Drakon Book I: The Sieve

by C. A. Caskabel

  We approached the torches outside Wolfhowl, but our cart didn’t move in. Enaka the Golden Maiden pitied us and ordered the dead warriors resting next to her in the Sky to stop pissing on us. Silence fell like a second cloak of darkness as we waited there. A hooded man approached, his shadow outlined in the weak light. He stood next to the cage among Murky Eyes and Old Man and shouted, “To the Sieve!”

  Our cart started moving again, away from Wolfhowl.

  “That…was a Reghen, a Truthsayer,” said Ughi.

  “At last, you know something,” Atares said. “Those Reghen are the tongues and the ears of the Tribe. They bring the words of the Khun, and the Ouna-Mas. Do you know who the Ouna-Mas are?”

  I knew of the Ouna-Mas, the Tribe’s Witches of untold birth, the only ones who spoke with the Goddess and the One Leader, the Khun.

  We were heading west and north now, farther away from the orphans’ camp. Toward the Forest. Dawn was a long way off. We went up a hill for a while until the oxen started to struggle to move the cart. Old Man was shouting and ripping the air with his whip, but we couldn’t move a step. He opened the door of the cage, and he ordered us, “Get out. You go on foot from here. Follow him.” He pointed to the second Guide who was leading, holding a torch under a hide.

  We started running uphill until a jab of pain bit my side. I stopped to catch my breath. From the hill’s top I looked back all the way to the orphans’ tents. The sky was black, but the earth was full of fires, as if the bright stars of the brave had fallen to rest at our feet.

  Down below us, more Guides were driving the oxcarts and cages up the hill. The torches etched the black earth with gold fire. Each cart alone was slithering away slowly like a flaming snake after devouring its prey.

  “So many of them, more than a hundred,” said Atares.

  “What’s a hundred?” Ughi asked. I wanted to ask the same.

  “Look, Khun-Taa’s tents. Down there.” Atares pointed downhill to the center of Sirol where Khun-Taa, our Leader, and the Ouna-Ma Witches lived. West of them were the brightest fires of the Archers, the fierce horsemen. To the east of the Khun were the cutthroats, the Blades, and farther away the endless tents of the help: Fishermen, Tanners, Hunters, Blacksmiths, Trackers, and Craftsmen, all thrown together. Between the Blades and the Tanners were the few tents of the orphans. The asshole of Sirol. I would never cry for leaving that place, even if I had to go into the belly of Darhul.

  “Move, don’t stop.”

  A strong blow to the back and I was down again eating mud. It was soft and thick, like fresh shit. I got back up. We kept running, going down a much-trampled path. To the left of it were bushels of hay stacked under wooden sheds and behind them a prickly hedge bush as tall as I. To the right, only a few tents. The path led us to a small field. About ten breaths to run its length, its width twice that. A few sheds and tents around, the oaks gray skeletons in the west.

  “Take off your clothes. There, next to the other children,” Murky Eyes said.

  Seven times the fingers of my one hand were the children. They were swarming around like crazed wasps that had their hive ravaged by a blazing torch. The Guides were pushing them to form a straight line.

  “The first one to fall is finished!” shouted Old Man.

  He then disappeared under the north shed to protect himself from the rain. More of those Guides stood there waiting, observing us. The Guides were covered in hides, wolf hats, and tall horsehide boots. We weren’t.

  “These men are so old, still alive,” I said.

  “Their rage is frozen, and their shame is heavy. The Tribe cast them out here to herd orphans under the storm. They don’t like you, Da-Ren. Keep away from them,” Atares said.

  I pointed to the new shadows that were gathering. “Look at them. Archer boys.”

  “Shit, try beating them,” muttered Ughi.

  A tall Archer boy was running fast and eager toward us. He turned his head back and shouted triumphantly to the rest of his mates, “I told you! This is the westmost camp. Yeah. We are the best!”

  There were a few girls among them too. The Guides brought one of them close to me, only Atares separating us. The torchlight shined strong on her face.

  I know you. I’ve seen you.

  Brown-haired, brown-eyed. Brown was the first color of the day.

  “Westmost! Good. We’re in a brave pack,” I heard her voice.

  I had seen her colors many times in Sirol. I was one of the few brown-haired boys, and the ravens always gave me spiteful looks. The fair-haired girls were favored and fortunate offspring of Enaka. But for a boy to have brown hair, it was a disgrace. All it meant was that my mother was a slave from the North.

  “You’re Elbia,” I said.

  She nodded, silent, a smile; a smirk? A smile. I had seen Elbia three times before. First, at the Archers’ camp, one summer past. She was riding a brown mare, her hair and the horse’s tail blowing in the wind in unison. Then three moons ago, at the bow trials of the eleven-wintered. She was faster than most boys on horse that day and stood out from all others, unlike me. We didn’t practice with the bow a lot at the orphans. And then that same night when I fell asleep, in my dream; that was the third time.

  I was in the same pack as Elbia. The boys who came with her were also from the Archers’ tents. They had put me in a worthy pack. I smiled.

  The cold night persisted, sucking the strength from the children like a ravenous bloodeater. Even the Archer boys fell silent. I was still searching for a stick to defend myself with. Some of the children were moaning already and wouldn’t even raise their heads. Murky Eyes was shouting for silence. Silent tears. They stood like sheep, looking at the mud. None of those children who stood there, dead frozen, made it through the Sieve. At least, they didn’t become Archers or Blades. Only the ones who disobeyed some of the rules managed to become warriors. The others would end up fishing bass and salmon from the great river, the Blackvein. They would make our tools and our boots. But they would never hold double-curved bows or blades, or own three horses each.

  Ughi, that feeble orphan, would fall first. Or that other one, next to Elbia, the short, skinny girl with the curly hair. Her locks were coiled tight like newborn blackberry snakes when they brought her. As the rain fell heavily, her hair straightened and covered her back. The tall Archer boy five bodies down from me dropped to his knees. Murky Eyes covered the distance from the shed to the center of the field in a few quick breaths and waved his whip high. The boy managed to get back up, and with his head held low he pressed his arms on his half-bent knees to stay upright. Children in a row, pinned in the mud, trembling like willow trees on the banks of the Blackvein River. Barefoot, a loincloth around my crotch, a black silence without birdsong. My fingers and feet numb.

  Ughi fell first. Ughi, the puppy we called him among the orphans. They had brought him there last winter from the Rods’ tents when his mother died giving birth. Ugha-Lor was his name, named after Pelor the magnificent ancestor of men, but no boy ever used that. Ughi, the puppy. Weak legs, hollow cheeks. He usually smiled, as if he couldn’t foretell his fate. He never managed to fight any of the other orphans for food. On some nights, he even lost his own share of gruel.

  His legs melted fast, and he fell facedown.

  “Get up,” I whispered. “Kick him, get him up,” I yelled to Malan, who was next to him.

  “Get up, puppy.”

  Nothing.

  Murky Eyes passed by me, made a grimace of disgust and murmured to himself before landing a thick gob of spit next to the boy’s body. He touched Ughi on his bare back and then hugged him. From where I stood, they were two gray shadows embraced as one. The boy shivered, his legs kicked a few times, and the Guide held him tighter. The dark mud was a cold cloak.

  “Puppy is freezing,” I whispered to Atares.

  “No, Da-Ren. It begins,” he muttered, and he turned his eyes away from Ughi.

  The Guide was stroking Ughi’s hair. The boy wasn’t kicking anymor
e. The sun found a break among the cloudbreaths and brought light and the first warm colors of the day. A deep dark red running down Ughi’s neck. Death colored the mud darker. The Guide’s blade caught the dawn’s light. Children screaming. The only ghosts to ever haunt my nights. The Guide dragged the body a few paces in front of us so that we could all see. As he turned toward the shed, he whistled for the maulers.

  There were two of them, two gray strong-necked dogs with drool glistening on their wrinkled jaws. The men of the South called them molossers and trained them for the battlefields. Our Tribe called them maulers. Easier on the tongue, and a more fitting name. The maulers charged without changing direction, the fastest going for the neck and the larger one straight for the meat. They didn’t send the dogs for Ughi. He was already dead and wouldn’t say a word as they ripped him apart. He liked dogs. He was the only one in the orphans who never tortured puppies. They sent the beasts to rip the spirit and the heart out of us.

  It worked.

  III.

  Your Own Heart

  Thirteenth Winter. The Sieve. First Day.

  Red was the second color of the day. The maulers stopped tearing Ughi’s thighs, and the small open carcass was left to fill up with red water. It caught the rain, falling heavier now, like a warped cauldron, a cup for the Reekaal.

  Not much later, the riders emerged as wind spirits born out of the hazy dawn. Three hooded shadows on horseback stopped in front of us. One of them had a female frame: a black robe split in the middle and the sides. Her legs straddled the horse snugly. She dismounted and walked toward us, the two Guides on either side.

  “Sah-Ouna,” whispered Elbia. Her voice, sweet as a nightingale’s song, turned my fear into a mythical adventure.

  “Sah-Ouna, the First Ouna-Ma,” said Atares. Sah-Ouna slowly raised her arrow finger. Silence.

  I was at the end of the line, and she came to me first. Her skin pale, her eyebrows dark serpents. She sank her nails into my cheeks and turned my head to the right to look at the back of my neck. The fingers of her other hand, icy cold worms, slithered through my hair searching for something. From that night, she would be the one Demon who would haunt and hunt me.

  “Worthy…to face the three deaths,” Sah-Ouna whispered to me. She mimed spitting on me but then moved to Atares.

  “Worthy to face the three deaths.”

  The third one was Elbia.

  “Worthy to face all deaths.”

  And so it went. Each kid, one by one, until she reached a boy who was coughing badly and couldn’t even raise his eyes to look at her. She passed him without saying the words or spitting. A Guide grabbed the boy, and they disappeared into the darkness.

  “He is finished,” I heard Atares.

  A whistling sound cut through the rain. An arrow landed between Atares’s legs, and he froze in place. Murky Eyes approached fast on foot.

  “No talking and no moving, rats.”

  The tall Archer boy standing next to Ughi’s torn body warmed the mud as his piss ran down his shaky knees. He had kept his stare down since the maulers left. Shaky Knees would be next.

  I could see hardly anything around me. The rain was falling again like a veil of crystal thorns. I didn’t want to see. Nothing else. No one. I closed my eyes so as not to meet those of any other child. They stole my strength every time they looked at me. The darkness and the medley of sounds soon made me dizzy, and I opened my eyes again.

  Before the pale sun was at mid-horizon, Shaky Knees finally fell, mumbling, “No, no.” When he hit the mud, no arrow struck him, no Guide cut his throat, and no mauler came to tear him to pieces.

  Others soon followed. I counted the children around me, fewer than three times the fingers on my one hand remained standing. My knees started shaking. The day before, I had carried the pails till dusk without rest. The cold was twisting blades in my back. Almost defeated. But she saved me. The mud. Brown and wet like the pulp of horseshit and piss I had been drenched in since my seventh winter. I could see the Greentooth’s reflection, the one who sent me out every day at dawn in the dreadful heat and bitter cold, there. She was looking up at me, cursing me, ugly, but for once useful. “You? At the Sieve? Huh! You’ll fall on the first day. They’ll send you back here to the shit pails.”

  She was right; they wouldn’t kill all of us. But if I fell, I would be thrown back into the world of that pulp from which there was no return. Its stink penetrated everything forever. Faced with it there was neither hot nor cold, nor any pain in the knees. I closed my eyes and saw the warrior on his gray-white horse that kicked over my pail. How strong and fearsome he looked. My legs turned iron hard.

  Each of our warriors had three horses. And there were more warriors than anyone could ever count. And there was something more I knew: “How much does a horse crap in a day?”

  I didn’t know the bow, but I knew that.

  “About my weight in shit every day.”

  I could pass into old age, many rainless summers, carrying steaming pails mixed with my own sweat and golden-green flies. And still, I wouldn’t have carried in one long life even what the whole of Sirol shat out in three days.

  As I stood there looking at the thick brown mud around my feet, I said to myself and to the Greentooth that I wasn’t going back to the shit even if they kept us standing for one moon. The Greentooth was not my mother. Every night, I wished for the heads of Darhul to come out and take her before the next day dawned. But she taught me more than my real mother ever could have. Others would fall. I would not.

  There were a couple of girls among those still standing. I moved between Elbia and Atares. I was not going to fall in front of her feet. She reached over to me with her fist and touched me. A smile, not a smirk. “Hold on. Don’t fall. It’s almost over.”

  Her hand was covered in mud. It was warm and soft, like life.

  “What’s over?” I asked. Before I finished my words, a reed arrow landed three fingers from my foot.

  The Guides threw into carts the children who fell. Unconscious or dead, I knew not. When each cart filled with four or five, the Guides took them away. But it would end.

  It was early evening, and eight of us were still standing. Elbia, Atares, and Urak from the Blades, another girl, two boys I didn’t know, and Malan. They had brought him into the orphans just one winter ago, after our warriors’ raids in the South. His skin was milky white, but they told us that he was one of us and not an othertriber.

  Finally, one of the nameless boys fell. The second horseman dismounted and took off his hood. He was a Reghen, a Truthsayer, his gray robe marked by the red circle. His voice was as strong as ten warriors’ as he spoke. My whole life gushed out of his chest:

  The Truth of the Sieve

  Children of the Archers, the Rods, and the Blades, the Hunters, and the Craftsmen, the Trackers, the Tanners, and the orphans: Prick up your ears like the Wolf, plant your legs like the stallion, and hear now the Truth of the Tribe’s Sieve.

  The twelfth winter is upon you, and the Sieve will decree where the next one will find you.

  This first night, the Wolfmen, the protectors, and the Guides of the Tribe came and gathered you from your tents, which you will never see again.

  Into trials of the Sieve you will enter for a moon and a half and the eyes of Enaka, the One Goddess of the Unending Sky, will be upon you.

  Only the strong will leave the Sieve as warriors. Hunger and ice will become your brother and your sister. Dung and rotten fish are the fate of the weak. The Wolfmen, your Guides, will allow no sheep-heart to waste a warrior’s bow. Guides you will call the old warriors, who in winter will place you on the path of the true Golden Sun and Silver Selene.

  Enaka watches from above, and from her lips the winds of victory blow upon you. Become Warriors. Stand by her in the Final Battle. Do not end up in the nine jaws of Darhul.

  As sheep for slaughter, you enter the Sieve,

  as ashen wolves of the steppe, you will leave.

  Thus de
clared the Ouna-Mas, the Voices of the Unending Sky.

  For countless nights, each breath and word unchanged, I heard the Truth of the Sieve. That was the only thing any boy my age wanted to talk about. Old Man left a basket between ours and the Reghen’s feet. The smell of meat.

  “Seven pieces. One for each. You are the Wolves of the first night. No meat for those who fell, the Sheep. That’s it for today,” the Reghen shouted. The gray-hooded man looked young from up close, only a few winters older than me.

  I wanted to let out a cry of joy, but nothing came. I wanted to run, but I was too tired and numb from the cold, so my legs shuffled to the basket. Urak got there first and grabbed three pieces of meat, but Atares and another boy fell on him, kicking and punching until he was left bruised and stunned. Atares took the last and smallest piece of meat and dipped it in the mud before shoving it into Urak’s mouth. Danaka, the second girl, cheered him on. So did I.

  “Go over there to eat,” said Old Man, pointing to the only tent at the southwest corner of the field. I stole a glance to the left of me and saw other Guides dragging the last cart of the day to the tents on the opposite side with a few children in them.

  “Will we see them again?” I asked.

  Elbia looked at me with puzzled brown eyes. Beautiful.

  “The Sheep? Why, yes. Hasn’t your mother taught you anything?”

  “What mother? He’s an orphan,” said Atares.

  “Worthless orphans. Two of them are still standing today. I can’t believe it,” said the other boy, whose name I didn’t know.

  Murky Eyes came next to me as we were talking. He lifted my mane and looked at the back of my neck as Sah-Ouna had done earlier. His stinking mouth was gaping and silent. I was staring at the slots under his eyebrows. His eyes were covered with gray-white clouds.

  “The Reekaal got him,” Atares whispered. Murky Eyes lifted his hand and slapped the babbling boy.