Chestnut-colored men came from the desert far east tribes that were defeated by Malan. They carried small bows, long spears, and wicker shields. They were scantily dressed, and their wiry muscled women rode beside them, dressed the same way, with loops of neckropes hanging from their shoulder. Many rode the fast and light-footed horses of the Crossers of the South, which couldn’t endure even one winter in Sirol.
They all came with great show as if they had to prove something. What, I didn’t know. Did they expect us to kneel before them and kiss their feet? To abandon the iron valley and surrender it to them? To worship them even though we were the victors and they were the defeated? To cut off their balls and stuff them down their throats?
Many days passed until the bulk of the Blades arrived, a few hundred of my men who had survived the battle of Apelo, mixed with many swordfighters of the South. The hay-colored man who had replaced me in Apelo was their Firstblade. Some of my men wore their dog skins over chainmail armors and carried the tear-shaped poplar and leather shields of the Crossers. Those I’d made Chiefs had been replaced, most likely after their deaths, and the new ones wore gold chains around their necks. Angels slaying drakons were still painted on the shields of the Crossers, yet the crosses were all erased. The Blades’ shields were decorated with a Sun and a half Selene.
The first to ask for me were the Reghen after they searched in vain for their five brothers who had perished in Sirol. I told them the story I had made up, and they looked at each other and left with a warning:
“King Malan will be here soon.”
Sah-Ouna arrived ahead of Malan. She held a ceremony of sacrifice and mourning at the Wolfhowl to pay tribute to the scattered ashes of their dead. The Goddess and her faith worshippers had returned to the camp of the forgotten barbarians.
It had been almost a whole moon that I had stayed put in Sirol, away from the Forest and Zeria. Leke and a few more men, Baagh among them were accompanying me. To my surprise, nobody was paying any attention to Baagh anymore.
“Surrounded by men of all tribes and faiths I can walk around here unnoticed,” he told me.
Malan arrived on the third moon of spring, and we were all summoned to pay tribute the day he entered Sirol. At first, we saw about a hundred Rods with spears atop the black stable-bred horses of the South moving like a dark forest. They shielded him completely from view, and we only guessed his presence from the protruding emblem, the three metal spheres that swung back and forth above the spears. As they entered the main road of Sirol, the Rods opened up, and a chariot with a wooden platform, led by eight horses came in sight. At the center of the platform was Malan, wearing a black mantle over a crimson tunic and black trousers. He raised his arm, covered by a leather bracer, and hailed left and right, receiving the shouts and cheers of everyone around. He marched through half of Sirol, from the eastern end to his newly built palace that way, among thousands of spectators of all races and tribes. At the four corners of the platform, stood the Ssons, huddled on one knee, each one looking in a different direction, each one painted a different nightmare. The men had made names for them, names I never cared to repeat, but heard again around me. Skullface, a tall wiry man, his face and arms painted as bone naked of flesh. Crazyeyes was looking at us with a hundred different pairs of eyes painted over his head and upper body. Ironbleed had painted blades all over his body as if they were bleeding red streams, and finally Blue, the strongest of them, the victor of the duel of Varazam. Blue had painted intricate lines of the same color wherever his veins and blood would flow. His neck and long head were painted as scaled skin in a bright green and where his eyes and mouth should be, he had painted a snake’s mouth and large wide-open yellow lizard eyes. From a distance, you couldn’t tell it was paint.
Cages trailed behind Malan’s entourage; some filled with beautiful othertriber women, fair-haired, exotic and colored; one with a bear, a couple filled with wild dogs, and even one with a leopard. More Archers followed behind them, and I recognized some of the older faces, the ones who had been with Malan throughout the whole campaign. They also wore chains and arm rings and feathered hats. I laughed hard as I watched all these festooned warriors march past me.
Baagh was by my side, and he warned me.
“Nothing to laugh at. They wear these things to show their power. You have very few men left, and even they are watching with gaping mouths. Maybe your men are wondering if they made the right choice.”
“Those who come are not of my Tribe,” I told him.
“Yes, I heard about twelve different Tribes have followed the new king to—”
“No, no, I don’t mean them. I speak of the Blades and the Archers, the ones who were born here. They are different as if they’ve lost all our Stories and Legends after a few winters away.”
“We’re all different than we were six years ago. Aren’t you? And if you have noticed, Da-Ren, Malan is different too.”
He was, and it was not just the way he was dressed. He was alone.
“Sah-Ouna isn’t anywhere near him,” I said.
“No Ouna-Mas or Reghen close to him,” Baagh added.
“No priests of the Cross either.”
“Your Tribe has changed, Da-Ren. Gold changes everything fast. It erases miserable pasts, old gods, and stories.”
“Like opion.”
“Exactly!”
I saw Bako, a familiar, proud, and still stupid face, leading a Pack of Archers. I had fought him on the first night of the Sieve. Following him were Danaka and Matsa, and for a moment I felt that I was back in the fields of the Sieve fighting for meat. Bako stopped in front of me, dismounted, embraced me, and patted me hard on the back so that I could hear his bracelets and chains ringing.
“We brought the Emperor of Thalassopolis to his knees,” he said.
“The Emperor! Did you really meet the Emperor?”
He nodded briefly without words, accepting that he didn’t, yet implying that he did.
“Did he come and kneel before you?” I asked mockingly.
“No, but he declared Malan King of the North and gave us so much gold we can bridge Blackvein with it.”
I’d already grown tired of him.
“When is the next campaign?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“This means that they’ll stay here for a while,” Baagh said to me.
During the next days, all kinds of rumors were flying around. One morning, I’d hear that Malan was going to stay in the new palace they were building in Sirol forever, then that he will head south and soon I heard the rumor about the west and the Forest. It wouldn’t be long before he’d ask me to report what I’ve done.
“We have to go back to Zeria and our people. Those newcomers are not believers of the Stories and the Legends. They are already venturing into the Forest,” said Leke.
I left before Malan summoned me, hoping to forget all that was tormenting me, to make love, sweat, hunt, and hide from it all a few days west. I found Zeria in the hut with the seven newborn boys and girls.
“The Forest lives, Da-Ren,” she said.
That is what my Tribe needed. More warriors and witches.
I sat on the sheepskins with my back turned to Zeria.
“Stay here, don’t go back,” Zeria pleaded.
“Here, where? In the Forest? We are only a few days away from twenty thousand jackals, Zeria.”
This was far more dangerous than the old Tribe I knew. Those men who came did not have any fear of the Forest; they could be in here following my tracks already. There was trouble back in Sirol even before Malan arrived. Some of the new tribes had camped near the wheat fields and pushed out the farmers. Their horses were ravaging the farmlands. They had followed a powerful king and Goddess to Sirol; patience or starvation was not something they’d accept. Very soon they’d march for war, west.
“None of us should be alone now,” she said.
“Let’s leave Zeria; we have to get away from here. I always have t
he same dream. Escape to some other forest, or even go south to the Thousand Islands, find another village and learn their tongue,” I told her.
“I can only raise my children here.”
“Then let’s stay here. I have that dream too, but I always wake up as Malan’s men storm Kar-Tioo at dawn. Our children are older. The whirlwind falls upon us. Blood on my daughter’s neck. My son’s despair.” How many times have I seen this? How many times had I been this whirlwind? “Young Blades, the sixteen-wintered, those I gathered and turned into men, hold you down. They tear up your dress; I see their drool… A lovely dream.”
She slapped me once and then started punching my chest repeatedly with her small fists.
“Damn you, Da-Ren! You have to be stronger than that.”
“You don’t want to leave, but we can’t hide here. We are the deer, and the wolves will be here fast.”
Outside our hut, a long, drawn-out howl announced the darkness of the night. That was neither pheasant nor wolf. A Reekaal. I was still waiting to see my first Reekaal after twenty-four winters. All the Reekaal of the world had gathered around us, and I still couldn’t see them.
Malan called me to his new reigning palace when I made it back to Sirol. He had started raising a great building made of gray stone. Only Malan’s private hall and the hall of the throne were ready, and the slaving stonemasons worked day and night around it to add more rooms. The banners and the horsetails were tied on poles that created a long pathway before the hall entrance. It was a rectangular hall, its walls decorated with trophies, tributes, and armors of the defeated. Across from west to east, there were two rows of columns that supported the roof. Farther inside and parallel to them were shorter decorative columns at my height upon which stood the skulls of the animals and the horned Reekaal, as I remembered them from winters ago. The bones glowed under the light of the twin cresset flames that burned next to each column. They formed an aisle that led to the dais and the throne.
A new black throne was raised on the eastern wall. It looked like it was made of ebony or some lacquered wood. Behind it, the bows of the Archers were arranged to form the perimeter of three great circles on the wall, painted gold of the Sun, silver of Selene and red. Red for the earth? Red for the bloodied earth. It was morning, and the sun beamed directly from the uncovered windows above the throne blinding any common man who stood on the aisle across from it facing the king. It was a dark hall, and the round windows above the throne were the only sources of sunlight. The light emanating from our ruler himself, the only hope one would find in there.
I had seen the palace of Thalassopolis and nothing would impress me. Malan’s hall looked like a nightmarish tomb in Varazam; a tomb where the only purpose of the light was to illuminate death. On each side of the smooth black throne, stood a statue of a mauler, black as well, sitting on its hind legs. As I got closer, the mauler on the left rose, and its eyes gleamed alive, while that on the right remained still as a statue. I found it very fitting of Malan, another show of his mastery of tricks.
“The king of the Northern Empire will see you shortly,” the Reghen announced. I moved around the hall, farther south of the stone column aisle and saw a large rectangular opening filled with water.
“The baths,” he told me. Green-black water, bubbled in there. I knelt and dipped my hand in it; it was hot and clear, not muddy. The wooden planks that covered the floor were warm, and I touched them trying to understand where the heat was coming from in this lightless corner.
“We pass boiling water through pipes under the planks. This way it always stays warm,” said the Reghen who was escorting me. He was gesticulating and smirking, too impressed with his own words.
“Why? It’s springtime, the land is blooming,” I answered.
Malan appeared from within the darkness of the quarters behind his throne. He didn’t climb on the dais, walking up to me instead. “Welcome, long lost…” he stopped trying to find the word, “…Firstblade?”
He waved silently to the Ssons and the Rods to stay back, and he embraced me briefly and in mutual silence. He had a short beard, and his hair was grown and pulled back into two ponytails. He wore a crimson short-sleeved tunic above his leather trousers. Under the cresset flames, I saw that his arms were covered with black henna paintings. Sun, stars, skull, and bow repeated in patterns. He grabbed my forearm, and his fingers groped.
“This was the broken one?” he asked.
“Yes, the left one.”
“I hear you have a great Sorcerer, Firstblade.”
Once more, my eyes searched the hall and didn’t find a single Ouna-Ma. Only Rods and Ssons stood back near the throne, all of them carrying blades except for the one Reghen who had escorted me inside.
“I am trying to keep up with you, king, as you are changing titles.”
Malan waved at the Reghen, and he approached us.
“What happened to the Ouna-Mas and the Reghen here?” the king asked me.
“Thieves from the north came in the night and slaughtered them all. We were too late and too few to guard every tent.”
“Yes, that can happen.”
From the casual tone of his voice, I guessed that he didn’t believe a word I was saying but didn’t care.
The Reghen’s words were not subtle.
“A great misfortune! Such a tragedy to occur under your brief rule here,” he said.
“Yes, thousands came to their pyre.”
“We heard you were so devastated that you’ve gone into hiding. You abandoned Sirol.”
“I am here now,” I said turning my gaze on Malan.
A slave lowered a ewer to the table next to us and filled two silver cups with wine.
“Silver!” Malan said summing his conquests in one word.
The sardonyx chalices and the feasts of Thalassopolis came to mind, but I hadn’t come to provoke, so I shut up.
Malan spoke, but this time the piercing words came slowly out of his mouth: “You might consider changing that title of yours. It sounds old and…given.”
“Firstblade.”
“Yes, the first kingdom of the Tribe has grown. All has changed. There are many Khuns among us now.”
“What?”
“Yes, I rule over all of them, the Khun of the North, of the Steppe, of Kapoukia, of Apelo, of the Sea. But there are still other Leaders those that rule over each Banner, the Leader of the Blades, the Archers, the Craftsmen, even a Leader of War Strategy.”
“Sounds too messy,” I said. “Did you, Reghen, think of it?”
“We neglected to seek your wisdom first, Da-Ren.”
“They are just titles, but they are important to the men who hold them; and more so to those who don’t,” said Malan.
“So how do all these titles work together?” I asked the Reghen. “If you build boats and fill them with Archers, to sail to Apelo and go to war…who rules over that? The Leader of War Strategy, of Archers, Apelo, Craftsmen, Sea Leader?”
“Huh? Well, the Leader of the Sea, just patrols harbors that the Hunters—” said the Reghen.
I waved in disbelief.
“Stop, it gets messier,” I said, and turned to Malan. “But you don’t need my advice.”
“I don’t, and you don’t care about that. If you go around calling yourself ‘Firstblade,’ many people will become confused and angry. Now, you might be brave and worthy of some title for past glory, but I have no need for trouble,” said Malan.
“Past glory! You know, those Reghen claim that one of them had slain a drakon six generations ago. And for that, you’ve given them all those powers. The Blades died to the last one at Apelo, and we got nothing in return. A Crosser rules over the men I trained, and othertribers with drakonheads on their shields roam Sirol as if they were born here. What did my men die for?”
“That’s what they were born for, and now they’ve gone to the stars,” the Reghen jumped in.
Malan did not need to console me.
“Do you think the Reghen
are here because of some drakon or because they are the only ones who can count? You want to cry over past glories and dead warriors, Da-Ren? I can send you to the tents with the old Guides, and you can spend your nights drinking the horse spirit piss and tell funny tales. You’ll have a couple that they’ll want to hear. You can start by explaining to them one more time why we didn’t find a single Reghen, a single Ouna-Ma alive here when we returned.”
If only I could get away from there.
“Is that all, King Malan?”
I turned to head for the exit, but the isle was already flooded by a crowd approaching at a slow, steady pace. Dark robes.
Two Rods were first then Sah-Ouna alone. Behind her, I recognized the silver-haired Ouna-Ma of the night before the battle of Apelo. Two more Rods and then two pairs of Ouna-Mas. And then following them was Sani and six of his men, with their painted bodies reminding me of the Ssons. They all stood on the opposite side of the aisle from me. The silver-haired and Sani had their eyes on me. Sah-Ouna gave me a brief stare and then turned to Malan, simply nodding.
Malan turned to me.
Drakon Book IV: Butterfly Page 12
