“And the next day?” I asked.
“No, there was no other battle.”
Envoys from the three cities came at nightfall to Malan’s tent to negotiate peace. Malan kept them as hostages, except for one, who was sent back to carry the Khun’s demands. All of our terms, the old and the new, had to be accepted before dawn, or else he would order the final attack.
“How did I—?”
“We came for you that same evening. We got there when the battlefield emptied. I could still hear the cries of the wounded. Not even the crows had descended yet. I swear, Firstblade.”
I believed him, but I had no strength for words.
“It was only at sunset that we finally found you, among the horses and the bodies of othertribers and our own men. No, I didn’t recognize you. You were almost buried under the sand, your head and your leg a bloody mess, your arm trapped under the dying horse; I couldn’t believe that you were still alive. I stared at your corpse when I noticed your lips moving.”
They cut the horse in two to pull out my crushed arm.
“You nearly drowned in its blood before we could get you out of there,” Leke said.
I drank the sweet poppy wine, and it slowly filled me with warmth like Enaka’s light of death. The pain subsided for a little while I stared, with half-open eyes, at my purple fingers. The faint light of the tent had now become a silver haze around them. In my brief sleep, I dreamed of white cloth wrapping around my whole body, honey and resin deep in my nose—merciful, sweet, and eternal sleep. I awoke again in agony. The pain was getting worse. Another day passed. I wanted more opion, but they wouldn’t give it to me. I was dying. I knew it. I would rot away slowly from the arm, then up to my chest, and when it reached the heart, I would be done. I had seen it happen many times during this campaign and back at Sirol. An inglorious, humiliating death.
I had to go while there was still time, before the poppy turned my mind to mush, to see my men and face Malan one last time. Would he dare look at me?
“Bring me a horse,” I said to Leke. “Take Rikan and ten men from the First, the most loyal, and we ride for Malan.”
“We’re going to the Khun?”
He is not my Khun anymore.
“That one.”
Leke returned soon with Noki and helped me up. They threw the Firstblade hide over my shoulders, and I stepped out of the tent covers supported by my two comrades. The pain was returning, but I was outside in the fresh air. It would all end soon, but I had to endure the torture until I reached Malan. They pulled me up on a horse. The Sun blinded me as if it were cursing me for my disobedience. I had denied Enaka. I had dared to look upon the Sun alive again. This was not right; it was ninestar magic, I could hear the Ouna-Mas and the Reghen hissing already. One shout from countless mouths greeted me as I began to make out, one by one, the men around me.
“Irons high!”
Every warrior saluting by crossing his forearms in front of the chest.
“A worthy Firstblade! A worthy Firstblade!” someone nearby shouted.
“Everyone is here,” Noki said as he supported me on my horse to keep me from falling.
A cripple, still alive. I wasn’t worthy.
The Packs of the Blades, all twenty of them, eight hundred men, were lined up in one row as far as my eyes could see. No one stood behind anyone. Everyone forward. Everyone first. As many as were left standing. The Twentieth Pack was the closest in front of me. I passed them in reverse order to salute them. From the Twentieth to the First. I was riding another horse, not my own, a tall and strong stallion, with Leke holding the reins next to me. I tried to compose myself proudly, back straight. The torturing pain.
There were no longer forty men in line in the Twentieth. Many were missing. In their place stood their two blades, the long and the short, their iron crossing, and their tips buried in the sand. Man, man, blades, man, blades, man, man, blades—they were lined up until the very last one. The living still standing. And the dead with their blades. All shouting, “Irons high!”
But they were not all there.
“We lost twelve Packs,” said Noki.
“Fifty more men are badly wounded,” Leke added.
A few of them had come with their last breaths of strength. Pain conquered me once more. I dropped my head, and my cheek touched on the smooth neck of the horse. I kept going like this, still looking at my men.
We passed the Nineteenth, young blood, fast legs most of them. The old Nineteenth had remained in Sirol, under Sani. They were standing still, only their eyes wondering: Why was I still breathing? The Goddess had summoned me near her. If I would obey her, only for once. Few were missing from the Eighteenth. We got to the Seventeenth. Not one man stood there. Only a banner to mark their number, a D for ten and seven Is next to it, and two blades for each one of the fallen, crossed in the dirt. Many blades were broken, a lot of them missing and replaced by wooden sticks of the same length. The same in the Sixteenth. The Fourteenth was also a new Pack, and so was the Thirteenth. I had trained them during the campaign. These were the Packs I had ordered to turn around with me and fall on the enemy’s cavalry. Up until the Eighth. Not one man standing. The Seventh. Greeted me with silence. Three hundred men were still alive. I had lost five hundred Blades in one morning. I hadn’t even managed to stand and sing at their pyre.
In the Third, there was only one man and one short of forty pairs of blades. He was sitting on his hide, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun and his gaze raised high to meet mine. Both of his legs had been hacked off above the knee.
“…high,” he whispered.
I approached him on horseback. I couldn’t climb down. I lowered my hand with great effort. With greater effort, he extended his. He still looked fierce—the bushy beard, the dark muscled arms, but his eyes foretold the end. I let the clay figure that the Ouna-Mas had made in my likeness slip from my fingers to his. Maybe he was still a believer.
My companions had surrounded me on three sides, leaving only one open for me to look at my men.
“You are as white as a Deadwalker, Firstblade. You shouldn’t go to Malan like this,” said Leke.
He didn’t call him Khun.
I didn’t have many days left; I knew that. If I didn’t make it now, I never would. Leke hadn’t brought Rikan to accompany us as I had ordered him. Nor the others from the First, the most loyal. I wanted to go to Malan with them, the fourcarved who had defied the Khun, the Reghen, and the Witches.
We made it to the First. My eyes opened wide searching but all I saw was scalding poison, and it poured all the way down to my lungs. The First Pack, my Pack, the Pack of the Smiths and the Tanners, the one I had given birth to and trained, wasn’t there anymore. No one.
“I said—”
“Yes, I know, Da-Ren.”
The First should have survived. It was my carving on the Tribe. My Legend. My Truth. I told them to keep running. Those were my orders. For them not to follow me, for them not to be buried with me in the desert. I ordered Rikan, their Chief.
“When you turned to fall upon the horses, Rikan turned too.”
The Blacksmith.
“And Kuran.”
The bravest unlucky scum of the Tribe. They ignored my orders and followed me to doom. Not one of them was left to stand before me. Forty pairs of dusty, worn and broken blades, cross-buried in the sands of the East. Victorious.
“A worthy Firstblade,” three hundred men cried with one voice behind me for the last time. The cry pierced my ears like a searing spear.
Malan’s tent had been rebuilt grander than ever before: the Earth, Sun, and Selene symbols, the horsetails, the spoils of war, and the tattered three-edged cross banners were blowing in the breeze. The gray-haired Reghen, the one who advised me throughout the first springs of the campaign, was waiting outside the tent, as if he had received word that I would be coming. He was the one who had spoken to me a few summers ago about the heroes and the sacrifice.
“I have bee
n waiting for you,” he said.
Had he? Did anyone believe that I would come out of this battle alive?
“A great victory, the decisive one. So many spoils.”
So much pain. There were not enough spoils to pay for the loss of the First.
“And you still live to savor it all, Da-Ren,” he said.
Was I still living? I was dying, and anyone could see it in the pale of my face, the yellow of my eyes.
I moved past him silently, my knees trembling, my hand making way through the entrance’s thick fabrics to get to Malan. The tent had many holes at the top allowing the light to pour in ample. Othertribers, well dressed, wearing gold chains and soft shoes, were standing casually among the Tribe’s men. It didn’t make sense. They didn’t seem scared or desperate. They weren’t slaves. They seemed to belong in that tent, as if casually meeting with Malan. But I hadn’t come to see them.
As soon as I looked at Malan, he knew. Unlike the Reghen, he was smart—the smartest man I had ever known. Maybe it was because he had used me like meat, or because he could see the pain of my loss, the pain of death on my face. The physical pain led my mind, nothing else, as craven as it sounds. The pain prevailed over the Stories erasing any faith I had left in the Tribe. And what was left in its place? Nothing.
Malan knew I was finished.
The Reghen spoke first, announcing me to everyone in the tent, to the Leaders, the othertribers who showed absolutely no fear of being among us, and to the Ouna-Mas.
“Da-Ren, the hero of Apelo,” he said.
What a great honor! Not even one face looked at me with respect. In there, I was more of a sick dog that would be better kept away.
Malan stepped down from his throne. Each of the two Rods next to him was holding a silver tray.
“Enaka wanted you to live, Da-Ren, so that you could hear everyone hail your bravery. Go and offer a worthy sacrifice to her.”
Malan picked a beautiful curved blade from one of the trays and unsheathed it. Its cross-guard ended in snakehead carvings, its pommel in a bright green jewel. He offered it to me.
“For you. In a gold sheath.”
It was a leather sheath, ornamented with gold.
I had killed my men. If this bitter twelve-wintered feud between Malan and me hadn’t existed, he wouldn’t have sent us. I was no hero. I was the death of my men. They had followed the ninestar, the cursed Da-Ren. I had brought darkness and blood upon my bravest men.
The prophecies were always true.
The gold-beaked hawks of Apelo.
The wood beams burn and bring down the stone walls of Varazam.
The ninestar prophecies of the Sieve.
The Drakon. It took me much longer to understand that one.
The four Ssons were farther back to the left and right of the throne, but their eyes were fixed past me.
“A worthy Firstblade!” shouted Malan. His entourage followed.
I lifted the blade with my right hand. A Rod patted me softly on the back, and I screamed. I dropped the sword and bent on one knee to pick it up. As I tried to stand up again, I used it as a crutch. They finally figured it out. They cheered me, but their eyes were bidding farewell as if I were already up in the Unending Sky.
Malan offered me a second tray, full of gold coins. I didn’t have three hands. Or two, for that matter. If I could, I’d break out in nervous laughter. Noki came forward uninvited and took the tray. The Khun looked more startled to see him than me.
“Damn, are you still alive, Noki?” A fake, careless smile on his face.
“You should know us by now. We don’t fall; we don’t kneel.”
“Uncarved—once—all of us. Strong legs.”
“I want to—” I went to say, but I had no idea how to end my plea.
Malan spoke with his hand on my shoulder. Its weight was killing me. I shut my eyes.
“Not now. Rest. Your campaign ends here, Da-Ren. Ours will end soon as well. Go and heal yourself, and when you are healthy, come and tell me what you want to do. You can go to any tent you like, join any Banner, or return to any city you choose. Choose any outpost, east or north. I say you should go back to Varazam. Rest there until the coming winter passes.”
“And the Blades?”
“The Blades are no more. Your campaign is over. I am going to make changes.”
I didn’t say a word. Not for one moment did I think of what he had said. I stepped back and away from him, almost collapsing, supporting myself on one knee. As if I were bowing to him. I just wanted to leave, to return to the poppy. There was no room for anything else in my head. Everyone in that tent seemed occupied with important matters, and I had only interrupted them with my last farewells. Dogs, Ouna-Mas, and Reghen—each returned to their tasks.
Malan had spoken. He had told me, in his own words, that I was a cripple and no longer First of the Blades. He advised me to return to Varazam and Kapoukia, where the ghosts waited for me.
We walked out of the tent. It was noon, at summer’s end. We had earned gold coins. We had lost everything else.
“End it,” I begged Noki again with tears of pain. He had to cut off my arm. There was no other way.
They threw me like a sack of bones atop my horse. I leaned my head to the left this time, hoping the pain would lessen. If I decided to lean to the right, I would have been dead two nights later. We were strolling back to my tent. And then what? I didn’t belong anywhere anymore. As we were passing a clearing, I saw a few defeated Crossers chained under the scorching sun, sitting cross-legged, naked, and barefoot in the sand. Their heads down, waiting for their fates, like sheep for slaughter.
I trotted closer to them, my gaze fixed on a gray-haired old man, who kept staring at me. He raised his hands above his head and kept them there, palms open, as if he were certain that I would stop at his command. His feet were in manacles and he was wearing what was left of a priest’s tattered robe. He seemed familiar to me, but every old man looked to me a little like Rouba. Or like Er-Ren, my father, whom I had never seen. I moved closer. The guards shouted and moved with whips in hand, ready to bring him back down. They froze at my sign. I stopped my horse next to the old man with the long silver-gray hair, and he touched my fingers. They hadn’t rotted black yet but I couldn’t feel them. He looked into my eyes, and he mirrored my pain more than anyone else.
My mind went back to the siege of Varazam.
Great King of the North…
I remembered the words of the Cross Sorcerer, the envoy of Varazam who had come in Malan’s tent to offer terms and propose the duel. Looking at me straight in the eye, the man spoke slowly and clearly in the tongue of my Tribe:
“If you don’t let me set that arm, you will be dead in two nights’ time.”
It was Baaghushai.
LXII.
The One of Magic
Twenty-Fourth Autumn. Nobody
I should have kept going.
Move on.
Trust no othertriber.
That was the Legend I had been raised on. I hadn’t learned to beg for help from a Cross Sorcerer. The journey had ended. Enaka had summoned me. I would die in a few days—there was no doubt about that—burning in the pyre just as I had lived. As a great warrior of the Tribe.
Instead of all this, the pain won over, and I said only one thing to Baaghushai.
“Make it stop.”
I managed to make half a signal to my men before collapsing.
Bring him. Let him help me.
Trust. Leke and Noki trusted me.
Baaghushai would do anything to get out of his manacles. He was my miracle, and I was his.
Luck, once more, was there to save my life. Zeria’s words came to mind. The Atropos fate had marked me long ago in the Forest. You die by iron. Under the ribs. Like a Drakon. I can’t die from a broken hand.
The three of them took me back to my tent but didn’t put me inside. I could hear their voices as if they were coming from the distant sky.
“He
re, under the sun, I need all the light,” said Baagh. “Tie him down.”
He opened the splint and removed the bark and the mud. I couldn’t tell the difference between mud and skin. It was all a brown pulp. There was no iron piercing my arm, no worms chewing on my flesh, just the pain of this.
“Bring me a tall stool,” said Baagh.
“What’s a stool?” asked Leke.
“Something for him to sit on. Hold him; he will bite his tongue,” Baagh ordered Leke.
They put a stick into my mouth for me to bite.
My arm hung there, limp and deformed, badly swollen, covered in dried honey and pieces of white cloth.
Baaghushai smiled silent to me and then, without a warning, he pulled my arm down. I shrieked like a little girl whipped with thorn lashes. A thousand small knives had gotten into my brain and were twisting to get out again.
Leke shouted to the Sorcerer. “You, snake, stop that; you’ll kill him!”
“Leave him,” I tried to say.
“I must set it in place,” Baagh said. “Cloth, bring me some, not these. Linen,” he told them. “And two more men to hold him down. And water to wash him.”
He pulled my arm down once again, and with his fingers, he tried to feel the bones under my skin. I had no more strength, even to cry. He started wrapping my arm loosely with many layers of linen.
“Olive oil?” he asked.
“Lard, I can get that,” Noki said.
“Wax? Resin?”
“Resin.”
“Go, now; run and fetch them.”
A fearless Baagh pushed and ordered my men about. After a while, he was rubbing resin and lard between the layers of linen. He wrapped my arm again many times in the linen, but not tightly.
Drakon Omnibus Page 71
