His eyes had begun to blur from a young age, and that could be an ill fate for a warrior rider. A deep, blind puddle, a false step of the horse. Maybe he really had seen the Reekaal that night in the Forest. Like the cloudy-eyed Guide in the Sieve.
Before dusk, Chaka, Rouba, and the Reghen led us to the Wolfhowl. It was already full of thousands of warriors. They were seated higher and surrounded us, their deafening shouts rising from above our heads. I felt something dancing on my leg, but it was only Malan’s fingers trembling uncontrollably. Impatience, fear, death or victory. If I had to use a bow, I wouldn’t be able to shoot even a bear at twenty feet. The Dasal were locked up in five cages in the middle of the field, the maulers and the Rods guarding them. Hundreds of torches were lit around the Wolfhowl, engulfing us in fire and leaving the sky dim in comparison. The stars were weak, but my legs had to be strong.
The rules, as announced by the Reghen, were simple. Each one of us and each Dasal could choose only one weapon. The fight was to the death. If a Dasal won, he won his life. That was the inviolable Truth of the Wolfhowl. If Darhul himself won the fight, he won his life and his freedom.
“All these thousands of warriors! Did they come just to see us?” asked Akrani.
“They were itching and asking me about each of you all day. Everyone is on edge,” said Rouba.
“For us? We’re not even warriors yet.”
“Khun-Taa reeks of rotting flesh and old age. They are starving. They smell that one of you will be the next Khun before the following spring, but they don’t know who. And then…the Dasal are strong men and everyone says that some of you won’t make it through the night.”
That was my future, and no Ouna-Ma was needed to foresee it. The One Khun. Or a corpse for the pyre. Nothing in between.
I looked at the Dasal. They had taken them out of the cage.
“Do they know that if they kill one of us they will be free?” I asked Rouba.
“Yes, one of them I know well. He speaks our tongue.”
“You know him well?”
Would he know if the girls among them had blue eyes? It wasn’t the right time to ask him.
“Yes, they trade with everyone. Don’t listen to the nonsense stories. For a long time, the Dasal have been supplying us with belladonna, crazygrass, and herbs from the Forest. We give them barley and wheat.”
They untied the Dasal and let them choose their weapons. A couple of them ran first to grab the heavy single-bladed axes.
“They think we’re trees,” laughed Gunna.
None of them chose the bow. They would never have managed the double-curved bow without practicing for many summers.
Gunna went in first and chose to fight a strong Dasal. The Dasal wasted no breath and started running and screaming toward the giant with his ax. Gunna’s first arrow found him in the stomach. As the green-eyed man lay fallen and writhing in pain, Gunna walked toward him and pushed the second arrow into his neck. A river of blood crimsoned the Dasal’s torso, and then his knees and Gunna’s boots.
Gunna walked back toward the rest of us amid loud cheers.
“Redbreast, he is a redbreast now,” he said, the gagging, broken laugh again roaring out of his mouth.
Balam went second, brave in stature but a coward when it came to death. He chose for himself the oldest opponent and a bow. He was never even a stone’s throw from the Dasal. The old man, trembling and panicked, tried at once to run away, but the arrow found him in the back.
The games proved too easy and boring for the bloodthirsty audience. I could see men all around me getting up and leaving. They were raising their hands impatiently and booing in disgust. It was my turn now, and thousands of warriors around me were already jeering.
“Give them a rabbit to chase. It would be more difficult!” someone behind me yelled.
A rabbit. I had lost to Malan. In the Sieve.
His words brought me to my senses. The moment had come for me to stand out and become worthy of the honor of the First Leader, the next Khun. Enough about the rabbits; it was time to lift the curse of defeat which had haunted me for five times spring.
I was the third out of five. I chose the largest, strongest-looking Dasal who was left. I then approached the pile with the weapons and chose a long blade instead of a bow. That woke up the crowd. Many, Blades probably, were cheering, but most, Archers probably, were booing even louder. But all of them were now enjoying themselves as they should.
The Dasal across from me was tall, as tall as I, and much older. The deep grooves on his face reminded me of the trunks of dry old trees. I now believed Lebo, who said before he died that at night they become one with the hollows of the trees and that they were born from them. He snarled and swore in a mysterious dark tongue. He lifted and swirled the heavy, one-bladed ax in a menacing manner as if it were made of straw. I moved toward him. He was not a man, not with those lizard-green eyes. Or a warrior, either.
He raised the ax and tore the wind, but it found only dirt. Before he raised it a second time, I plunged in to put a hole in his chest and get it over with, but he was quicker than I thought. His ax found my long blade and threw it out of my grip. It took a few breaths before I felt the tingling and realized I had lost the tip of my little finger. In my first fight. I heard the sighs of our warriors. Scattered boos. Khun-Taa was whispering to the ear of the first-veiled Ouna-Mas next to him. He was probably asking if she foresaw my death.
The Dasal chased me, and I back-stepped. I let him get close, but I was fast, too. When he missed me, I got behind him and picked up my blade off the ground. I let him rip the air many times aimlessly until he lost his strength.
I waited for him to lower his ax one more time. Before it was up again, my blade struck his left arm above the elbow. He fell to his knees with a howl which was drowned immediately by screams that would crush a defeated man to the ground. He raised his right hand, the one with the ax, but it just hung there. I hit him again on the left arm to be sure. His ax fell to the dirt. I fed on the warriors’ cheers of victory, and I hit his half-cut arm a third time to finish the job. His arm fell to the ground along with its rags. Blood spurting out, covering my body and his. He was squealing, but I could barely hear that either, even from two feet away. Ten thousand maddening bellows flowing from my ears to my hands. I grabbed his ax and brought it down to his neck. Blood of the othertribers! So beautiful and crimson it was. To kill for the Tribe. I am worthy, father. All those men watching me, they were all my father. Any one of them could be. I would wash myself off with the bitter mare’s milk spirit which my fathers drank.
Khun-Taa himself was standing up, and the crowd was still going wild. As if it were his own feat, Gunna took the cut arm and walked around the field waving it at the warriors.
“Look at us now! Are we Uncarved or not?”
I was so thirsty. Rouba gave me a waterskin and I emptied it on my face; Blackvein’s water and the splattered blood of the green-eyed became one on my tongue. Malan was First among us and would fight last. It was Akrani’s turn.
We threw Akrani the Uncarved into the funeral pyre the next morning at daybreak.
“Unlike you, I choose the bow. It is fast and clean,” he said to me before he walked to the center of the arena. “I don’t want to lose a finger.”
I shrugged my shoulders. My little finger started stinging the moment he brought it up. Rouba shred a stripe of his own tunic and tied it.
“More water,” I said to him. I was still thirsty.
The Dasal across from Akrani was a wiry man, almost forty-wintered. I would not have chosen him. All this time he had waited calm, with eyes closed in his cage; his arms over his knees. The Dasal chose neither ax nor blade. He picked a shield, the only one there. He fended off the first arrow and ran toward Akrani. The second arrow didn’t pierce the shield either, but the third one flew very close to his ear and got tangled in his ragged hair. But he kept running toward the Uncarved. There was no fourth arrow.
The Dasal wa
s next to Akrani, and the sharp round othertriber shield became a hammering ax and a vengeful blade. Akrani’s light bow was a useless weapon in man-to-man combat. He fell dazed on the first blow of the heavy shield. The Dasal, holding the two ends of the shield, brought it down with rage onto Akrani, snapping his neck, smashing his head, and shattering his teeth. I could hear around me the sighs and the “aaahs” of shock and dismay after each blow, as if the Dasal were crushing thousands of warrior skulls, the skulls of our fathers. The Rods finally burst onto the field, with their long spears, and forced the screaming Dasal to stop.
Our stupid smiles and cheers disappeared. A deathly silence fell across the Wolfhowl. Chaka shouted for us to take away the body and the red-brown pulp that used to be Akrani’s head. I chose the shield. It was the only fast and clean way to scoop Akrani’s brains up from the dirt. The hungry mauler, his eyes glowing chestnuts, growled and walked around us impatiently as we carried the body away.
Thirteen of us had come Uncarved from the Sieve; four were still standing.
In the Stories of the Reghen, we were always victorious, but in three nights we had lost Lebo and then Akrani. The Tribe’s Legend claimed that the Uncarved were the best warriors, picked out from the thousands of youths who’d endured the Sieve. But the Legend had forgotten to tell us one thing: that the othertribers could kill us with equally great ease and greater hate. Even in the midst of the Great Feast.
At the peak of youth, when the soul is quicker than the feet, any Uncarved boy was certain that, up there, Enaka had eyes only for him, the One destined to be Khun. But all it took was a three-finger-deep blade in his first fight and the proud boy was nothing but ashes ascending to the Unending Sky.
With the Wolfhowl still silent after Akrani’s defeat, it was Malan’s turn to deal with the last of the green-eyed. The Dasal had chosen the shield as well and looked almost as strong as the one I had fought. That was when I began to fear that Malan, too, might fall. He was the closest thing I had to a brother. I wanted one day to beat Malan. I wanted to beat Malan every day, but I didn’t want to see him dead.
He wasn’t the surefooted Malan of the Sieve. He was staring left and right. I could smell his fear. He was the rabbit in this fight. I could see ahead, and I saw his death. Malan lifted a blade, a smart choice against the shield, but I knew he wasn’t as good with iron. It was his first time fighting in front of everyone, the first time he had to kill with his own hands. The first and the last.
The time had come where I would finally beat Malan in front of everyone. The wind was rising stronger, cooler in the Wolfhowl. I was so thirsty. Victory was mine. The Goddess would grace me with… Raindrops? Raindrops were falling on my face. Thicker; more and more of them.
I should have known then. Enaka and Sah-Ouna had forever thrown their guarding veils over Malan. The exact same moment that the fight was about to begin, the Sky obediently unlocked the rivers of the Goddess and dropped them over our heads with thunder and lightning.
The Reghen looked at Sah-Ouna.
“Darhul is strong tonight!” the Reghen turned and shouted to Chaka.
The Reghen looked at Khun-Taa.
“Tomorrow!” he shouted again and for the last time.
Three breaths later, the rain was coming down, a pitiless, heavy gray veil. The thousands of warriors emptied the Wolfhowl in a stampede. We were soaked and alone in the middle of the arena. Rouba and Chaka set free the Dasal who had smashed Akrani’s head, and he disappeared in the storm. It was what the Truth of the Wolfhowl had decreed. A victorious man lives again. We dragged the last Dasal, the one who hadn’t fought with Malan, back to our camp and I put him in a cage across from our hut.
“I’m Veker,” he told me as I was locking the cage. “Let me go. I have always been a friend of the Tribe. I bring you the crazygrass.”
I spat in the dirt with disgust.
“You will fall in the Wolfhowl tomorrow,” I told him, wondering how he could speak our tongue so well.
He lowered his head, and he knelt as if to worship me.
“You saved my daughter,” he whispered.
He wouldn’t be able to find a word to thank me in my tongue. I pretended not to hear.
“Zeria, in the oak,” he said.
Zeria. The one of color.
I turned my back on him and ran away before anyone else came close enough to hear. I was unlucky that Malan had not opened him up.
I slept on a full stomach, hurrahs from jubilant Gunna and Balam, the two of three remaining older Uncarved, and from the younger ones.
“Da-Ren’s Story is in every tent, in every fire tonight,” Rouba said loud enough for all to hear.
Right there, he was the one father I had. The one true Guide, to lift my spirit high. The one I wanted to make proud.
Malan had disappeared into a corner of the hut, and none of us bothered him. The next dawn would bring his biggest day.
I dreamed of redbreast robins.
I opened my eyes in the heavy darkness of the night and awoke to Malan shaking me out of a deep sleep.
“Da-Ren, wake-up. He got away,” he whispered.
“Who?”
“The Dasal escaped from the cage. You have to help me find him. I saw him running. To the Forest.”
“Wake them all up. The Guides.”
“No, we two must find him. He’s mine, Da-Ren. Come on.” He pleaded like a child.
“We will not go alone.”
“You didn’t lock the cage, Da-Ren. It’s your fault. Help me now!”
Malan grabbed me by the hand. He had never done that before. I was fully awake and putting on my horsehide boots. We were tiptoeing out of the hut. It didn’t even cross my mind that it was better for me if Veker escaped. He was the only one alive who had seen me hide the girl inside the hollow oak.
Zeria, he had called her.
Malan had taken bow and quiver with him, but in my confusion, I had grabbed only a short blade. The rain was still falling heavily.
Malan shouted, “He went in there, I saw him!” We both went to where no one from our Tribe ever entered. We had no torches, and they’d be useless under the Sky’s fury. I did what every stupid, invincible seventeen-winter-old would do—I charged into death.
Malan had signaled for us to separate, and he was out of sight. I was running through the tangled black trees with all my heart and strength. Selene was lost behind the clouds and the wooden skeletons that got in my way. A tall hideous shadow moved to my right, and then an arrow shaft broke on the tree next to me. I hid behind the trunk and stopped to catch my breath. It was the worst thing I did. My mind betrayed me. My shaking legs slipped in the mud. I wasn’t even a thousand feet into the Forest, but, there, for the first time, I succumbed to an untold horror. The cold yellow sweat paralyzed every joint in my body. The shadow again. Some creature fast, menacing. Hunting. I was not new to the embrace of death. I had felt it every moon since the Sieve, but that moment, the black drooling tongues of the demons were touching my feet, my head and my hands. I was inside of the monster. It had swallowed me. I cut the air again and again with my whistling blade, defending myself against the branches. Its talons were coming down to rip me apart. But I hit only air, raindrops, and dead wood.
Only a short while ago, I had slain the strongest of the Dasal in the Wolfhowl. But here, his ghost roamed. I was inside the Forest’s green-and-black belly, and it was grinding me into a pulp of sweat, rain, and mud. I couldn’t find my way out. For one instant, I asked myself if Malan had really woken me up, if I really had run like a fool to go in there, or if it was a nightmare. I fell to my knees and put my hands over my head; I didn’t want to open my eyes ever again. I screamed from the deepest part within me. “Maaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
Malan? Mother? Was I calling her for the very first time? The word did not come out. I called her again.
I heard the shouts of our men—the only mother I ever had— and as I looked toward my right, I saw torches appearing and disappearing. The ho
rns of distress were blowing throughout the camp of the Uncarved. I followed their cries, crawling fast on all fours until I found the Guides who had come for us. I came out of the Forest as if I had come out of a woman’s belly into the light. The rain had eased.
It was my first night alone in the Forest.
The same night I killed my first othertriber.
The same night I learned her name.
The same night I discovered the green fear.
I had become a warrior.
The thought never crossed my mind, that Malan himself had let the Dasal free.
Who thought like that?
Enaka had pitied him.
I didn’t think for a single breath that Malan had tried to kill me with an arrow in the Forest.
Who thought like that?
I was seventeen winters, eighteen springs young.
When I first saw Zeria.
I would again descend into the womb of the Forest.
It had conquered me.
I had already fallen in love with it.
That which I feared. That which was forbidden.
Before I even knew what love was.
I would find it there.
XXIV.
Skeleton
Island of the Holy Monastery, Thirty-third summer.
According to the Monk Eusebius.
In the damp of the night and the scorching heat of the day, Da-Ren and I wove the words of his story like bloodstained flower wreaths. My hand, already tired, dropped the reed pen when Da-Ren said his story hadn’t even started. Baagh warned me sternly before he left that these words would one day be read by the Emperor of Thalassopolis himself.
“The written codices will go to the Polis of the Kings. You write for the power-wielding Emperors, but also for the many,” he told me. “For those you will never see. Not for the few monks around you.”
How was it possible that the thrice-sanctified soul of the blessed Emperor could hear of such malevolent and brutish acts committed by these barbarians? For the first time, I considered that maybe not everything should be put on the papyrus. And what kind of prayer or repentance could befit this savage man who lined up corpses as fast as I lined up the words?
Drakon Book II: Uncarved Page 8
