Drakon Omnibus

by C. A. Caskabel

  Back at the camp of the First, half of our tents stood empty and abandoned. Those who had left had stripped all the good hides from them. The few torn skins hung over the wooden skeletons and billowed like angry ghosts in the winds. I parted with my tent to sleep with the rest, offering my hides to mend their tents.

  “Don’t do that. They will not respect you,” said Sani.

  “The ones who stayed behind respect me already,” I said.

  There were fewer mouths to share the scarce meat, but I needed more blades.

  “You have to find young ones for our Pack. Very few of us are left,” Sani told me.

  “Where?”

  “Go to the young Blades. The training fields.”

  The Sieve had finished six moons ago, and the next one would begin in seven moons. We were way past the time of the first spring moon when I could take new blood.

  “The other Chiefs will never allow me to break the rules and steal the best,” I said.

  Summer found me with a handful of men fighting the mosquitoes and the flies of Sirol. Those under my command started patrolling, as Malan had ordered. Supplies were running out, and men killed each other over a dead rat. Thousands of men of the Tribe, hungry and impatient, were left behind for the few of us to whip into order.

  One sizzling summer afternoon, we were inspecting the large camps of the help. The stench of the Tanners and the smell from the Fishermen invaded my nostrils and blanked my mind. But they kept going about their work, untired by the heat and the misery of their fate. The Blacksmiths were farther away, covered in soot, carrying coal wood in the heat of the day and feeding the bloomeries to milk the iron of the land. They hammered their anvils to sing and shiver like young maiden slaves.

  A crazy thought came over me the next morning, a little after the sun began to burn relentlessly. I was looking only for twenty to fill the First. Men of iron. Unbreakable.

  “Sani, Leke, everyone. Mount your horses, and spread my word. To the Tanners, the Hunters, the Fishermen, the Craftsmen, the Blacksmiths, and the slaves.”

  “You want us to take a message to the slaves?” asked a man with a huge gash where his eye used to be. His name is by now long lost from my memory.

  “Not the slaves. Forget I said that. But go to all the others of our Tribe. Tell them that whoever dares may come, and I will choose twenty new Blades for the First Pack tomorrow.”

  “It cannot be done. They have four carvings,” Sani told me.

  “Do you think I don’t know that? Bring me only those who don’t remember how many they have.”

  They brought me exactly twenty.

  Blacksmiths most of them, a few Tanners, three Fishermen. They came on foot to earn their first war horse. They looked at me as if I were the son of the Goddess, the Sun himself, who had come to redeem them. No Hunters or Craftsmen had come.

  “Those who have meat to eat didn’t even look at me. The ones who came have been living on scraps and roots for many moons now,” said Sani.

  “Why are you here?” I asked a Blacksmith named Rikan.

  Rikan and those like him would be the Pack that I would forge. I remember him still, as I remember few others. His mustache was two black bending iron blades. The short hairs of his beard were shavings from the furnace, black as coal dust. His arms and sweating shoulders were shiny metal slabs, smoothly welded together. Brutally forged with a uniform roughness were his nose and forehead. His eyes, two black holes filled with hot melting ore. They wrinkled half-closed against the hard summer sun rays. There was never much light in the Blacksmiths’ caves, where they forged the metal. They had to get the color right—the gold, not the red or the white hot and ample light was their enemy.

  His voice rose and fell heavy as a hammer. “Chief, I came because I want to see the West. And the South and the East.”

  His eyes wanted to see the world. His eyes commanded his heart. To abandon the darkness of the forge. To see.

  Those whose hearts still traveled like children also came. If the heart travels, it will give wings to the legs.

  “You? Kuran?” I said, recognizing the unlucky scorpion-struck Kuran from my Sieve.

  “I want to change my fate.”

  Even the unlucky scum of the stars had come. To the One Chief they deserved, a ninestar.

  Leke was trying desperately to count the men, old and new, with his fingers again and again.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You were wrong, Chief. We could have brought one more. You can rule forty men,” he said.

  “I am the fortieth Blade, the last and one of you,” I answered.

  He nodded silent. Embarrassed, honored?

  Truth is I had counted them wrong. But a Chief needed to find his words fast, to rule over so many men. Even his false words. Men, warriors who face death, hate the truth as much as they hate a Chief who is wrong and still rules over them.

  “Tomorrow, we begin training!” I shouted.

  “I will pass out horses and blades,” said Sani.

  “You won’t pass out anything.”

  He didn’t understand.

  At dawn, before the sun began scorching us with vengeance, I started making the changes in the training routine of the First Pack. I had meant to do that for some time after the battle at the Blackvein and after our winter march through the Forest. The Blades fell. They were the weak link of the Tribe.

  We still didn’t have a Leader for the eighteen Packs of the Blades. The post had been widowed, and Malan still didn’t trust anyone. No one could forbid me anything. I had only one chance to become that Leader of all the Blades, and I meant to seize it before it was lost. Two men, new recruits, Blacksmiths, stood around the morning fire, drinking milk and showing off the chainmail armors they had brought. They were making those for the Rods now, but each had the foresight to grab one for himself before joining the First.

  “Those will be useful to us,” Sani said, as he felt the weight of the armor with both hands.

  The armor was truly magnificent—as a decoration for Malan’s tent. I sent him both as a gift. I whistled for them to stop talking and said, “Throw away all your armor. And I don’t want to see any shields or looted helmets on your heads. You will strap only two swords. Long and short.”

  They threw away the rest of the stuff, but a second surprise was awaiting them. I dismounted my horse.

  “Forget your horses. We won’t ride again for four moons.”

  Rest, O’Ren. Rest your legs, be free of any rider until we meet again later.

  Some of the older beards began to laugh. Heads moved, chuckling with disbelief left and right. Even the recruits turned pale. I repeated my words many times until the last man took me seriously and dismounted his horse.

  The most difficult thing I had ever done. Because, when the big words were over, I knew that everyone was there for the meat, the women, and the horses. The Tanners and the Blacksmiths had never had any horses, and they had come to change that. My older men had been living on horses, so they could hardly walk, let alone run fast for a few hundred paces. They fought, trained, talked, slept, and ate on their horses. The horses were part of their bodies. They dismounted only to sleep, shit, and fuck. If I had asked them to cut off their balls, cook them in their barley mush, and eat them, they might have obeyed me. But four moons without horses was something that their minds could not get around.

  “What are you doing Da-Ren? Don’t torture us.”

  Even Leke called me Da-Ren, not by my title.

  “Who’s with me?” I asked again.

  Leke and Sani said yes, but even they did it with their heads down. Most of the recruits were with me because they had no choice. The other Packs had already left for the raids. Everyone was with me, whether they liked it or not.

  “Maybe I am wrong, but you are going to bust your heads proving it to me. Who disagrees? Let him wear a shiny pot over his head. Let him wear an iron-ring coat.”

  Some were looking at the beautiful armor. />
  “And then he can come and fight me like Mekor did. Inside his iron coat, I will roast his bones. His helmet, I will fill with his ashes.” When no one moved, I continued. “Khun-Malan said that we will cross the Endless Forest.”

  I repeated it so they could picture it in front of them.

  “The Endless Forest. It is as dense as the beard on your face, and men’s boots have never stepped in there since Enaka bore the Sun. No horse gallops in that Forest; no man carries a heavy shield up the gorges. You have only your legs. You will run, and run, and run. Without horses.”

  And so they learned to run.

  To run with a blade in each hand, to run in the thick mud of the swamp, to run up and down the rocky hill four times each morning, to run next to the dogs with manic fury, to run through the undergrowth, on the perilous stones, and over fallen trees. Without losing their eyes. Without water. With one hand tied behind their backs. With one leg lamed. Carrying baskets full of stones on their backs.

  They would run in summer and beyond, while my mother, the slave, the witch, the northerner, southerner, or whatever wretched dog she was, gathered, every day before midday, more curses than she had in her entire life. They ran in the height of summer when the heat was unforgiving. They ran in the autumn rains.

  Whoever saw us would point to us and sneer.

  One night, one of the most simmering hot of summer, when the mind surrenders to the damp heat and the sweat flows down a river from the brow to the asshole, the Reghen came and gathered us to tell a Truth. Instead of a Truth, he told us things that even a seven-wintered child knew.

  The Truth of the Seasons

  In the frozen winter, the warrior and his horse take cover. To escape death. Nothing else. The horses cannot survive the cold and the icy grass. Without horses, the Tribe will perish.

  In the spring, the warrior trains, he readies himself. The animals must mate in the spring. They do not go to battle. The horses must feed, rest, and regain the lost strength of the winter. Without horses, the Tribe will perish.

  At the end of summer, in early fall, the warrior will go to battle. Before the great rains begin. Those rains crook the bow, destroy the soil, lame the horses. Without horses—

  I raised my hand before he finished his words. Two things I hated: the heat and his stupid Truths. They were both melting my brain. I put my body between the Reghen and my men and interrupted him. He didn’t like it. He was a young and tall Reghen.

  “Thus declared the—”

  He tried to continue.

  “I thought you were finished, Reghen. Why are you telling us this? Even the seven-wintered know this.”

  “The Truths are eternal and easy to remember. But it seems you forgot them, Da-Ren. What do you think you are doing here?”

  I took him to the side, away from others’ ears.

  “Are you talking about the training? Without horses?”

  “Your training…is for the maulers, not for men. The Tribe knows only the bow and the horse. And, no, we don’t care about your training. But how dare you defy the greatest Truth of the Sieve? Who do you think you are?”

  “Is this about the Blacksmiths and the Fishermen?”

  “Any man with four carvings can never be a warrior. Enaka decided thus, and the Sun cannot turn backward.”

  “You can tell Enaka that we ran out of Blades. I need men.”

  “I will tell Khun-Malan. You will send them all back where they came from. Today.”

  “No.”

  “It is the Truth.”

  It was a bunch of lies.

  “Listen, Reghen, with your two hundred ears. Come back on the first moon of winter when all the other Packs have returned from the raids, and we have the Competitions of the Goddess. If you can tell the ones with the four carvings apart, I will let you take them.”

  I knew how to spot a coward. This one, who was even taller than I, kept his chin up high when he was talking.

  “We will not accept this. It is a mockery of all our Truths,” he said.

  “I took free men. Not slaves. You do not command me—not me or them. What does Khun-Malan say?”

  “Khun-Malan has far more important matters to deal with.”

  I laughed.

  “Do you know what the Reghen used to say?” I asked him.

  “Huh? What?”

  “A Reghen told me once that the Tribe favors young Leaders like Khun-Malan and like me. The old ones rot inside. The young will lead the Tribe forward. They will bring Change. That is what the Reghen say. I brought Change.”

  That shut him up.

  He would speak only to have the last word.

  “The Blacksmiths and the Fishermen you took are missing elsewhere. Who will fish?”

  “Go find a couple of lame slaves to do your fishing.”

  Leadership. Everyone wants it. Few can master it.

  I had been raised with the Uncarved, three dozen of young men who were supposed to become leaders. Most of the youths I had grown up with would have died in two days if they had been sent as Chiefs of the First. Not because they were slow with the blade, but because they were arrogant and, at the same time, afraid. Each one believed himself to be unique. They walked the same. With one foot in front of the other. As they had been told. Before they bled to death.

  Malan had sent me to the First to die, but Malan’s triumphs had made me far more dangerous and fearless. Invincible in defeat. Elbia’s death had made me impervious to pain. Then came Zeria’s betrayal, and that had made my heart as cold as iron buried in snow. Those three shielded me. They were my own three mythical, identical Reghen brothers.

  I continued with the changes, though a few nearly cost me my life. I slept with half an eye open every night, but I survived.

  “A black luck found me,” said Noki, laughing, while the sweat ran rivers out of his body. He was the fastest in every run. Second only to me. Each trial they did, I did with them. The baskets of rocks, the hills, the swamps. Otherwise, they would have drowned me in the Blackvein by the third night.

  Leadership. Everyone wants it. Few understand it.

  Each birchwood saddle weighed about as much as a three-wintered boy. I cut off the front and back arches of the wooden frames. The frames supported the Archers when they rode using both hands for the bow and arrow. But I wanted the Blades to mount and dismount with speed, and a heavy, rigid saddle was a hindrance.

  “You go to the Tanners, you bargain, and you get lighter clothes; exactly the same for everyone,” I said.

  “Why the same?” Leke asked me.

  “Because same is what we are. Same clothes, same life, same rules, same right, same wrong. When you are all dressed the same, the others will not see a scattered useless mob but one monster with forty heads and twice as many blades. We dress as one, fight as one, live as one.”

  Finally, I asked them all to trim their beards very short. They thought I was joking, but I was dead serious. We didn’t cut our hair, only so that they wouldn’t confuse us with the shaved slaves. We just had it tied with a band. So that the ninestar mark of their Chief would show unmistakably.

  “I don’t want anyone to be able to grab you from the beard in the mayhem of battle. You must slither away like snakes.”

  When the other Packs returned, they made fun of us. “Blade girls on foot,” they would shout down to us from their horses. We heard much more, along with sneers and laughter every day. We stood out from the other Packs as the one-breasted female Archers stood out from the thousands of men.

  Before the desperation of the winter frost, came the Squirrel Moon, the last of autumn, and it brought the Competitions to honor the Goddess. The victorious warriors would receive generous amounts of booty from the great Khun. Horses and women. All other activities stopped during the trials. It was the season of Changes, after the raids and before the snow. Everyone was there either to participate or to watch the best. Wild and reckless festivities flooded Sirol from end to end. Milk-spirit, roasting and feasts as i
f it were our last moon. Slave girls with legs wide open, winners and losers, thousands of men and women became one wild orgy looking for that last ember of warmth before the winter swallowed them.

  And that’s when the ridicule stopped.

  We competed against all other Packs of the Blades.

  In man-to-man combat with unsharpened blades, on foot, the First Pack came in first. Noki, Sani, Rikan, Leke. Faster than demons on their legs, capable of bringing down ten men each. I persuaded Malan to add an event: running in the Forest. The First came in first.

  At the horse-riding competition, the First came in first. I rode O’Ren faster than the best of the Archer horses.

  “Pelor’s iron balls! How did we win this one? We hadn’t ridden horses for so long,” Leke said to me. No one was better than he was on horseback.

  “Now you are two ironstones lighter each, and your horses were hungry for this, well rested for so many moons.”

  At the bow, the First came in third among the eighteen Packs. But the Blades didn’t do much shooting in battle.

  In the neckrope, the First came in last.

  Pigface found only that single opportunity to take a jab at us.

  “When you go into the Forest, Pigface, take your neckrope with you. And go hang yourself from a tall branch to feed the bats,” Noki answered.

  We attracted the yellow-green eyes of jealousy. And the eye of the Khun.

  “That horse of yours,” Malan said when he found me resting at the end of the last trial. “Where did you find it?”

  “Oh, that? A crazy beast. Not safe for a Khun,” I replied with a dead-serious face and a shit-scared heart.

  He sneered at my fear and dropped the talk. “I am not here for the horse. I have been watching your men all these days. Do you know what you are doing?” he asked.

  “Yes, the Blades need faster legs. We don’t fight man-to-man in shield walls like the Southerners. We chase those left behind at the end of the battle. Or they chase us. Or we climb mountains and hills. Those with slow legs and heavy armor always fall first. I have seen it from the first day.”

  “Not one Reghen or Chief agrees with you.”