The virgins who were of age to become Ouna-Mas approached Khun-Taa naked and proud, and received their first red veils from Sah-Ouna, plunging the men into dark dreams. Othertribers fought with shield and sword against Archers on horseback in mock battles. They fought bravely but fell pierced. Captured Sorcerers of the Cross from the South were thrown as live prey to the maulers. There was no fight there.
The flasks were always full of mare’s milk-spirit and passed around to keep the warriors light-headed. There was meat for all, but in meager amounts. Food had become scarce. The dogs and the vultures found plenty to feast upon; the warriors, not so much. On the last night, cups of crazygrass would replace the milk-spirit and men would swallow them happily along with Sah-Ouna’s prophecies.
The four Uncarved who were older than I had left our camp forever a few days earlier. They had entered their eighteenth spring, losing any claim to become the next Khun of the Tribe. Chaka held a brief and gloomy ceremony. One of the four received one carving and became Chief of an Archers Pack. He was given forty men to command. The other three received three carvings and followed the fates of thousands of other warriors. Khun-Taa had managed to devour four more of his children and was not planning to ascend to the Sky anytime soon.
My time had come after five times spring.
We were Wolves, the five who remained: myself, Malan, Gunna, Balam, and Akrani. If the Goddess finally called Khun-Taa to join her, then Malan, who had been named First on the previous moon, would become the Tribe’s sixth Khun. Over ten thousand warriors would be waiting for him in the Wolfhowl with hungry eyes and bellies.
“If they ever let someone so young become Khun,” said Rouba.
“But it is the Truth, the rule of the Reghen. He is an Uncarved. They all have to kneel in front to him,” I answered, surprised at his words.
“It is the Truth, so we are told, but Khun-Taa has been the One Leader for thirty winters now. Most have forgotten the Truth. You don’t know how they’ll take it. What will the Leader of the Archers or the Blades do?”
“What can they do?”
“If it were me, I wouldn’t let you. Any of you,” Rouba said again.
Useful things, the rules and the Truths. For games and silly trials. Useful for children.
But the end had not come for Khun-Taa. And we were brought to his tent to be reminded of that. The morning of the second day of the Feast, our small camp filled with Rods on horseback. Not one of them dismounted. They came in haste and delivered an order: “Chaka and the five Uncarved Wolves, follow us now, to the tent of our Khun.”
Only two nights earlier, we had returned from our first manhunt, diminished and humiliated.
Khun-Taa accepted us into his tent. It was even bigger than our hut, but it didn’t make a great impression on me. The torchlight was flickering weakly, as if someone were getting ready to sleep forever in there. As if the Khun didn’t want to show how old he had become. He drank from a wooden cup and not from the loot. He looked much older than Chaka or Rouba.
The bear hides of the Rods surrounding him and his thunderous voice were the only things that made him seem formidable in our eyes.
“Who are you?” Khun-Taa asked without getting up from his unremarkable wooden throne.
“I am Chaka, my Khun. In charge of the training of the Uncarved.”
“And what kind of training is this? Unarmed Dasal weasels kill them, and they can’t even capture a girl? You found one of color they say? And let her go?” Sah-Ouna was beside him but kept silent. “You have been ridiculed far and wide. You call these cowards Uncarved? The warrior Packs fear for our future,” Khun-Taa continued.
The countless days I’d spent with the bow, the blade, and the horse meant nothing at that moment in the Khun’s tent. Now that the dawn of the biggest trial had come once again, I knew our training was flawed; and so did Chaka and Khun-Taa.
“It was their first time. It will never happen again,” said Chaka, lowering his head in shame.
“I should have sent Fishermen. They would have done better. Your shame must be washed clean, tonight even, before tomorrow’s moonrise. The five boys will fight in the Wolfhowl against the Dasal you captured. Now get out of my sight!” ordered Khun-Taa.
“Yes.”
“And be thankful to the Goddess, all of you here and out there, that I will not die soon.”
That was the dreaded Khun-Taa. He had survived as Leader of the Tribe for thirty winters, and all said that in his old age he had become wise and just. As a youth, he had been a mad beast. He had wiped out every living creature south of the Blackvein and left the fields barren. Fire and salt were all he had sown. And now our people were starving. When he had grown old, he had drawn the Tribe back north of the river and had spent his nights with the younger Ouna-Mas. He had waited for their tongues to whisper him his destiny, but the faster their tongues kept working, the more confused he would become, and so he remained appeased in his tent. Just and wise.
There was only one thing he didn’t know despite his newfound wisdom and the destiny tellers.
When he would die.
We left the tent like beaten pups.
“Tonight, you will fight to the death. Prepare, or else the demons will take us all and feed us to the dogs!” Chaka screamed at us, and his face turned red.
“Will we fight in front of all of the warriors?” asked Malan.
“That’s what the Khun ordered. In front of him and the thirty thousand warriors. The Truthsayers and the Redveils.”
Back at the camp, no one rested. We all left with bow and blade to practice and to forget our anguish for a while. I found Gunna piercing pumpkins in the open field. My ears caught a flapping sound and I looked high. Gunna raised his eyes and his bow, aimed twice and shot two small birds in flight. We all knew that he would have easy work that night. He looked at me, free of fear or worry, and said, “Fucking redbreasts. These robins started singing before dawn again today.”
“Those aren’t redbreasts that you hit. They were starlings,” I told him.
“I don’t know what they were, but now they are redbreasts,” Gunna said with a loud, broken laugh as if he had just swallowed the robins, feathers and all.
His eyes had begun to blur from a young age, and that could be an ill fate for a warrior rider. A deep, blind puddle, a false step of the horse. Maybe he really had seen the Reekaal that night in the Forest. Like the cloudy-eyed Guide in the Sieve.
Before dusk, Chaka, Rouba, and the Reghen led us to the Wolfhowl. It was already full of thousands of warriors. They were seated higher and surrounded us, their deafening shouts rising from above our heads. I felt something dancing on my leg, but it was only Malan’s fingers trembling uncontrollably. Impatience, fear, death or victory. If I had to use a bow, I wouldn’t be able to shoot even a bear at twenty feet. The Dasal were locked up in five cages in the middle of the field, the maulers and the Rods guarding them. Hundreds of torches were lit around the Wolfhowl, engulfing us in fire and leaving the sky dim in comparison. The stars were weak, but my legs had to be strong.
The rules, as announced by the Reghen, were simple. Each one of us and each Dasal could choose only one weapon. The fight was to the death. If a Dasal won, he won his life. That was the inviolable Truth of the Wolfhowl.
“All these thousands of warriors! Did they come just to see us?” asked Akrani.
“They were itching and asking me about each of you all day. Everyone is on edge,” said Rouba.
“For us? We’re not even warriors yet.”
“Khun-Taa reeks of rotting flesh and old age. They are starving. They smell that one of you will be the next Khun before the following spring, but they don’t know who. And then…the Dasal are strong men and everyone says that some of you won’t make it through the night.”
That was my future, and no Ouna-Ma was needed to foresee it. The One Khun. Or a corpse for the pyre. Nothing in between.
I looked at the Dasal. They had taken them out of the cage.
“Do they know that if they kill one of us they will be free?” I asked Rouba.
“Yes, one of them I know well. He speaks our tongue.”
“You know him well?”
Would he know if the girls among them had blue eyes? It wasn’t the right time to ask him.
“Yes, they trade with everyone. Don’t listen to the nonsense stories. For a long time, the Dasal have been supplying us with belladonna, crazygrass, and herbs from the Forest. We give them barley and wheat.”
They untied the Dasal and let them choose their weapons. A couple of them ran first to grab the heavy single-bladed axes.
“They think we’re trees,” laughed Gunna.
None of them chose the bow. They would never have managed the double-curved bow without practicing for many summers.
Gunna went in first and chose to fight a strong Dasal. The Dasal wasted no breath and started running and screaming toward the giant with his ax. Gunna’s first arrow found him in the stomach. As the green-eyed man lay fallen and writhing in pain, Gunna walked toward him and pushed the second arrow into his neck. A river of blood crimsoned the Dasal’s torso, and then his knees and Gunna’s boots.
Gunna walked back toward the rest of us amid loud cheers.
“Redbreast, he is a redbreast now,” he said, the gagging, broken laugh again roaring out of his mouth.
Balam went second, brave in stature but a coward when it came to death. He chose for himself the oldest opponent and a bow. He was never even a stone’s throw from the Dasal. The old man, trembling and panicked, tried at once to run away, but the arrow found him in the back.
The games proved too easy and boring for the bloodthirsty audience. I could see men all around me getting up and leaving. They were raising their hands impatiently and booing in disgust. It was my turn now, and thousands of warriors around me were already jeering.
“Give them a rabbit to chase. It would be more difficult!” someone behind me yelled.
A rabbit. I had lost to Malan. In the Sieve.
His words brought me to my senses. The moment had com
e for me to stand out and become worthy of the honor of the First Leader, the next Khun. Enough about the rabbits; it was time to lift the curse of defeat which had haunted me for five times spring.
I was the third out of five. I chose the largest, strongest-looking Dasal who was left. I then approached the pile with the weapons and chose a long blade instead of a bow. That woke up the crowd. Many, Blades probably, were cheering, but most, Archers probably, were booing even louder. But all of them were now enjoying themselves as they should.
The Dasal across from me was tall, as tall as I, and much older. The deep grooves on his face reminded me of the trunks of dry old trees. I now believed Lebo, who said before he died that at night they become one with the hollows of the trees and that they were born from them. He snarled and swore in a mysterious dark tongue. He lifted and swirled the heavy, one-bladed ax in a menacing manner as if it were made of straw. I moved toward him. He was not a man, not with those lizard-green eyes. Or a warrior, either.
He raised the ax and tore the wind, but it found only dirt. Before he raised it a second time, I plunged in to put a hole in his chest and get it over with, but he was quicker than I thought. His ax found my long blade and threw it out of my grip. It took a few breaths before I felt the tingling and realized I had lost the tip of my little finger. In my first fight. I heard the sighs of our warriors. Scattered boos. Khun-Taa was whispering to the ear of the first-veiled Ouna-Mas next to him. He was probably asking if she foresaw my death.
The Dasal chased me, and I retreated a step. I let him get close, but I was fast, too. When he missed me, I got behind him and picked up my blade off the ground. I let him rip the air many times aimlessly until he lost his strength.
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