Drakon Omnibus

by C. A. Caskabel

  The white-haired women had been telling us Reekal tales since the first winter I remembered myself. It would be scary had I been a seven-wintered. Or if they really took us out of Sirol, to the Forest, the lair of the Reekal.

  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 anymore. 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.

  Apocrypha I.

  My Name is Sarah

  As the One Mother heard the Legends, Chapter I

  Come noon, the sun’s rays beam down the bottom of the dried-up well, and I see his grimy face staring up at me. He has been standing there, for six days and nights now; my brother’s bloated corpse cuddled around his feet. It’s the only way they both fit—the well is barely six feet wide—else he must step on the maggots and the wet rotting flesh of my kin.

  Come night, I pray to the haloed angels to beat their milky wings and part the autumn clouds so that the moon can illuminate his screams. And when the angels listen—more often they don’t—I have a second chance to see them both, the living and the dead next to each other. The moonlight paints everything in its own twisted magic, the savage’s eyes are glowing mad and yellow; he still makes desperate efforts to climb up. To me. My brother’s rotting face comes alive every time the savage tries to climb; the jaw gnawing at the leg of Jak-Ur. Maybe I dreamt that, I am not sure it happened, the light of the autumn moon is hazy and weak.

  Jak-Ur is the name of the savage; it is one of the first words he taught me.

  Water. Food. Help. Shit. Lift. Up. Jak-Ur. Sarah.

  He said his name is Jak-Ur and I told him my name. He should know the name of his death.

  We don’t speak each other’s tongue; we showed each other these words with hand signs, except for the word “help.” That one he didn’t need to sign.

  “Fear.”

  We’re both afraid, he of being trapped forever, me of him getting out—but how can I make a hand gesture for fear?

  “Don’t be afraid, sister,” were my brother’s last words.

  I know now why we bury them fast, six days passed and the reek, oh Lord, the reek. I know now that once dead, the God’s faithful stink as bad as the animals. And the color of his skin. Whatever is down there is not my brother anymore. It is dark and oozing and glistening—that might be the moonlight on the rainwater though—and doesn’t have a face. Tiny ants creep down the stones at noon; fat spiders come up at sunset.

  The well is made of gray stone. My father built it when he first came here, but it dried up a long time ago. We use it to dump filth, and dead kittens—not me, young Lonas, the woodcutter’s boy drops the kittens. Poor Lonas, the savages took him, alive. Weeds have grown; they found some raindrops to suck and are extending between the stones of the circular well, flicking like lizard tongues that try to kiss both of them: the living and the dead. Truth be told, they are both dead, that they must know by now, the maggots may have eaten the flesh and the lips and crawl around the eyeballs of my brother, but that barbarous dog is dead too. He will live until I decide on the most painful death. I have thought of thirteen deaths so far, but it has only been six nights. I think I slept one night, I had dreams of rag dolls walking and wolves howling; they must come from sleep.

  “Don’t be afraid, little sister,” my brother said; those were the last words I heard out of his mouth. Not the last sounds. That was squealing.

  He spoke those words, his hand on my shoulder, a few moments after my father’s slave, Agapetos, stormed among the huts screaming: “The dogs, the dogs. The infidels…coming.” I was outside, washing, that’s what they had me do most days. Washing clothes, the lye burning my hands until the priest comes to marry me; my father promised me to him. The wedding is supposed to be next month, before the holy winter night of death and birth, but I don’t know anymore. I think it won’t happen.

  My father ran out of our hut, my brother right behind him, and asked Agapetos: “How many? How far?”

  Agapetos, barely swerved his horse half circle and pointed backward. Not far. He then nudged the mare into a gallop and never looked back.

  “Swords! Gather the men! Barricade behind the carts. Now, boy,” were my father’s last words.

  Agapetos means “the one we love,” how unfit for someone whom we have fed all his life, only for him to betray us, shouting “dogs” and then riding away. He didn’t mean it as a curse. There were real dogs, black-skinned and strong-necked, and they reached before their masters, the riding archers. It was maybe four or five of them, but I heard them barking from far away. Only the last moment before they fell on our men did they go silent, focusing on the kill. And then came the flaming arrows, the riders, the scourge of God.

  My father never had a chance to bravely wield his sword, a sword of the Empire, one he had carried around the battlefields victoriously, before the Emperor himself gave him land scrolls and appointed him two days south of the North River to grow the fields and defend the borderlands. How proud did my father sound every time he talked about the Emperor and his gifts. My mother was smarter than him.

  The boy, my brother, fought bravely—if one can call what followed a fight—after my father fell. The rest of our men, fewer than ten among the huts, dropped fast, pierced by the arrows. The riders took Mother, they took Lonas, they took the women, and the very young. My brother was wielding his sword, surrounded by six riders, they were toying with him, poking him with their spears, until one of them, who must have been their warlord, the one on the rose-gray horse, shouted something in their barbaric tongue, and they turned and rode away. They had pierced him a few times, and a couple of the wounds were deep. Little brother fell to his knees, but he wasn't dead. The riders galloped away, all except for one. Jak-Ur. My brother had wounded Jak-Ur on his forearm; he managed to draw some blood from the dogs.

  And then it starts and never stops, engraved in my mind forever.

  Jak-Ur doesn’t leave with the rest; he dismounts and approaches my kneeling brother. I am hiding in the empty oil barrel outside the barn. It has rotted, and the children use it to hide and play; they have opened holes to see through. I fit; I am slender and young, taller than a child, I make sure I am well-hidden in there, I pray that I am. I have to save myself, no Emperor or father will save me today.

  My brother is bleeding out; his eyes dart desperately left and right. Are you looking for me, brother? I am safe.

  Jak-Ur punches my brother’s face twice, sweat and blood and teardrops, and then grabs him by his long hair and starts pulling him toward the well. Your last words I remember, but now I am afraid for you, little brother. The words end but the sounds stay.

  The sounds still come in the night; they haven’t stopped for six days now. My brother fights as much as a wounded and long-defeated boy can fight. But he still fights, kicking and screaming, like…a girl. That’s the words he’d use: “like a girl.” Jak-Ur resolves to smash my brother’s head on the top of the stone wall, the rim of the well that protrudes two feet above the ground. And then when brother is unconscious, or dead I hope, Jak-Ur puts brother against the stone wall, Jak-Ur is behind him, pulls down his pants, both their pants, and he start
s thrusting back and forth, like the dogs and the stallions, and little brother’s body just follows the motion, Jak-Ur pounds, little brother’s face staring down the well, his bare legs and waist against the stones, and it never ends, a few moments to last a thousand years in my hell.

  It is only the three of us left under the crimson and purple bleeding clouds—father’s favorite colors, those of the Empire three-cut flags. The swirling autumn leaves whisper the last rites above the scattered corpses who don’t want to see any of this and stay face down in the mud. I climb out of the barrel, I can’t understand, believe, and I must get closer, to see my little brother. He is not my little brother, and I am not his little sister, we are twins of one womb sheath, and we look—we used to look—so much alike, everyone says that—Agapetos always did, and so did Mother. They took Mother. A man knocked her senseless and pulled her on a horse. She didn’t see any of this; the priest always said that the Lord is magnanimous. That he is, sometimes.

  Jak-Ur spreads my brother’s legs wider to have better support, and he steps on the stone ring. He can now rock faster and harder. Little brother always had his feet planted wide, father taught him so, to be a deadly swordsman, get in fighting position. When he turned eighteen last year, father gave him a sword and a hand-carved sheath. The empty sheath dangles shamed around my brother’s waist, he has no pants, but the strap and the sheath are still there, and its leathery point softly plows the mud as it is driven back and forth. Jak-Ur keeps pounding.

  I sneak up to Jak-Ur from behind, silent and light-footed like a kitten. I am only six feet away, and I hear a moan, was it a squealing, a wailing, my brother, you are not dead yet, Jak-Ur rides him like dogs ride bitches, and I have no fear anymore, my soul explodes, I summon all the rage in my head, and the bursting of my heart and I make it into strength for my legs and I run, and with my whole body give Jak-Ur’s back one push.

  The stone wall has rotted, the mud between the stones is soft from the autumn rains, and Jak-Ur's weight pushes brother down, and brother’s weight pulls Jak-Ur down. Jak-Ur startled tries to turn around, to grab something, but he can’t stop the fall, brother is still alive and holds to the savage’s one leg that still stands on the ground and brother pulls the leg down with him, and they are both gone in the dark hole, it is only a breath, two breaths, the well is thirty feet deep, not more, and I hear a dull thud. Both as one. And then I hear Jak-Ur scream as if he broke something. Now, after six days, I know that he hobbles badly; he can only stand on one leg. I don’t hear brother screaming; I don’t hear him wailing anymore.