“Which one is our Pack?” I asked him.
“These don’t count how many heads the Pack has, Chief. We are not Archers; we don’t lose count,” he answered.
“What do they count then?”
“It’s a wager we play. They count—” he stammered.
“Play what?”
“They count how many moons the Chief of the First Pack has stayed alive. That is why it is outside your tent. They are for…you to know.”
“Moons?”
He nodded silently.
Not even winters?
“So, what did you bet, Leke? How many slates before I bleed away?”
“I am with you, Chief. I wish you well.”
“Five?”
Bleak silence.
I looked at the slates again. Most of them counted fifteen to twenty moons, some even had thirty, and others had as few as the fingers on one hand. And the last, mine, didn’t have any.
“Throw them all away,” I told him. “As of tomorrow, we will count only our victories, not our deaths. We’ll carve the slates to count the othertribers we slaughter. Bring many slates.”
“As you command, Chief. Tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. The starless night had come once again, and so was her sister: loneliness.
Victorious in my small, stinking tent I closed my eyes and dreamed of Zeria. In my nightmare, the Reekaal had crucified me and left me nailed on a leafless winter oak. Zeria came to save me at dawn, her fingers pulling out slowly the pegs from my palms as her lips touched mine.
It was the only beautiful face I had seen for many nights.
XXXIX.
Silent, Holy Night
Eighteenth winter. Chief of the First.
The night was silent. The frosty wind of the North had stolen the voices of men, the songs of birds, and the howling of the dogs. The second full moon of winter, the sacred one that marked the end and the new beginning, was upon us. It was the night of the Story of Birth, the Genesis of the World.
It was a long-standing tradition that once every three full moons every Ouna-Ma was completely free. Once in winter, once in spring and so on… Her only duty was to choose a Pack of men and go there to recite the Story of Birth. But after that, she was free to sleep and speak with any man she favored. Her unique and sacred gift belonged to only one man, usually the worthiest, the Chief of each Pack.
Razoreyes was the one who chose to come to our Pack on that Long Winter Moon. Razoreyes, a name I had made up only for her. She was the same Ouna-Ma, the second Redveil I had taken, the one Malan had sent to me after I had made an oath to serve him. She came to our fire and sat among the men. She rode alone, without a Reghen or Rods, on a night when a full Selene had hidden behind the clouds and the black breaths of Darhul. Everyone sat around the blaze and waited for her Story. The only Story that the Ouna-Ma would recite every thirteen moons herself, not delivered through a Reghen’s mouth. But afterward, she would be naked only with me. She had chosen me. This time, she had not been sent. For the men that was the only winter’s moment where they could be so close to a beautiful Witch. Deep in their hearts everyone would kill to be in my place. But all they could do was huddle around the fire and try to listen.
To celebrate the Long Winter Moon, the Ouna-Ma always followed the same ritual; she recited the Legend of Enaka, the greatest Legend of the Tribe, the Story of the Birth of our world. Chills turned the warriors’ skins to gooseflesh. The thought of the Ouna-Ma’s legs wrapped around me made me even more formidable to their eyes—a giant and a worthy Chief.
These were the words Razoreyes spoke a little before she melted with me:
The Legend of Enaka
The First and Second Epoch of the World
Hear now, men, the most sacred of the Stories of the Tribe.
This is the Story of time before yesterday, of the world before the Earth, of the Sky before the stars, and of the Goddess before the birth of man. It is the breath before the breast, countless winters before the cold. An age when the only meadow, the whole world, was a thick slime, black and shiny. No solid earth or wavy sea existed, only the mud boiling hotter than the sun and colder than ice, a sludge that neither light, nor hope, nor even time itself could penetrate.
There in the slimy, shining darkness lived an eternal Demon, alone, the only breathing thing, the ancient, eternal, immortal Snake, Darhul with the nine heads, each dressed in a different skin of black. Ravenfeather, Woodtar, Charcoal, Onyx, Blackberry, Ebonetree, Stormcloud, Nightsky, and Despair were the nine shades of black and the names of the heads of Darhul with the even darker soul.
Then, in that Yesterday—endless for man but only a heartbeat for the Immortal Goddess—as the heads of Darhul fought among themselves, Despair ripped out Charcoal’s red glimmering eye. The eye rolled down from the Demon’s head, covered in crystal tears, into the radiant black slime. A smoldering coal, the orphan red eye drank its own tears, and in the heat and cold of the mud, it transformed.
It became Light.
And thus, the First Light was born, and it took the form of a beautiful maiden, her bareness covered only with a blinding cloud of hope. And she was the Only Goddess, Enaka.
Enaka stormed on Despair, the most loathsome of Darhul’s heads, and from that moment, the First and Final War between the Goddess of Light and the Eternal Demon began. The fiery rays from the Goddess’s quiver and the icy tongues of Darhul fought until the dark slime that made up the entire world split in half. The one baked into life and became the golden earth of the steppe, and the other half melted as death and became the black sea.
The war had no end. No one could prevail. On one side, Darhul spewed black clouds from his nine doubled nostrils, and from the other side, Enaka threw screaming lightning bolts from her chariot.
Then one night, Enaka turned her milk-white winged horse, Pelor, who drew her chariot in the Unending Sky, into a brave, black-haired man and lay with him. From their love, she bore seven sons, the Seven Suns to light the entire world and burn Darhul, defeating the Darkness forever. A new world was born, and it would soon be ready to give birth to men.
Almost defeated forevermore, Darhul spat out his dying revenge. He cut off with his nine jaws his own nine heads and dipped them into his belly, steeping them in poison, making them deadly arrows. The arrows fell upon the Goddess’s newborn Suns, killing all but one. Six heads found their targets six times and killed six sons, six Suns of Enaka.
To save her seventh Sun, the life-giving Goddess hid him behind her chariot and opened her mouth wide to swallow the other three arrows. But the heads of Darhul sprouted and kept doing so again and again. A thousand times his nine heads became deadly arrows, and a thousand times the Goddess swallowed nine of them, their venom in her body until she became enormous, the size of the Unending Sky. Finally, with one giant explosion, she burst and shattered into countless pieces. These countless parts of Her shone brighter than ever before. They flooded the night and became thousands of stars and new Suns, and her heart became Selene of the night. Selene rides the dark sky whole and strong at times, broken in half from sorrow over the loss of her sons at others, and the nights when Despair overpowers her, Selene is no more than a faint sliver of hope.
That was how the Goddess defeated the Demon. With her sacrifice and that of her children.
The stars were now myriad gleaming specks in the Sky, and the Demon, blinded by the Sacred Light, knew that he had been defeated. Life had been born. The nine heads of Darhul, all screaming at once, dove and hid forever in the depths of the cursed salt sea, and there he still lives, in the bottomless abyss where the light has no space to rest and where our warriors cannot walk or gallop upon the black water.
Golden stones from the stars fell to the earth, and fed the soil to give birth to our men.
But other pieces of the Demon’s flesh washed up on the barren shores, covered in pus and charred blackberry blood, and from them, our demon-bred enemies were created.
Reekaal, his firstb
orn sons; Drakons, his greatest curse; and the Buried Deadwalkers were the myriad warriors of Darhul. They were born from his wounds and his vengeful heart.
Archers from the stardust of Enaka rose to fight them.
And still, every day and every night, the war between Enaka and Darhul rages on. Their spirits are weakened now, but their offspring are stronger. Enaka prevails for half of the day, and the Demon is triumphant for the other half of the night, but there are still days when the Demon is all-powerful. With his nine breaths, the black clouds, he darkens the Sky and blackshrouds the stars, the Sun and Selene, the son and heart of Enaka. The Goddess fights him with her bow, sending her fiery sun rays in the day and her terrible thunderbolts at night.
And so the epochs and the winters passed with the children of Enaka caught in an eternal battle against the demons of Darhul, the Reekaal, and the other monsters.
But the Story has not come to its end. Here and now, in your generation, is the most fateful and glorious moment of its culmination. For the darkness has returned; unstoppable rivers of black slime run again and drown the rest of the world, and the Demon has poisoned, from end to end, everything in the lands farther away from here. Everything except Sirol.
Beyond the Blackvein, the Buried Deadwalkers, the undead, rule in the Southeastern Empire, servants of the old white-bearded Sorcerers of the Cross. They wait to be resurrected from their bones. Sapul, the city they call Thalassopolis, is their cursed palace and their heart.
In the Endless Forest in front of us, the Reekaal have sealed with horrors all roads to the West and have put the entire Western Empire under their command. That is where the hiding place of Darhul lies, in the seas after the West, and his tentacles reach all the way to the Forest and the tendrils of the cursed trees.
And in the white darkness of the North, the Drakons of the ice rest but never sleep, where the Sun is pale and frozen like a dead girl’s touch and no one ever dares approach.
The Final Battle is upon us, the one where the children of Enaka and the scum of Darhul will fight till the complete catastrophe. Have no mercy for any demonseed. Do not stop until the last one is annihilated.
You will live forever,
as brave and worthy among the stars;
or as cowards melting slowly in the belly of Darhul.
Glory to Enaka, the Only Mother and the Only Goddess of the Unending Sky and the Light.
Razoreyes had finished her Story under Selene’s silent, holy night. My men stood up and walked away shaken and distraught, more so because she would be spending the night in a tent next to theirs but not with them.
These were the Stories I had been fed like black milk since I was a small child. When I was young and foolish, I believed them blindly. Later, I spat on them. In the end, I learned to respect them. Their wisdom and their brutal truth. This unlikely myth of birth, struggle and love, is nothing but the most common Story of each man and woman:
Darkness is our mother. We are born in Despair, by a faint, unlikely ember; but we find Love, and Love transforms us to Light and Hope. We live our Love for only one Night like a cursed Butterfly, and then we die, still fighting the Darkness with our last breath.
I had been chosen by this Ouna-Ma, this winter, and this is how it was meant to be. Razoreyes was already walking toward my tent, and I followed. The gazes of my men followed us too, but they couldn’t enter. She undressed and I marveled at the two magnificent snakes which were painted across her body. Their black heads on the left and right side of her shaved head, their red cloven tongues touching and hissing in her ears, the bodies of the snakes painted down on the back of her neck and to the sides of her spine, reaching her beautiful ass. Like the nine heads of Darhul, she wrapped her arms, her legs, and her henna snakes around me all night. Like the fiery scepter of Enaka, I went inside her and filled her loins with white-hot rivers of life. We wrestled ceaselessly, front and back, like two gods. One would dominate briefly and then the other, until we both lost ourselves together in the eternal end, a formless mass underneath the hides that covered us, as dark as lust and as shiny as sweat. I kissed her body a thousand times, she bit my flesh a thousand more. It was the one time she would be entirely mine, the sacred night of the winter full moon and the only moment when the Ouna-Ma could escape her vows and talk. Only to me.
My body had received nourishment and Truth. My mind searched for more.
I asked her, “The Legend says that the Archers were born from stardust?”
“That’s what it says.”
I remained silent. She understood.
“But who knows? If you fight bravely, it could say so about the Blades tomorrow.”
I didn’t much like her words, but she wouldn’t grace me with more hope.
“Tell me, how can I tell apart the children of Darhul from those of Enaka?” I asked.
“Foolish question, young Chief. You can always tell apart the people of our Tribe from the othertribers. From their color, their tongue, and their ways.”
“But I have the ninestar, the triangle of Darhul imprinted on my skin, and the pale-faced Sah-Ouna rules the entire Tribe even if she wasn’t born in it.”
She lowered her long head and crawled backward on her hands and knees, like an animal on all fours, wrinkled her brow, still looking at me as if she couldn’t believe what I had said. Her words were a threat but not an answer.
“Hold your tongue, strong man, because the prophecy listens, it is a haunted spirit searching for a body. Do not ignore it but do not challenge it either. Forget your ninestar destiny. Or else, if you challenge it, it will find skin and bones and come to life. Do not awaken the spirits of the North.”
That was not the answer I was looking for. The two lips I wanted to bite again were spewing out nonsense. We had a few breaths left together before dawn would come again. For one more spring, summer, fall, and winter, she would not command her body. She had chosen me. Still, she was in a hurry to go, as if I had frightened her.
She lifted herself onto her knees and turned her back on me. I glanced for the last time at the two painted snakes on her back and then she put on her robe. She waited there silent and distant, before the robin and the rooster called her away from her heart’s love.
I asked her one more question: “The Story of Birth, the Legend of Enaka that you sang tonight—”
“Yes? Haven’t you heard it before?” she said, reluctantly turning her gaze to me.
“Countless times. And it always says that the darkness is stronger than the light. It existed before the light. Enaka was born from the eye of Darhul…”
And that meant that in the end, the Light, Enaka, and the Tribe would be defeated. There was no need for me to say anything else.
Razoreyes did not think. She answered immediately. She knew. Her eyes, wide open, stared into nothing, their pupils giant black suns. Boundless was their magic. The otherworldly words escaped her lips of love.
“The Nothing always engulfs, precedes and follows. It existed before Something, and will after it. The Something always dies, even if it is born. It is an unequal battle that the Eternal Goddess fights for us. But have faith. The Nothing never dominates.”
“The Blades?”
As if she had guessed what I wanted to know, she continued.
“Blades, bows, horses—they do not go to battle alone. The Stories guide them. Believe. We will triumph. You will all sacrifice yourselves for Enaka’s victory, but you’ll rejoice and receive your reward next to her.”
“And what about me?”
“You…you, Da-Ren, are the blade of the Khun, the one who will rip first through the othertribers. Spare none of them. And when the Goddess calls you into her arms, accept your sacrifice as she did. Remember, she sacrificed her children. For us. The prophecy says you will be First there, Da-Ren.” She said my name very slowly with her tongue inside my ear before her love faded abruptly. She had come alone, of her own will, to lie with me on the most sacred night of winter. “The Final Battle be
gins. That is what Khun-Malan sent me to tell you.”
XL.
Armor
Eighteenth winter. Chief of the First.
I hated armor. Metal plates or chainmail, armor always meant certain doom for those who wore it. It was a death foretold.
“There, above the iron rings, below the beard, to the side, where your veins are still pumping. That’s where my arrow will sink.”
“A polished chainmail but it stops at your waist. I’ll have to thrust my iron into your groin.”
I suffocated each time I tried on the dark iron rings that were woven like impenetrable tunics. It felt like a skin of death over my skin of life. It slowed me down and weighed heavily on my joints as if the ghosts of the condemned pulled down my arms and begged for a quick death.
I hated the winter because it, too, was a kind of inexorable armor. It descended from the north and covered everything around me like a white linothorax. The rivers wore their own wintry armor, fat slabs of ice, and when they broke, rarely and with difficulty, they sounded like Darhul grinding the bones of our warriors between his teeth. The ground wore its own armor too, countless blue-white icy needlesheaths, one for each dead blade of grass.
And the men, it wasn’t only the dogskins but also the cold itself that swathed them tightly. It numbed and made arms and legs hard and unbending like their own skin had become a panoply of death. The winter winds punctured our bones and filled them with rust to the marrow, making them creak with every move. The cold slid inside the ears and made every command feel like an icy-hot needle piercing the ear hole. Every hope and song was cut in mid-breath upon bleeding gray lips. The armor of winter prevented them from reaching our heads.
The horses, unable to graze on the burned grass, wore for armor their skeletons and their weakness, the armor of mercy. The weaker ones had turned to frozen carcasses, only their legs visible in the snow, protruding upwards. The fish were lost underneath the frozen river, and the swans had disappeared. Hunting them was forbidden, and the last ones were taken to Malan’s tent.
Drakon Book II: Uncarved Page 25
