We had come far north, and the wood in front of us thickened and darkened a bit more every time I looked at it. Milk-colored fumes were rising above the treetops, and it wasn’t fog.
“Campfire,” whispered the Chief. He motioned silently for us to dismount and wait. “Grab your cudgels—no blades or bows. I don’t want holes in them. Open the cages, and wait here.”
At once we were all on foot, except from Balam, the featherbrain who dreamed of being the next Khun. He waited frozen still on his horse.
“Are you afraid, Balam?” the Ninestar asked.
“No, but—”
“The Blades are not our best warriors, and they aren’t afraid. You are an Uncarved. Get off your horse now!”
It was the beginning of spring, before the first moon, and the land had not blossomed. The trunks of the first oaks stood out dark and motionless in front of me, but farther back the naked branches and the dead leaves mixed into one dense gray cloud. That was where the Blades and the Guides disappeared, on foot, with knives and neckropes in hand.
We alone, the Uncarved, stayed behind, guarding the cages and trying to make no noise. The Blades had been away for some time, and there was no sign of them. There at the Forest’s edge, I hung from the fangs of the gray monster, just outside its mouth, but still, it made no move to devour me. A sun I couldn’t see was setting behind the wood when a medley of cries and moving shadows came through the trees. The second Guide appeared and called us to get deeper into the trees.
“Come further inside. The Forest won’t eat you.”
Everyone moved slowly, cursing the boots and the cracking leaves.
“Don’t wake anything up,” said Gunna.
The branches started to come alive, moving, dancing, embracing, whispering. I tried to listen to their calling. This was where I had last seen her, Elbia, the girl with the brown hair, her ghost among the oaks. She was hiding from me, for a long time now. I missed her.
“What comes out?” Gunna asked when he heard the leaves crackling.
“Kill it first, ask later,” answered Malan.
Cries and other sounds grew louder. Shadows first, then figures of men were emerging from the wood.
Balam, shaking, held Malan’s hand. Malan pushed him hard.
“Are you fucking stupid?”
A handful of Blades were yelling and running toward us, one of them pulling a rope. Behind him followed the first Dasal, with the rope wrapped around his neck, trying not to choke to death. He tripped twice over fallen branches, and the grip tightened even more. The prey was tied up and thrown at our feet. Gunna tried to grab him, but the Dasal started kicking hard.
“Use your cudgel, kid. Don’t kill him,” shouted Bera.
We hit the bearded rag-covered man a few times to weaken his legs and threw him into a cage. Another followed, and another, until we filled two cages with Dasal. They were covered in mud and growled like wounded bears. Some were still kicking to break the cage. Lebo, Gunna, and Akrani were sticking their blades into any arm or leg that moved. Lebo had wounded a man deeply, and his leg was bleeding badly all over the others in the small cage.
“Let’s get out of here,” one of the Blades said as they brought in the last one.
“It will get pitch-dark soon,” Bera said.
“A woman; I saw one of color. She was with them. Bring her to me,” the Chief replied.
Looking at the Dasal made me want to kill a man for the first time. They drank my blood just with their mad stares of despair as they tried to escape.
“Is this man or animal?” I wondered aloud.
I hated them with a passion from the first moment. So weak; they disgusted me. No brave warrior would allow himself to be caught by a neckrope like a weak foal.
“Wake up!” I heard the voice, and a loud blow woke me.
I was still staring trancelike at the Dasal’s cage. The Blade who had hit me threw a body at my feet.
“Wake up! Put her inside. I’m bringing the rest, and we leave,” he said. “In the third cage, by herself. That one goes to Sah-Ouna!” he yelled, already running to gather the others.
A savage creature stirred at my feet, hair black as starless night, coiled with mud and dried leaves, fresh cuts and scratches bleeding on her elbow and knee. This wasn’t a man. The body was thin and delicate. I lifted the cudgel, ready to hit its back before it tried to get away. She lifted her head and I saw her eyes.
My right hand froze in midair, and my left gripped her arm tightly. Her blue stare of agony flowed ice-cold up to my head and down my knees. My hand wouldn’t come down to strike her. My heart beating like a hundred hooves. My eyes watered warm.
There she was, Enaka herself, the Great Mother, she who bore the bright stars, appearing before me for the very first time.
The one of color.
The Goddess was unjust with me. From that day and beyond, I would encounter many women with eyes the color of the sky. But when I saw her that evening, First, otherworldly, she was the Only woman in the world. And the Last.
There I saw for the first time the black star, the one that had fallen from the Unending Sky and frozen the steppe. In the black of her hair.
There I saw the Blue Drakon, the Crystaleyed who guarded the rivers of the North. I saw him unleashing the waters and flooding the Iron Valley. In the blue of her eyes.
There I saw my Legends, those that would haunt me forevermore.
She was slim, with skin as smooth as my blade. She struggled and screamed, kicking me in vain. Another scream to my right, a different one. A boy slaughtered, boots crushing wooden planks. I turned my head; men running. Blood was gushing out of Lebo’s neck; his own blade stuck there. The Dasal had broken open one of the cages and were running away. The fastest were already lost behind the trees. Gunna, Malan, and the other two were chasing them.
“Stay here! Guard them!” shouted Malan, showing me the other cage. “Don’t let her go!”
Never let her go.
I was all alone with her at my knees and the Dasal in the second cage. She bit my hand. But it didn’t do anything. Never let her go. The fear in her eyes, the only blue shining in a dusky forest. I could hear the Blades shouting; they’d be back soon.
There I was at the Great Feast of Spring, only three nights later, the blood running from her long neck on Sah-Ouna’s tree trunk. The eyes of color frozen—torn out. Another sacrifice. The Goddess had quenched her thirst.
Lebo’s throat had emptied on the dry leaves, through the first and only carving he would ever get. I was the only one guarding the cage with the Dasal, and they were repeatedly kicking it to break free.
A few steps ahead, I saw the oak’s hollow.
And I knew.
I held her by the forearms and stared straight into her eyes. O, my long-lost ghost! “Oaks,” I whispered. To her. To myself. “Oaks!” Elbia knew. “Children are oaks, not firs. They live. In spring.”
I finally knew.
I was dragging her by the forearms, and her wailing was becoming more desperate.
I was forever defeated at that moment and chose my own poison. I turned my back that day on the world that had born me, to embrace a new one.
I had been born only to die, Malan would say.
I pushed her into the hollow of the oak; she tried to run the moment I let her but I threw her back in. The shouts of the Blades were closer.
“Shhh, shhh!” My finger on my lips, my other palm shutting her mouth. She understood. She stopped screaming. I threw leaves and branches over the hollow, hiding it completely. The Dasal were kicking hard to break the cage. I turned with demon’s speed, took my blade out, and poked them.
“Help us!” yelled one of them in our tongue. My betrayal. They had seen. Rage and surprise, shame and dishonor, weakness and terror. The branches of my mind were strangling me. I pushed my blade, not deep, but enough to make him bleed and shut up.
The Blades returned, and with them were Gunna and Malan, with two of the Dasal who had e
scaped. Darkness was fast swallowing the hollow oaks. What screamed near us was no pheasant. A wolf? A Reekaal?
“Da-Ren. Da-Ren. Where is the girl?”
“She got away in the wood, there,” I pointed in the opposite direction.
The Ninestar punched me in the face.
I supported myself on one knee, dizzy from the blow.
“They would have gotten away,” I said pointing to the Dasal in the other cage. “I was alone.”
“You all did shit today, useless turds! Load your dead one on his horse, and let’s get out of here.”
“We have to find the girl,” said the Chief of the Blades.
“The night is here. Listen around you. Reekaal. We are not staying here for one more breath. Out, there, away from the trees, all of you, now.”
“Sah-Ouna said—”
“To the snakes with Sah-Ouna! Have you ever seen an Ouna-Ma in the Forest at night? We leave now!” yelled the Ninestar.
“She had blue eyes. Did you see her?” insisted the Chief.
“I don’t care if they’re gold. We leave now! Before we lose all Uncarved Wolves.” Bera was screaming his lungs out. Whatever fear he had in him, he used it to appear angry and determined.
“We have orders,” the Blade said.
“What orders, aye? Kill us all? To leave the Tribe without a single Uncarved? Move out of the dark, in the moonlight. Now!”
I cast a final glance at the hollow oak. I couldn’t see two blue eyes looking back at me. I would see them constantly—whether I wanted to or not—whenever I closed mine. Until the end of my life.
I had betrayed Enaka, Khun-Taa, Rouba, Bera, Chaka, Lebo, Sah-Ouna, the Reghen, Malan, the Uncarved, the Sieve, Khun-Nan, the First Ouna-Ma, the Sun, Selene, the stars, and all but one of the ghosts of my entire Tribe.
“Sah-Ouna will hear of this,” the Chief shouted to Bera.
“So she shall! I am a ninestar Guide. You don’t scare me.”
I spat a glob of blood on the dirt. A warm smile, the joy of guilt, the only things to fill my empty stomach. I whispered of my brave and disgraceful deed to my horse, the only one who would ever take my side, no matter what I had done, and trotted into the night. I wanted to gallop and scream with pride but had to stay in pace with the carts and the rest.
We were back in the wide-open valley. My horse knew. The Forest knew. I finally knew. The clouds parted. Selene would be full in three nights. Her light was falling silver on my ninestar destiny.
What did you do, Da-Ren? Enaka knew. She saw.
XXIII.
I Dreamed of Redbreast Robins
Eighteenth spring. Uncarved—Wolf.
I killed a man for the first time a couple of nights later, on the second of the trinight Great Feast of Spring. It was the time when the Tribe, hungry in belly and in spirit, waited to hear Sah-Ouna’s prophecies. An old woman would carve a new fate for thousands of warriors. For many winters now, the arrows had been ready, searching for the next prey like starving hawks. One single command from Sah-Ouna would be enough to set us on a march toward the West to fight the Final Battle.
Sah-Ouna wouldn’t speak until the third night and the first two nights were reserved to honor Enaka who had awoken weak and thirsty. The sacrificial blood was the sacred elixir that would lift her from a deep winter’s sleep to welcome us into her bosom. Many animals were slaughtered on the first night: the heads of horses, goats, rams, and sheep stood dripping from the stakes around the Wolfhowl. Their dead eyes kept away the evil spirits of the Forest. More than ten thousand warriors sat around the Wolfhowl on the surrounding mound that was encircling the arena. It had been raised high and inclined steeply to seat many rows of men so that all could be there for the Great Feast.
The virgins who were of age to become Ouna-Mas approached Khun-Taa naked and proud, and received their first red veils from Sah-Ouna, plunging the men into dark dreams. Othertribers fought with shield and sword against Archers on horseback in mock battles. They fought bravely but fell pierced. Captured Sorcerers of the Cross from the South were thrown as live prey to the maulers. There was no fight there.
The flasks were always full of mare’s milk spirit and passed around to keep the warriors light-headed. There was meat for all but in meager amounts. Food had become scarce. The dogs and the vultures found plenty to feast on; the warriors, less. On the last night, cups of crazygrass would replace the milk spirit and men would swallow them happily along with Sah-Ouna’s prophecies.
The four Uncarved who were older than I had left our camp forever a few days earlier. They had entered their eighteenth spring, losing any claim to become the next Khun of the Tribe. Chaka held a brief and gloomy ceremony. One of the four received one carving and became Chief of an Archers Pack. He was given forty men to command. The other three received three carvings and followed the fates of thousands of other warriors. Khun-Taa had managed to devour four more of his children and was not planning to ascend to the Sky anytime soon.
My time had come after five times spring.
We were Wolves, the five who remained: myself, Malan, Gunna, Balam, and Akrani. If the Goddess finally called Khun-Taa to join her, then Malan, who had been named First on the previous moon, would become the Tribe’s sixth Khun instantly. Over ten thousand warriors would be waiting for him in the Wolfhowl with hungry eyes and bellies.
“If they ever let someone so young become Khun,” said Rouba.
“But it is the Truth, the rule of the Reghen. He is an Uncarved. They all have to kneel in front to him,” I answered, surprised at his words.
“It is the Truth, so we are told, but Khun-Taa has been the One Leader for thirty winters now. Most have forgotten the Truth. You don’t know how they’ll take it. What will the Leader of the Archers or the Blades do?”
“What can they do?”
“If it were me, I wouldn’t let you. Any of you,” Rouba said again.
Useful things, the rules and the Truths. For games and silly trials. Useful for children.
But the end had not come for Khun-Taa. And we were brought to his tent to be reminded of that. The morning of the second day of the Feast, our small camp filled with Rods on horseback. Not one of them dismounted. They came in haste and delivered an order: “Chaka and the five Uncarved Wolves, follow us now, to the tent of our Khun.”
Only two nights earlier, we had returned from our first manhunt, diminished and humiliated.
Khun-Taa accepted us into his tent. It was even bigger than our hut, but it didn’t make a great impression on me. The torchlight was flickering weakly, as if someone were getting ready to sleep forever in there. As if the Khun didn’t want to show how old he had become. He drank from a wooden cup and not from the loot. He looked much older than Chaka or Rouba.
The bear hides of the Rods surrounding him and his thunderous voice were the only things that made him seem formidable in our eyes.
“Who are you?” Khun-Taa asked without getting up from his unremarkable wooden throne.
“I am Chaka, my Khun. In charge of the training of the Uncarved.”
“And what kind of training is this? Unarmed Dasal weasels kill them, and they can’t even capture a girl? You found one of color they say? And let her go?” Sah-Ouna was beside him but kept silent. “You have been ridiculed far and wide. You call these cowards Uncarved? The warrior Packs fear for our future,” Khun-Taa continued.
The countless days I’d spent with the bow, the blade, and the horse meant nothing at that moment in the Khun’s tent. Now that the dawn of the biggest trial had come once again, I knew our training was flawed; and so did Chaka and Khun-Taa.
“It was their first time. It will never happen again,” said Chaka, lowering his head in shame.
“I should have sent Fishermen. They would have done better. Your shame must be washed clean, tonight even, before tomorrow’s moonrise. The five boys will fight in the Wolfhowl against the Dasal you captured. Now get out of my sight!” ordered Khun-Taa.
“Yes.”
“And be thankful to the Goddess, all of you here and out there, that I will not die soon.”
That was the dreaded Khun-Taa. He had survived as Leader of the Tribe for thirty winters, and all said that in his old age he had become wise and just. As a youth, he had been a mad beast. He had wiped out every living creature south of the Blackvein and left the fields barren. Fire and salt were all he had sown. And now our people were starving. When he had grown old, he had drawn the Tribe back north of the river and had spent his nights with the younger Ouna-Mas. He had waited for their tongues to whisper him his destiny, but the faster their tongues kept working, the more confused he would become, and so he remained appeased in his tent. Just and wise.
There was only one thing he didn’t know despite his newfound wisdom and the destiny tellers.
When he would die.
We left the tent like beaten pups.
“Tonight, you will fight to the death. Prepare, or else the demons will take us all and feed us to the dogs!” Chaka screamed at us, and his face turned red.
“Will we fight in front of all of the warriors?” asked Malan.
“That’s what the Khun ordered. In front of him and the thirty thousand warriors. The Truthsayers and the Redveils.”
Back at the camp, no one rested. We all left with bow and blade to practice and to forget our anguish for a while. I found Gunna piercing pumpkins in the open field. My ears caught a flapping sound and I looked high. Gunna raised his eyes and his bow, aimed twice and shot two small birds in flight. We all knew that he would have easy work that night. He looked at me, free of fear or worry, and said, “Fucking redbreasts. These robins started singing before dawn again today.”
“Those aren’t redbreasts that you hit. They were starlings,” I told him.
“I don’t know what they were, but now they are redbreasts,” Gunna said with a loud, broken laugh as if he had just swallowed the robins, feathers and all.
Drakon Book II: Uncarved Page 7
