“I’ll take my best riders, and we’ll charge in front of our Archers. Fall hard on the enemy’s center, shutter their first shields with our long spears, and then retreat. Open some holes on the front line. Our Archers will then have the opportunity they need.”
“A glorious way to die!” said the Reghen.
I just wanted to fight, to feel the enemy, and to prove Sah-Ouna’s words. I didn’t want to die. As I looked into Malan’s eyes, he moved his lips silently, mouthing the word “Sacrifice.” He spoke then for all to hear. “That’s brave of you, Da-Ren, but it will not work.”
“Have you seen the thick-shafted spears of their front lines, the menavlons, as the Trackers call them? They’ll skewer through your horses and your men,” said Karat.
“Maybe, if you wore armor, and if you cover the horses too with leather.”
I hated armor. A slow death.
Malan frowned in disappointment. They were right; this would never work. Their archers would take down my men and our horses and we would die on the spears. I was trying to move my lips to say more, to convince even myself, yet my stupidly bold plan was not helping me. Sah-Ouna turned to leave, and Karat spoke:
“I say we go back and fight. May Enaka’s thunderbolts burn the Crossers! Fire and death from the Sky! You heard the Witch! We win by Enaka’s will.” Karat raised his fist in the air, but no one followed.
“I need to think. The Rods will summon you again before dawn,” Malan said.
We stepped into the night, and each one of us went back to his men. I had failed once again to stand out, to find my Story, to prove my worth.
Fire and death, fire and death. The words of Sah-Ouna and Karat were torturing my head.
I didn’t have any brown powder to mix with the wine and went to lie away from the others, facing the stars. Fire. Sky. Death. Stars. Story. This time, my dream was not about melting with Zeria in a golden palace hall. There was fire and death in my dream, and it ended soon. I woke up in the middle of the darkness, ran to Leke and Rikan, and hurried them:
“Get me a hundred of our best riders. Now! And send someone to bring here that Reghen who is always around, and an Ouna-Ma!” I turned to Noki. “You. Gather twenty of your best and ride fast. I need some supplies before midday.”
Fire and death. At last, I had a plan.
LI.
Cypress and Oliban
Twenty-First Spring. Firstblade
In the darkness of the night, we gathered the men in the open, in front of the dung fires, red-eyed and dazed. Black-bearded, grimy and long-haired, wearing their dark dog hides they looked like a pack of beasts ready to devour man’s flesh. I only had to give the right signal. I climbed onto a boulder three feet tall and gave my hand to the Ouna-Ma to join me up there to face the bravest of the Blades. The Reghen stood next to us, but at the ground. At first, I didn’t say a word; I wanted them to start.
“Let’s go back, Firstblade.”
“This place is cursed. To Sirol!”
I didn’t need any of that cowardice.
“It’s always the Archers. We want to fight, Firstblade. We came for this.”
That was the one I was waiting for.
“Do you want to fight? Do you want to fight for the Goddess?” I shouted staring down at them.
Half of them bellowed eager, and that was enough. I continued.
“Men, tomorrow is the day. We come out victorious, or we starve all the way back to Sirol!”
“What does the Ouna-Ma say, Firstblade? What are the omens?”
The Ouna-Ma and her omens—I expected that. I had dreamed her omens.
I brought my lips next to the ear of the Ouna-Ma, slowly inhaled her scent of cypress and oliban, and whispered senseless words of gibberish to her. If only I could get every man here to smell the perfume from her neck. She stared at me with blank eyes.
“The Ouna-Ma says: ‘A Legend of fire and death, a Story for the brightest stars, the Age of the Blades is dawning.’”
The men, fully awake now, started raising their voices.
“Men, I need twenty of you to move in front, next to me. Tomorrow, we will ride first before the Archers. Step forward, the strongest armed who can carry on their backs a pole that can hold four full pails.”
I stopped and turned again to the Ouna-Ma. I spoke to her away from other ears, and this time she answered back. Her red veil had taken the fir-honey amber glow of the torch fire.
“Pails filled with black oil and pine resin,” I said. “This is our final battle tomorrow. We’ll bring fire and death to the Cross, even if we burn together. Your Story awaits you. The Goddess is summoning you to sleep the night next to her, up there. We’ll throw our bodies and our horses ablaze into the Crossers, and when the next night falls, we’ll rest forever among the stars.”
The men were still silent. No one had moved.
“And thus decreed the Voice of Enaka.”
The Ouna-Ma stepped forward and without warning started singing, “O Goddess, sweet and beautiful.” She raised her palms to greet Selene as she was emerging from a lonely patch of gray clouds. She took off her veil and kept her song going “…and I will bring as sacrifice…” The night wind cooled the sweat on the brows and the tears on the cheeks of the warriors. Still no one moving. She climbed down from the boulder and walked to the men in front. They could feel her scent now, they could see deep in her belladonna pupils.
“Sacrifice, Da-Ren; I expect nothing less,” Malan had warned me when we were ready to leave Sirol.
“Who is joining us?” I shouted once more.
The first man pushed slowly through his comrades and came forward. He was more than thirty springs old and barrel-chested, and he was favoring his right leg heavily.
“Uluh of the Eighth. He had a bad fall from his horse. Back at the mud craters,” said Leke, pointing at the man’s crippled leg. He probably knew by name every single one of my seven hundred.
A boy who was at most eighteen winters old followed him. The Ouna-Ma let her veil fall to the dirt and the soft wind of the night carried it away from her feet. For the first and last time, she touched the two men on their right cheeks. Five more followed, and then even more. I soon had to step in front to select from the endless volunteers. I pushed Rikan back hard when he tried to join. Temin, the dark-haired, handsome young man, tried to do the same, and Leke pushed him back harder. A day of victory was shining in the east as the stars faded away. Noki and his men had come back with wagons carrying barrels of the black stink oil mixed with the pine resin.
I turned to the startled Reghen.
“You learn fast, Da-Ren,” he said.
“I had promised that I’d keep them alive.” Why do we make these stupid promises? “But they’ll stand brave by me, until the very end.”
“By you? Oh no, Da-Ren, that will not happen. This is a long campaign, and this is only our first battle. The Tribe needs the Firstblade. I know that now, and Malan will too. We, the Reghen, will make sure he does.”
“I always lead my men. I can make it back alive.”
“You are staying back here, Da-Ren. There is a fate for everyone, and yours is not to set yourself on fire tomorrow. My brother has already left to speak to Malan and the others; it’s done.”
The Ouna-Ma moved closer, and her painted fingers caressed the skin around my ear as she whispered her words softly.
It was surprising how easily I was convinced. The men were already preparing, the pails were full, and stacks of resin-soaked hay were loaded to the sides of each horse to serve as a shield and as kindling.
“You ride twenty paces apart from each other. Just before you fall on them with the pails and the hay bushels, the Archers will unleash the fire arrows. Get as close to them as possible. And—run back.”
Run back. Not one was going to run back, but still, the Firstblade’s words, the Ouna-Ma’s only touch, was all the Story they’d ever dreamed.
Uluh took a pail and emptied it onto his head and his hid
e. Uluh was not going to run back. He wore two hides, and most of the men wore scalemail. They had covered the fronts and heads of the horses with boiled leather and bronze plates to shield against the arrows. The Craftsmen were rushing, bringing bronze sheets to attach to the poles and the sides of the horses. Each of the twenty horsemen looked like a beast dressed in metal skin.
“Maybe the men can dismount midway and run,” said a Chief next to me.
“The horses are loyal but not stupid. If the men abandon them, the horses will stop,” I answered.
At midday, the air was dry, and not a cloud was threatening. Enaka had graced our plan. Summer had come that day. Spring was ending fast, like the lives of the Crossers who stood against us. The Ouna-Mas appeared by our side again. Sah-Ouna had sent seven this time. But the Ouna-Mas’ songs and bare breasts wouldn’t be the ones saving us that day, so I told my men to talk to their horses.
“Ride them bravely. They cannot stop or feel fear. Charge them over the shields of their foot-men and come back as fast as you can. Ride like fire!” I said.
“We are ready, Firstblade,” said Uluh of the Eighth, his long hair soaked in black oil and looking dead set on top of his horse. For that one day, he was Chief and Legend. He then turned to the rest of the riders and shouted, “This is what you were born for, raised for. This is why we have made it so far. For today’s victory. The Blades. With me. Not the Archers. With me. First in battle.” Those were his last words.
The young boy next to Uluh had loaded the pole to his shoulders and was lifting it high. His breastplate was strapped tight. It was a shiny breastplate of an othertriber, and he looked so proud in it. A glowing smile, an eighteen-wintered boy riding to his doom without a name. I never learned it, or worse, I forgot it.
“Irons high!” all the men roared before they fell upon their fates with untold pleasure.
Fire and death came upon the Cross, when the Sun was scorching at its highest, a deafening storm bellowing from the Sky. The Archers charged together with my men but feigned retreat at the last moment. But most of the Blades made it to the enemy front line, dead or alive, emptying the pails on the Crossers. The Archers’ arrows, wrapped with pine-blood’s tows, followed, set ablaze at the right moment. We aimed them high so they would fall with the strength of the Sky. The new strings, the ox tendons, were tight. The shield wall of the Crossers burned in flames and screams. The black oil and the heat spread the fire fast, and the screaming, burning horses destroyed the formation of the defenders. A few hundred arrows had found small openings. One opening through the shield wall, and it all ended quickly. One hole was enough for tens of arrows to get through. When one man fell, another gap opened. As soon as one opened, it immediately grew larger. Some of their horsemen emerged from farther back and tried to chase our retreating Archers. As the day passed, they became slower, and when they came too close, they were pierced like the pumpkins of my Uncarved training.
“Aim at the horses! The men are armored!” commanded Karat.
“The horses?”
No one wanted to hit those beautiful swift-footed creatures. Next to them, ours seemed no better than short-legged pigs. But the othertribers’ horses were not rugged beasts. Ours started out slow but continued to ride hard and strong, while theirs started strong, but late in the afternoon, wore down from exhaustion. Everyone wanted such a horse as a battle trophy, but most of them were pierced and slaughtered, bringing their riders down with them. When the othertribers had lost half of their men, the other half threw down their heavy shields and tried to run.
I joined into battle with my Blades when it was far too late for glory. The hooves were crushing the dead bodies, the half-burnt skulls of my volunteers, the poppies, and the shields of the double-headed eagle. We charged past them chasing the retreating Crossers. Some managed to get away, but not many. We finished off any who were still bleeding from the arrows. The shining helms of their men, their scale armors, even the crimson robe of their Cross Sorcerer. He had chosen to wear crimson that day. All were crimson now, lying in the field. Defeated. I lost eight of the two hundred Blades and all twenty pail-carriers who had brought Enaka’s fire from the Sky.
The few Crossers we captured were gathered in a circle awaiting death—exhausted and dejected. It took much effort, torture, and blood to learn a few useless things. A couple of their younger slaves talked. They said that in the beginning they had underestimated us and sent few horsemen. After the first day, they began arguing about whether they should chase us back or maintain their positions. On this last day of the battle, they were certain of victory. Their leaders didn’t change anything. But the fire and the arrows broke the will of the defenders fast. Defeat came quickly after that. At least they didn’t beg for their lives. They would be useless as prisoners or slaves.
“You demons have been sent by God. You are the Almighty’s punishment for our sins,” the captives kept repeating. “For the sins of Thalassopolis.”
Those were their last words, and those we brought to Malan.
How alike our Stories were.
“Revenge for our ancestors!” screamed the Ouna-Mas.
“God is punishing us,” cried the Cross Sorcerers.
As if their Sorcerers and our Witches had forged their Legends together before sending us, the men of courage, to dance barefoot over hot coals.
“No stake, no cross,” I said to Noki. “Kill them fast. They deserve a clean death.”
“I will,” he said.
“Is their god going to accept them like this? Disgraced in defeat?” I asked the Reghen.
“Their god doesn’t care about defeat. He takes the men who do his will, up there, to the poppy fields above the clouds. That’s what they say. Peace awaits them there in endless verdant valleys where their angels sing.”
Peace…
“That god of theirs has a big heart, but he’ll win no battles,” I said.
On my twenty-first spring, I still had a certainty about all things. God. Victory. Battle.
But I didn’t know what angels were. I asked him.
“Guardians of their faith. See this painting.” The Reghen knelt and pointed to a pear-shaped wooden shield fallen and bloodied.
A long-haired young warrior, with two blades of fire and iron, wings of an eagle, and a breastplate was painted on the shield of my enemies. He looked almost identical to the eighteen-wintered boy I had sent to his death.
Uluh. All twenty of you. Guardians of the faith. Angels of Enaka.
I had failed them; I hadn’t joined them in the last gallop.
“This was an easy victory,” Karat boasted, raising his cup outside Malan’s tent where the Leaders of the Tribe had gathered.
“Easy?” I yelled at him. “My men—”
But everyone else was already roaring their own words. “Honor the dead!” “Glory to Enaka!” Farther away, the Rods, those who hadn’t even joined in battle, were dancing around a roasting fire.
The dead had been honored and forgotten too fast.
“How many Archers did we have here today? Forty Packs?” Malan asked Karat.
“Fewer. We have better bows now,” Karat said.
“Their infantry was spread across six hundred paces. How many arrows did our Archers fire on them?” the Reghen asked me.
I was counting.
“After my men set their front line on fire—” I started, but Karat stopped me.
“Our Packs were charging against them five at a time. Retreating and reloading quivers, while another five Packs charged. One arrow with every breath each. At each breath, two hundred arrows coming down at the eight hundred men, their front line.”
“How long did their shield wall hold?”
“More than it should,” I said.
“We emptied six thousand quivers on them. We’ll be gathering arrows for days,” said Karat.
Six thousand quivers—half of them over the eight hundred men of the infantry, the other half at their cavalry. Before even one of my men
crossed blades with the enemies.
“Keep bringing on the reed, the horn, the wood, and the iron for our Craftsmen to make our bows and the stirrups. And no one can stop us,” added the Reghen.
Karat was completely drunk from the victory and the wine, roaring and screaming to everyone who still cared to listen. But Malan was fair and magnanimous to those who had perished in the fire of his glory.
“What you tried to do last night was brave, Da-Ren. Good thing that the Reghen stopped you. Are you challenging your fate? Longing to join Enaka?”
“We had to open the way for the Archers. I have not trained my men just to sit idle, Khun,” I said to my Uncarved peer. He had been raised with me, side by side since he was a boy. How had we turned out so different—two children from the same Tribe in the same tent every night, training in the same field every day?
“How do we name this battle?” he asked.
“The battle of fire and blade?” I replied.
“The battle of the poppy fields. That’s what the Reghen named it,” Karat intervened. He didn’t want me to take all the glory. “Great Khun, those othertribers are weak. They cannot stand against your armies. Their horsemen do not have strong bows. They can’t ride and shoot at the same time. They don’t even have stirrups or framed saddles,” said Karat.
“Ha! Not even stirrups,” Malan said as if he hadn’t noticed it till then.
“And what does all that tell you?” asked the Reghen.
“They fight like the first hunters of the Tribe, without double-curved bows. We brought here only two thousand of our ten thousand Archers,” said Karat.
“But they have courage,” I said.
“Those in front had courage. Once they collapsed, the ones behind ran like hares,” Karat said.
Malan asked again, but the Tracker insisted that they had not seen any other army of the Empire making its way toward us.
“What will we find in front of us?” the Reghen asked the Tracker.
“Many small villages. It’s a rich land for farming, but we’re not sure about loot and gold. We’re still very far north from the six great cities. Most are close to the sea. Thalassopolis is even farther but northwest of us. We’re not going there, not yet.”
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