Karat turned to me with a calm, sarcastic grin:
“I can’t have the Archers waste their strength with farmers. We’ll rest and prepare for the next great battles. Come tomorrow; you Blades can go in front.”
The growl of Malan’s mauler was the last sound of the moot, as the victorious Khun dismissed us.
Leke was waiting for me outside, and we set off together back to our camp, silent and short of breath from the day’s sufferings. He broke the silence as we were trotting and asked me, “I itch to know, Firstblade. What did the Ouna-Ma say to you when you were talking to the men?”
“You mean when I asked for volunteers?”
“Yes. You were stopping your words and she was whispering things to you. Maybe I am not allowed to know.”
I tried to change the discussion.
“Do you think those men of ours regretted it? At the last moment? When the fire eats the flesh…the horse screams?” I asked.
Leke stared at me shocked:
“What are you saying, Da-Ren? Are you calling them cowards? They’d never…”
“Yes, you’re right.”
I am not so sure, Leke. Those last few moments, when the flesh melts to the bone, the flames eat the eyes and the lips, and they can’t even scream no more. Are the Ouna-Ma’s words still soothing and cooling? Are you sure, Leke? Did you see what was left of them? Did they look like…angels?
We had reached our camp. The blaze of the last pyre was honoring those who sacrificed their lives.
Leke asked me once more:
“But you didn’t tell me. What did the Ouna-Ma—”
“No, you are not allowed to know. Go tell our Chiefs to be ready to ride first in the morning and leave me alone. Rest.”
He lowered his head and cantered faster ahead of me.
What was I to tell him? That the Ouna-Ma was not whispering anything to me? That I had asked her to be there simply because the men had to see her? That her only low whisper was something about riding my dick, naked under the naked sky after this battle was over? That I was to spend this night in her tent? That I had fooled my men? And they were happier than ever? There was not much to say to Leke.
I dreamed of the huts of Kar-Tioo. All of them burned to the ground.
The Blades rode first the next day. We quickened our pace and widened our distance from the rest of our horde. We would find them first. The Deadwalkers. The spoils. The children. A few days later, we reached the hills of Kapoukia, each one pierced a thousand times and rising like giant insect caves. It was late in the afternoon, and the light was escaping through the holes that ancient water and air had created in the ashen soft mountains.
“Beautiful,” said Rikan.
The Ouna-Mas had different Stories.
“Back when Darhul sent the Raveneye to steal the light from the sky, fire came out of the earth, the darkest days, and ash. Those here are the mountains of that ash. Caves and caverns spread underneath, all the way to the nest of the Demon. The Buried await us here,” the Ouna-Mas said when the full moon lit the conical chimneys of the ashen caves.
The elder Reghen stayed behind with Malan. A younger one brought the new Truths:
“The Ouna-Mas warn us that we have arrived at the land of the Buried. The evil Deadwalkers. They crawl in these caves, everywhere under the earth. You do two things: blade to the living and fire to the dead. Burn everything, even the corpses. It is what Sah-Ouna commands,” the young Reghen told me.
The demon tales of the Ouna-Mas proved stronged than the summer peace and the song of the cicadas that filled the fields aand our ears. The men insisted that we sacrifice a ram and pray every night, but the rams were fewer than the nights. They asked me to put staked animal heads around our camp to keep the demon spirits away. We did. But I was not afraid of the Deadwalkers. Like the Wolfmen, the Reekaal, and the Drakons, something told me that I wouldn’t face a single one of them. A different fear, my only one, was growing inside: Zeria’s silver amulet around my neck and the promise I made. Spread out before us were only small farms and orchards, villages with peasants. Men and women. Children.
“That Karat pig! He let us go first because there is nothing here,” I said.
“No, no. The Archers were trembling with fear. They all are, even our men—I know,” Leke told me.
“Fearing what?”
“The Undead. The Buried. The Legends. This is a land of ghosts, Da-Ren. We haven’t seen a single man for days. This place is cursed.”
The ashen hills had been abandoned by men and ghosts, but my guess was that their messengers and garrisons had retreated and forewarned them. There was plenty of life otherwise: the birds and the jackals of the night, the cicadas, the sparrows, and the rabbits.
Leke insisted, though:
“A couple of our slaves disappear every night.”
“You’d better tie your slaves then, Leke.”
“No, no, the slaves are scared. They talk of the Deadwalkers who come out of their graves at night to steal the souls, suck the blood, rip out the hearts and the livers—”
“I got that,” I answered him. The spleens, the lungs, the guts…
We kept marching into quaint deserted villages with log-built huts covered with thatched roofs. Made for tales that caress the ears softly and are sung to children eating honey and butter over warm bread. There were hundreds of those thatched houses, some with their chimneys still smoking tendrils of peaceful dreams. The villagers—living, dead, undead—had abandoned their jars of wine, wheat, barley, olives, and honey. They had taken most of the animals with them—as if they believed we wouldn’t be able to catch up with their goats. Olive orchards, vineyards, rich and golden wheat fields surrounded the villages at the onset of summer. The beehives buzzed to share the wax and their dripping gold juices with us. We left all of this for the hungry hordes who followed us.
“We are here for the gold and the slaves. And war horses. We did not bring forty thousand, the Tribe’s best, to steal olives,” said the Reghen, who was now close to me. The young Reghen was giving me orders. Not Malan.
My Packs, freed of the weight of the carts and tents, moved faster to catch up with the Deadwalkers. I ordered the men to sleep in the open air. We were getting very close. Before the first moon of summer, we penetrated deep within the Southeastern Empire and finally reached the first inhabited village.
It was a half-moon night when the Tracker brought me the news. This one was younger than twenty springs, he didn’t even look fifteen, his face hairless as a girl’s.
“They are sleeping. About fifty of them,” the Tracker said. “I made it all the way to their huts, up close, half a night’s ride from here.”
“And the others?” asked Noki.
“What others?”
“Are you stupid, boy? The others. The ones waiting under the earth? How many?” asked Noki, sweating and snapping again with bulging eyes as he shook the young man by the shoulders.
The Tracker froze. His jaw and his legs were shaking.
“Tell us, the Deadwalkers. Have they risen?” Noki repeated.
The Tracker turned to me as if I could save him. Silence fell and was cut abruptly by a funny hooting sound. A ghost-white owl was observing us from an olive tree branch. Noki turned and fell on me with a thundering laugh. I did the same. All men followed, the laughter growing louder. Even the Tracker, shaken, drenched in sweat, did the same. The air smelled of fresh dung and warm piss. An unstoppable ruckus rose, loud enough to burst Selene into a thousand pieces. A few of us laughed because of Noki’s prank. The rest, to drown their fears.
LII.
The Deadwalkers
Twenty-First Summer. Firstblade
Deep night, too early for the rooster and the nightingale.
The trembling of the earth awakens him. A small black shadow, but for two yellow gleaming cat eyes, jumps in the scant moonlight and disappears into darkness. A sleeping child turns around and moans, “Go away, go.” One of the monsters of the old
woman’s tale crawled into her dream. He warned that toothless witch not to tell wicked pagan stories to the children. They are bad luck and not for the God-fearing folk. His wife, his mother, five children all sleep by the hearth. It is long cold, not even a last glowing ember, but it’s late spring anyway. When they shut their eyes, the skies were clear of clouds with silver bands of stars. The sunlight should be ample and warm before noon. He promised his little girl that they would hunt sparrows and gather berries come morning. He wove a willow basket just for her. He sowed the last wheat days ago, and there is not much to do till harvest.
The white-gray owl was calling his dead brother all night, so the tale says. “Yoon,” long silence, “Yoon,” the owl goes on and on. But Yoon won’t listen to his brother’s solemn song. His head is split open, his brother’s pickax stuck there. God turned the murderer into a white-gray owl to…to what? To suffer forever? Out of mercy? So the tale says. But he is a simple farmer. He never found any meaning in this tale. He can’t hear the owl anymore.
The earth shakes again, the clay pots dance and sing with a muffled rattle. He pushes himself up with both elbows on the straw mat. He drags his naked feet to the north window, pushes the shutters out, and rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, squints, and blinks. Strange. A faraway silent whirlwind has gathered up the hillside. The priest warned them before he left on his donkey, but that priest is a crazy hermit, and no one listens to him anymore.
He jumps fully awake. He sees her out there, that toothless crone, his mother’s sister who lives next to them, the oldest in the village. She is already up—doesn’t sleep much, she is the one who says the pagan stories. Her cloaked shadow billowing among the huts, she bangs a ladle on a pot and shouts. No. She screams. What is she screaming? She is half-blind. What did she see in the whirlwind? What brings this rumble in the night? An earthshake, a storm, the devil himself?
The whirlwind descends fast and louder now, he hears horse hooves beating and riders bellowing. Too low, too bright, these are not stars, they are torches; riders in the darkness. The torches grow bigger. Pine, tar, resin? The scent of a bleeding forest. They’ll burn long. Too many.
Too close. They scream. The first huts are ablaze. More screams. Women.
A final, meaningless choice.
What does a man do with those few ending breaths?
Nothing.
Nothing would be the brave and honorable thing. What’s left to do? To hide his children? Shout to his woman to run away? How fast could a mother run? She can’t lift her skirts; she is holding two children left and right. To grab that rusty scythe, to look for the dull sword, to steal one last glance of his elder son, stripped of hope? To toss his daughter into that weed-covered dried-up well to save her? She was always good at climbing. Could she, maybe? To slaughter the infants before they take them? We never took them, and that was worse. To hear the screams of the elders who have lived one moon too many? To abandon everything and everyone and make a run for it? To crawl on all fours and try to hide? To kneel, weep, and shit himself right there? To make the sign of the cross and pray to the Almighty, who protects the faithful? To pull up his woolen pants and tie them tight? I laugh—but I had seen even this so many times. The many trying to hide their crotches when they were only two breaths away from losing their heads. The few of the big two-floored stone houses trying to hide their gold coins.
The old woman’s tales, the black wolves of the North, and the packs of two-legged jackals become reality in one moment. These few breaths when one still thinks that there is still something to do, but what? Think fast. Too late. That is the vilest torture. And that flashing iron is salvation and deliverance. The arrows land on the chest, the blade touches the throat and shines, the daylight rises ample and warm now, and the nightmare comes to an end. The peace of death remains, holy and graceful. The crackling of burning straw, an empty berry basket ablaze, the reek of burning flesh.
I ordered the raid on that first inhabited village long before dawn. A dark mist approached the lair of the Deadwalkers before first light when the body feels heavier and the head cloudy. A couple of restless villagers were probably the first to hear a rumbling from hundreds of horses galloping together as if a windstorm were approaching.
We didn’t need the Archers or their rain. Day after day and again, we didn’t lose even one warrior.
“By the Khun’s orders, you leave no othertriber alive!” screamed the young Reghen that first day and every one that followed, to remind us.
We rode in fear and haste the first time, eager to strike, no time to think. What would we find? Deadwalkers? Harmless peasants? Children still warm from sleeping in their mothers’ arms?
Never ask “why” in the midst of the summer raids. One of the first lessons for every Uncarved. I could fight with my whys in the dead of winter.
The peasants cried in a tongue I could not understand, but then again I didn’t need to. I hated those men. Because they could not save their women. They didn’t deserve women. They should never have enjoyed them. They should never have made them mothers. They couldn’t save even one child. Not even one. I hated them. I still do.
It started on that first day and continued on the second and third. And many more to come. We came with the Poppy Moon, we spread fire and death on the Antler Moon, the Longfish and the Harvest Moon. It ended with the late rains of the Hunter’s Moon. Every village heard of the barbarians who were coming, but we always arrived faster than they could run.
The first two days, I was riding first, “behind me, follow me,” charging against anyone who resembled a warrior, a man. I so longed for the Stories to be true—to see an Undead monster, a servant of Darhul, rising out of his grave to challenge me. “They’re there. Show them no mercy!” yelled the young frail Reghen. But I found only farmers. Unarmed. Soft. The blades cut deep.
Rikan sighed, tired, wiping his sweat. “The blade sets them free.”
“By the thousand stars of the Goddess, there is no glory in this,” I said to Leke on the third night. We fell naked into an ice-cold stream running next to the cemetery to wash off, to numb our minds.
“They have a resting peace in their eyes when you kill them. As if they’d been released from a horrible misery they’d carried since birth.”
It was the peace of their god and of their faith, they told me. Death was a valley they called heaven and eternal life. It made me hate their god.
I couldn’t, Zeria. I never raised my sword on a woman or a child. I kept my promise. But I could not stop the greatest scourge of the world. The blades unsheathed and shone. The women screamed till the ends of my mind. The children didn’t have time. Children don’t know. We always tell them false tales about mythical monsters. Always mythical.
I camped after the first three nights. I had not lost a man yet, but I had lost the calm of sleep forever. I stopped our advance south and waited for Malan. Was this really all he wanted me to do? To wipe out children and burn villages? Malan arrived a few days later, following the trail of embers and ashes and the flight of the vultures. He dismounted and walked up to me in haste; the Ssons to his left and right, Reghen following behind.
“Why are you delaying, Da-Ren?”
“Why aren’t we moving toward the seven great cities of the Empire?” I asked.
“Because those are my orders.”
“But we could enslave those peasants, just like the others up north, to feed us,” I said again, raising my voice against the Khun.
“So, you’ve become a Reghen now? Do you count and counsel me? The Ouna-Mas said ‘fire and death.’”
“This…this is not for warriors. There is no Story ever to sing here.”
“Are you the Firstblade or a chicken, Da-Ren? You will do as I say! And do it right! I told you to gather the gold from everywhere!” Malan screamed, banging his hand on his table.
“We take whatever we find.”
We had grown tired of searching in the olive brine and the haystacks for silver and
gold. What a great campaign this was coming to be, to reach the edge of the world, ten thousand warriors looting burlap sacks with chicken feed and bran. No Buried monsters, no Undead demons, and no gold anywhere.
“Dig up all the bodies. The Deadwalkers hide gold jewels in their graves. You have to burn the Undead,” said the young Reghen next to Malan.
What would they do to me if I split him open right there? What would they do? I asked myself three times silently between my teeth.
“You want my Blades to pick through corpses, one by one? What do you take us for? Vultures?”
Everyone’s eyes darted back and forth from me to Malan. He was Khun for three winters but he had been my peer for more than thirteen. Sometimes I forgot my place.
“We’re finished here, Da-Ren. You’ll do what the Reghen says,” Malan said.
I lifted my trembling fist and held it high next to my head. My teeth bloodied my lower lip. The Ssons took a step toward me and waited for Malan’s signal. The sun lighted their monstrous, long heads, painted with false jaws, eyes, fangs.
“Have the Blades gather up the old men to dig up their folk,” Malan said.
“Burn all the rotting bodies,” said the young Reghen. “Or they rise again from their bones. They’re cursed.”
“I’ve seen so many fall these past few days, but not one has risen again in the night,” I said.
“They are Deadwalkers,” the young Reghen insisted.
“They were walkers but now they are dead. I’ve yet to see one do the opposite.”
This Story just wasn’t convincing anymore. The Ouna-Mas had to come up with something better in the tents, where they painted their bodies all day. Scarier. Add some Drakons maybe. Crazyweed? Belladonna? Was it all gone? It would be hard to find any down here.
New orders came a few days later.
Drakon Omnibus Page 59
