The white banner was gone, and I could see now in front of their lines the black-hooded priests lifting their arms and staffs and shouting to the men.
“Cross Sorcerers, Demon’s priests,” said the Tracker next to me.
As we were getting closer, a song rose from their side, a song too beautiful for warriors. It traveled with the wind like the humming of a thousand beehives. It stirred to life their banners and reached my ears. It was a battle song or a hymn to their god, the Sorcerers leading their men to sing together.
Sah-Ouna wasn’t there, but she had sent three of her daughters, who stood in front of our Archers crying the battle hymns of Enaka. Sorcerers and Witches wore the same black robes, cursed each other and prayed to the Sky to their true god, raised their hands, and burst their lungs to give courage to their own side. Two Ssons rode fast in front of the lines to scare the Crossers but quickly disappeared behind our Packs. No Sson, no mauler, no monster would be fighting by our side.
The Ouna-Mas were hissing and cursing the priests, standing taller than everyone on the back of a cart used as a makeshift platform. Without warning, they ripped off their robes, threw down their red veils, and, half-naked, screamed out, “For the Goddess and victory,” to our Archers. The bare breasts of the Longskulls danced, pointing fiercely against the three-tailed banners of the XP Cross, the trumpeting angel, and the east-west eagle. Their nipples painted like the tip of iron arrowfangs, sang the Truth of our journey, our hatred, and our love. No, the Cross Sorcerers were not going to rip off their robes; they just stood frozen and continued the hymn that was now drowning in the bellows of our men. The Ouna-Mas had lit a flame of blind rage among the men as they ended their incantation to Enaka and the Sun. They had won the first fight with the Cross Sorcerers. We were finally ready to find our Story. The brave Archers would bring victory. That much was certain. My Blades would have to stay behind and wait, as we always did. I decided once more to change the rules.
“I am riding with you,” I said to the Archers’ Chief.
“You can’t,” he said, not even looking at me, his eyes fixed at the other side of the battlefield.
“I want to eye them up close. To know what we’re dealing with.”
The Archers spilled out onto the plain in a fast gallop. I galloped with them, with only a handful of my men. The earth thundered as the first four hundred hooves pounded on the ground repeatedly. My bow quiver hung next to my left knee as I rode, the arrow quiver to the right. The othertriber horsemen were waiting patiently. Their infantry had formed squares, about two Packs each. Their shields formed a turtle shell: the ones in front held them vertically, and those behind held them over their heads. Men knelt and planted tall spears before their lines.
The wind was against us. Clouds of dust rose to fight me, whipping my face and crawling into my eyes and mouth. Our first arrows ripped through the sky and landed on their shield wall. The Crossers waited patiently behind the shields; their front spears jammed into the ground at an angle to slaughter our horses in the chest. Their own arrows came from behind the infantry, bigger than ours but much fewer. We stopped long before their first line of defense and turned back, so we didn’t lose a single one. There was no man-to-man clash, no clanging of blade on blade. But what was more surprising, as I got closer, was that our arrows didn’t harm them either; only a few had fallen weakly onto their shields. There were no screams coming from their line, and that was enough proof that our arrows had failed. Their horsemen, armored in chainmail, chased us as we turned in retreat. They had tall, fast horses, and they caught up with the slower of our Archers and butchered them.
One of the Leftbreasts, the female Archers, fell wounded as she retreated. A dozen of her sisters turned around to defend her, encircling her horse. But the othertribers were too many and massacred all of them. We returned to our side of the poppy field and so did their horsemen to avoid our arrows. I found the Chief of the Leftbreasts when we regrouped.
“What did you do? You sent your women to death,” I said.
“A Pack never leaves a living one behind,” she answered.
“But you lost almost a whole Pack,” I said.
“They have sworn to fall to the last rather than leave one of theirs behind. There are worse fates than death for a woman.”
The brave deaths of the Leftbreast Archers marked the first time we engaged the othertribers.
Karat was ready to order the second attack. That was how we fought: attack, rain of arrows, and retreat. Slowly reducing their numbers until they were exhausted, never head-on from the start. I didn’t follow him. I had seen what I wanted to see.
“What happened there, Firstblade?” asked Leke.
“I don’t know. I don’t like it.”
Our Archers charged again in the same way. And a third time. Each time causing the enemy little damage and each time losing a few more men. No Leftbreast fell again, but some of the other Archers did. The othertribers advanced upon us on foot with a slow, steady pace. If we had to meet them in man-to-man battle, we would be no match. We had no shields and armor to fight them up close. Soon, they would close the distance and retreat would be impossible.
“Sound the horn. Retreat!” the Reghen ordered Karat.
Malan was not with us.
“I am not going back to Khun-Malan defeated,” he answered.
“We go back defeated today so we can fight again, or we all die here disgraced,” the Reghen cried. On his own, he tried to signal to the horn blower.
But Karat ignored him and stepped in front, ordering instead to shout the horn of the fourth attack. The first arrows of the enemy archers found his men—they were too close now. He would have gone for a fifth time in his madness, but Enaka ordered the Sky to save him and darkened the horizon with menacing clouds. The dust had flogged us, and the dampness had stolen our breath since dawn, but it still hadn’t rained. The first drops of rain scared Karat, who feared for the horses and the bows and, fortunately for all of us, sounded the retreat. Our warriors were retreating behind the hills, to the Khun, their heads bowed and numbers fewer. I was looking up at our Goddess with mouth open; drinking the rain to quench my thirst. I spotted the three Ouna-Mas crouched in one corner of the open cart, soaked in rain, half-naked, and dejected. There was no song of victory coming from their beautiful lips.
We could barely fit eight men and one woman in the small round tent that Malan was using for the council. Enough to confirm and swallow our first defeat. Most of us were sullen and silent, while Karat screamed with rage. He was cursing the First Craftsman.
“The bows you gave us are worthless!” Karat yelled.
“I told you not to use ashwood for the bows. Only maple. I told you!” a Reghen yelled without looking at anybody, talking to the dirt.
“It’s the ox horns you mixed in; you didn’t cut those horns in the fall,” said the First of the Rods.
“You know when I cut them, now? Do you?” answered back the First Craftsman.
“You must cut them in autumn, when they are thickest. Else the bows don’t bend well,” continued the First of the Rods.
That one had not held a bow for many moons in his life.
“The arrows fly weak and wobbly, like sick sparrows,” I said.
Only Sah-Ouna and the two cross-armed Ssons remained silent. And their silence revealed much more than Malan about the fate that awaited us all in defeat. Malan had lost another battle, his second after the expedition to the Forest, and the most important. It was his third spring as Khun, and he was still raging silently before us, unable to bring even one victory to the Tribe.
“You?” he asked the First Craftsman with the only word that came out through clenched teeth.
“But they are the same,” he said.
“I am telling you those arrows are to blame; the reeds that you chopped near the salt lakes were too soft,” the First of the Rods cut in again.
Malan turned suddenly and walloped him in the face with the wooden cup he was h
olding. The First of the Rods was a giant, but he remained a mute giant after that.
“If you stop spitting out horseshit from your mouths and words from your assholes, then we might just find out what’s wrong before dawn!” Malan yelled.
The First Craftsman turned to Karat and said, “Your men have the same bows and arrows that they had back in Sirol. You haven’t used the new ones that we’ve made yet.”
“So?”
“So, stop talking to me about wood and horn and reed and all this.”
“Then what is wrong?”
“I don’t know. I plead to Enaka and Sah-Ouna to help me find out soon.”
Sah-Ouna looked at him silently, cold as the thousand torturous nights of the steppe.
“Give me some time, and we’ll find out,” the First Craftsman pleaded once again.
“You have until first light. The Rods will be awake waiting for you. Sharpening the stakes,” said Malan.
I rested under the first leaves of a walnut tree, drank the milk spirit, and waited for the First Craftsman to return.
Rikan came to ask what were my orders.
“You will go to the supplies and the Hunters and take veils to cover your faces like those of the Ouna-Mas,” I told him. “Find enough for all of us.”
“Veils? For what?”
“Wear them in battle.”
“Da-Ren, have you lost your mind?”
“Just do what I say.”
“We’ll be laughed at.”
“Better to be laughed at alive than to be glorified hacked up in battle.”
“What do we need the veils for?”
“The demons here raise clouds of dust from those hills, and the wind will be against us.”
Rikan, the old Blacksmith, left to find veils.
The greater part of our army was many days behind. Only four thousand warriors and slaves were with us in the lead. The Trackers came every so often to report on the enemy’s movements.
“They’re neither moving nor bringing in reinforcements,” they told us.
There was still hope. A nightingale, hidden in the shrubs close by, was singing his song, same as in Sirol. This was still a dry and flat land, the land of the Sky, the Sun, and the horse, where men could defeat demons—a land ruled by the same Goddess and Selene. In the middle of the night, the First Craftsman returned to the council and pleaded for even more time.
“We will know by this afternoon. We must wait till the sun warms up to know for sure.”
Malan made his last warning clear:
“If you’re not back by midday, then you won’t live to see the end of it.”
It was afternoon when the First Craftsman returned with three more of his men, to give more strength to his words, or to share the stakes if it came to that.
“So? Anything to tell us?” asked Malan.
“We have come south,” the man said hesitantly.
Malan bit his lips, looked first at the Ssons next to the maulers as if he were ready to unleash them against the poor man.
“It’s springtime, but it’s too hot. Summer comes earlier here,” the First Craftsman mumbled.
“What do you say, man? Did you have too much wine?” asked Karat.
“I’m saying it’s too hot and humid here. The bows are fine, but the horsehair strings are stretching too loose by midday,” he said.
Malan looked at Karat in silence.
“He could be right,” answered the Archer.
“Bows are the one thing I have known since my twelfth winter, and I am right. At night, they flex better, but at midday, when you attacked, it was too hot, and they were not tight. The sun had heated them,” said the First Craftsman.
“Let’s fight at dawn,” said a Rod behind me.
Nobody bothered looking at him. We had to ride and fight all day long; that was not an answer.
“And?” asked Malan, still looking at the First Craftsman.
“We need new strings—hard ones.”
“When?”
“In half a moon.”
Malan grabbed him from the front of his woolen tunic and shook him.
“You have one day.”
“That’s impossible. We will have to use twisted ox tendons and not horsehair. That will take days. Otherwise, we’ll fail.”
“Three days.”
“Great Khun, no matter how hard we labor, they won’t—”
“I said three, and get out of my sight. In four days from now, you will all go to battle, and if we don’t prevail, don’t even think about coming back!” And with that, Malan threw us all out of his tent.
The First Craftsman left the tent to get to work, and no one delayed him. As long as the enemy made no move, we could afford the three days he needed. Malan ordered everyone to have horses ready, and to pack weapons and retreat if the Crossers marched toward us.
The Craftsmen fulfilled their promise, and we charged once again four days later. This time, victory was certain. We attacked without incantations and haste when the dawn’s fog was still blending and fuming over the redflower fields. Our arrows fell strong from above like a rain of iron death. But their infantry lifted their shields again to form impenetrable turtle shells and endured the arrows bravely. Their horsemen attacked faster and more confidently this time, and we lost more men. The night fell humid and hazy. The campfires of the Cross seemed larger because they had moved closer to us. This could be our final sunset.
Noki accompanied me on my way to Malan’s tent for one more council. We waited outside the Khun’s tent next to a Tracker, and I started questioning him.
“They are moving the tents closer,” he said.
“Have you tried to get into their camp? See them up close?”
“I got so close I could smell what they ate from their piss.”
“So? Did you see any Deadwalkers? Do they have fangs?” Noki asked.
The Tracker sneered and turned to me, ignoring Noki. “Worse,” he said. “Fangs don’t worry me. I have seen many beasts with sharp teeth, and I am still here.” He was a lanky man with a gray stubble; I could picture him slithering around the enemies’ tents. “Da-Ren, I was a Tracker before this jester you brought here was even born.”
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Irhan.”
“We dishonored you, Irhan. It won’t happen again. Tell me all you saw,” I said.
Irhan started talking, describing the camp of the Crossers and he stopped after a long time when Malan’s Rods called us into his tent.
The Tribe’s campaign was ending in disaster, and so was my only Story. No one was drinking; no one wanted to speak. All those Legends, the brutal training, the sacrifices of the young. All those hollow-eyed skulls of our ancestors watching us silently from the north of the steppe. All for nothing. A campaign, a life, unworthy of any Story.
Irhan was the first one to talk in there. “They are preparing to attack. Tomorrow or the day after,” he said in front of everyone.
Malan was tapping his foot impatiently as he leaned over the small wooden table. He was wearing the magnificent sable coat and had his hair shaved across half his head, but he was thinner than usual and pale as a ghost of the North. This campaign was sucking his youth. He didn’t raise his eyes. He tried to open his mouth twice to say something, but the anger extinguished his words before they came out. As he was diminishing, weak and defeated in front of us, my heart pounded harder, eager for a different destiny. Was it possible? That he could set and I could rise?
I said to him, and for all to hear:
“Khun-Malan, it is not just the bowstrings. Victory demands more than ox tendons.”
“Speak.”
“I’d rather let the Tracker speak before I do,” I said and pointed to Irhan.
Irhan stepped forward, a glimpse of gratitude and excitement in the sparkling white of his eyes. It was his first council, probably the last as well, the best Story he could hope to bring to Enaka.
“These are brave warriors acros
s from us. But they are also disciplined. I sneaked into their camp last night. They sleep in a standard six-man formation, always five men and one slave to help with their armor around each fire. The shield was always upward at the same place in front of their feet, each spear resting at the exact same angle on its sister shield. These men—”
“They have been warriors all their life,” said the Reghen.
“Worse,” I said. “They are trained, like a pack of brothers. This is no horde of forest peasants, no Garol farmers like the ones we fought back in the Iron Valley. The arrows fell hard, a black sky of shafts above the heads of those men in the center who don’t even ride horses, but they never took even a step back from their position. They have shields, courage, and discipline.”
“And? What do you say?” asked the Reghen.
“We have to break them head-on. I want to get in front with my men before the Archers. And I’ll need long spears, many of them, like those of the Rods.”
“The Rods will give them to you,” said Malan.
Sah-Ouna slowly lifted her black veil and revealed her face, covered in dark ornamental drawings of blades and arrows. She looked straight at me and touched my amulet, felt it between her fingers for a few breaths, and let go of it as if it were scalding hot. She had not spoken to anyone else, never uttered a word in this council, not even to Malan.
Her eyes moved between mine and the dancing fire as she placed her cold, pale hand softly on my cheek:
“Blue-eyed wolf…the winter rain of the steppe…quench the thirst…destiny of the ninestar boy…he brings the fire, death, blood.” She raised her eyes and asked, “Can you bring us victory, brave Da-Ren? Is your heart ready to go, where pride cannot? It is. I see it.” Her words swam heavy in the moist air of the tent and marked my destiny.
The men were alert again, her senseless words having brought even more hope than all the Archers themselves. More hope than even Malan’s threats. Less hope than the ox tendons. The old Reghen, who was close to me throughout the campaign, grabbed my forearm and asked me.
“Speak again. What is your battle plan, Da-Ren?” he asked in front of Malan and Sah-Ouna.
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