Drakon Omnibus

by C. A. Caskabel

  Our Pack was the one with the youngest Uncarved, and they called us Starlings.

  Our closest elders, in their fourteenth spring, were nine children, and they were called Owls.

  Those in their fifteenth spring were eight, the Maulers. May they die terrible deaths.

  In the next Pack, there were only six left, and they were called Eagles.

  And the last, those in their seventeenth spring, were called Wolves. Only four of them were still Uncarved. If our Khun died that spring, one of the four of them would take his place.

  We were the many, the thirteen, the greenhorn, the frail Starlings.

  “Why do they call us that?” I asked.

  “Because you still fly together as a flock,” said the Reghen.

  “Because the Eagles are hungry!” Bera roared.

  All of us together were exactly forty children, and that was as far as I could count back then. At night, when we finished with the bows and arrows, the Reghen would teach us how to count.

  “I seek only One,” whispered Malan. He was looking at me, pointing, and counting heads instead of caring about the sticks with the roasting lamb cuts.

  “And the others? What do you think will become of them?” I asked.

  “Pack Chiefs, Archers…” Lebo jumped in.

  “Blackvein’s vultures need to feed.”

  “All true.” Chaka, who was standing behind us, said only that and waited for us to put down our cups and listen to him carefully. The lamb’s juices were feeding my belly.

  “Those who survive the five winters of training will become something. Ask what happened to those who aren’t here anymore.” Chaka pointed toward the four older boys who were eating. “You see those Wolves there? A few winters back, they were thirteen. Proud and tall. Now four are left.”

  Anak was staring at them.

  “Don’t stare,” Lebo said.

  It was too late. The Wolf had smelled the prey.

  “Time to pluck their feathers,” shouted one of the Wolves as he came and sat next to us. He grabbed the cup of Anak the Oaf. The hunt had begun, and we were the prey. When Anak tried to push him away, the Wolf emptied the cup of milk onto his head and then grabbed him by the neck with one hand and locked Anak’s wet head. The Wolf’s knuckles struck and repeatedly rubbed like a flint rock against Anak’s skull. It might have hurt a little but it made Anak suffer much more in humiliation. Anak knew he wouldn’t make Khun ever. Right then, right there.

  “Don’t eat so much. The horse will die carrying you. Do you want to be Khun, you swine?” the Wolf said loudly for all to hear. “Listen, little Starlings, and clear your little bird heads. To become the Khun of the whole Tribe…” He made the biggest circle with his hands and roared a laugh. He stopped with his hands still in the air so we could all swallow his truth. “The whooooole…” He dragged the o every time. “Sah-Ouna must name you the First Wolf of your piss-poor hut. And that might be easy with the weaklings like you that they brought this winter. But you will have to be a Wolf standing, on the last Pack, the oldest in the Uncarved, on that one winter when Khun-Taa finally dies. Not one winter before or one after. Khun-Taa has to die when your moment comes. And that just won’t happen. It hasn’t happened for thirty winters. And before that, another thirty winters passed with the same Khun. So…never. And something even more difficult has to happen: you have to stay alive till then.”

  “If Khun-Taa dies tomorrow, only one of those four Wolves could become Leader of the Tribe. No one else from the whole Tribe. Not you,” said the Reghen, who had also come to stand by us.

  “But if Khun-Taa dies the next winter, none of those four will be able to become Khun,” said Malan, probably talking to himself.

  “Yes, so it is. All four will get their carving as soon as they pass their seventeenth winter.”

  “So,” continued the Wolf, who had understood long ago that he would never become Khun, “forget it.”

  He remained quiet for a while so the words could sink deep inside our souls. But only for a while—he just couldn’t stop. He enjoyed this so much that he wanted to soak our heads into whole winters of blind misery.

  “None of you will become Khun. Not one. But many will burn in the fire like those lambs in front of you,” added the Wolf.

  “What happened to the other nine of you?” asked Gunna.

  “Two were carved early by the Guides and left for other camps.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Like the lambs.”

  ‘How did they die?” asked Malan.

  “Bleeding. They bled to death. All of them.” The Wolf who had smelled us first started to laugh loudly again and added his tale, his eyes fixed on Anak. “Wait for the night of the Bear’s Sleep full moon. Then we’ll hang the fattest and slowest Starling from a tree upside down, and the dogs will pull bloody chunks from his face and tear him apart before the sun rises,” he said.

  Wolves and Maulers drowned out all the other sounds of the camp with their barking laughter. The Eagles and the young Owls were screaming and hooting.

  “Don’t listen to nonsense, Starlings. Neither the Reghen nor I would allow any such torture here,” Chaka said, with a serious tone in his voice.

  The Guides had strict rules for everything—what we trained on, when we rode horses, where we went and didn’t, when we slept. There was a Truth for everything, and we had to follow it blindly. The children had only one rule among themselves: the strong beats the weak wherever he finds him. This change was the hardest. One moment, I had to be an obedient and brave dog; the next, a devious, quick, ruthless snake.

  When the older children left, and we were alone in our hut, Bera the ninestar Guide told us: “Beware of the older boys more than anything else. They will beat you to death just because they can if we are not around.”

  Anak turned his head around uneasily as if he were already upside down on that tree, a rope tightening around his neck.

  Bera continued. “Hey, don’t be afraid. They don’t often hang someone from the oak’s branch. There are countless ways to die in the Uncarved.”

  “Tell us a few,” said Gunna.

  “If I do, we’ll be here all night. But the Wolf was true about one thing. They always bleed to death.”

  XVIII.

  Archers We Need in the Thousands

  Fifteenth spring. Uncarved—Owl.

  The Greentooth was always certain that I wouldn’t survive even nine nights in the Sieve. I had already passed nine moons Uncarved. The trials grew tougher each day, but I grew stronger and taller every night.

  Until the winter, the first truly ruthless trial, came again. The nights fell cold, and everyone stayed near the fire. The mind had time to think and suffer, restless. I could smell it. Only a few thousand paces to the east of us, a new Sieve was seething in its frozen rage. Rain or snow would take my mind back there every night.

  The Guides spoke of a ghost with long brown hair and snow-white skin. They said it had been seen on a frosty, moonlit night, riding among the weeping willows that kissed the Blackvein. I wasn’t allowed to go to the Blackvein, but I too had seen the ghost, on one of the few nights that the Ouna-Ma brought the gift of crazygrass. She came in my sleep, a pale girl on horseback, and touched my hand. Cold skin. Her dark lips, rosy no more, whispered to me: “I am riding, Da-Ren. War horses. Down by the Blackvein. Come find me.”

  We managed to become Owls that spring without losing anyone to bleeding or burning in the pyre. No one got a carving either. New Starlings joined from a fresh Sieve.

  The one thing we didn’t miss was the Stories. The Reghen and the Ouna-Mas came often and had a Legend for every death. We were closed up in the same camp and the surrounding fields. We hadn’t been anywhere else in Sirol.

  One night, Lebo asked the Reghen: “When will we mount war horses? We’ve been cooped up here so long.”

  “You have summers in front of you for everything. You have to master the bow without being on a saddle first,” the Reghen said.<
br />
  “What kind of Leaders will we be? We’ve forgotten what other boys look like,” said Malan.

  “Girls too,” added Noki.

  Noki was too smart to want to become a Khun. Sooner or later, he’d make it a point to carve his arm by himself.

  “You are trained better than all the others.”

  “How? Everyone trains with bows everywhere. We just do the same,” Malan said.

  Chaka stepped in and raised his voice in anger. “Do you want me to send you all through another Sieve? That should straighten you out! Do you know how many tents with Archers are training south of here?”

  “A hundred?” asked Malan.

  “Five times that many. Countless. Six Archer boys to every tent. Do you think that you are the best Archers? Thirty of those tents are just girl Archers.”

  “What did he say? Girls with bows? Ha!” said Gunna.

  Noki came closer to the fire with unexpected interest. The only other time he had had a spark was when an Ouna-Ma had come into our hut.

  “And some of the girls shoot better than you,” said Chaka.

  “So, what makes our training the best?” I asked the Reghen.

  The Guides gathered around, and each one said a different thing.

  “You listen to more Stories. Many more.”

  “Every morning, you face only the best, the other Uncarved.”

  “You train with the next Khun, whoever that will be.”

  “It’s the best training because we tell you so,” said Bera.

  “You are fewer and can train more. You don’t wait in lines behind hundreds of others.”

  “And, most importantly, Darhul is at your heels all day long because you know that we seek only One. Archers we need in the thousands,” said Chaka.

  Bera was right.

  The one I felt sorry for that second spring was Redin. Whether or not he was the son of Druug, the Leader of ten thousand Archers and three thousand more Archers in training, made no difference. Everyone treated him as if he didn’t deserve to be; because he didn’t. He was slower and weaker, and he had to sweat a lot more just to keep up with the rest of us. He was good only at sweating.

  The older Uncarved knew right away.

  “If that boy is Druug’s son, then his mother was not a She Wolf.”

  “Maybe a kitten.”

  “The Legend of the Kitten. That’s a good Story.”

  “Son of Druug, meow, meow.” Everyone laughed and clawed their fingers like little paws.

  The Uncarved boys had little to do after sunset, so everyone kept adding to Redin’s misery. It was the best pastime for those few moons until he left for good. The strong ones found a weakling and tore him to shreds like the eagles do to the pigeon. The worse the humiliation, the funnier it was.

  “I can’t go back if I don’t become Khun,” he would say to Noki and me, the only ones who still cared to listen to him.

  I shook my head without answering. I believed that he would see it in the stars, he would see it in the Blackvein, if he looked long enough. He would see his face mirrored there sooner or later. He would see that he wasn’t the next Khun.

  Redin finally met his fate on a spring day of clear sky and bright light when we had a bow contest. He struggled hard from the first round, always last, to gather his arrows that had fallen over the field and the shallow stream. The one who had the quiver with the fewest arrows at the end of the day got jeers from the boys and slaps from the Guides. Chaka called three times for him to come back, but Redin either didn’t hear or pretended he didn’t to win time. This had happened so many times before.

  Chaka looked at the ninestar Guide, and Bera gave the command without hesitation: “Owls, aim your arrows. Rain from the sky!”

  In the beginning, no one obeyed. We all just looked at one another.

  “Last time. Come back, you fool, now!” Chaka shouted to Redin.

  Redin didn’t even turn to look at us; he was knee-deep in the stream. He wasn’t even searching for arrows. His fists punched the water again and again, and he was swirling around like a madman. He knew. The spring water was crystal clear that day. He probably saw his face in there. He saw a Fisherman. Not a Khun. It was time. Even Druug, if he was his real father, would have agreed that it was the only honorable thing to do. He, more than anyone else, would have agreed. There is a stream that no man can cross and still keep his dignity.

  “Shoot! Or by Enaka, I’ll carve each one of you tonight!” Chaka shouted to all of us.

  Someone to the right of me—I didn’t see who but could guess—let the first arrow go. Others followed. And then all. Many times. When Chaka raised his hand we stopped.

  “I didn’t aim at him,” said Akrani next to me.

  “Neither did I,” said Gunna.

  No one aimed at Redin. At least no one admitted to that. Everyone aimed high at the Goddess’s embrace.

  “Did you shoot from the hunter’s quiver?” I asked Malan. One of the hooked-shoulder head arrows was still on his hand.

  Everyone turned to look at Malan.

  “I don’t remember,” said Malan, shrugging his shoulders indifferently.

  “Those arrows are man killers,” I said.

  “Let’s go see yours. See what those are,” said Malan.

  We walked to the stream and pulled Redin out of the crimson water. I had never in my life seen a body pierced so many times. Not even in the bloody campaigns afterward did I see one. For the son of the Leader of the Archers, he was properly dressed for death, the starling half-feathers on the arrow tails a grim golden-green adornment.

  We had to get our arrows back. Mine had a brown line, the color of her hair, painted on the shaft before the feather fletches to stand out from the others. I found one of my reeds three fingers above his navel. I took that one out with one pull. Malan’s arrow was next to mine. I hadn’t aimed high enough; I didn’t shoot too many. The other children had a hard time, especially those who had struck the feet and head. If we didn’t take out all those reeds, he would flare up in the funeral pyre, even if he wasn’t laid on wood.

  “Are you scared, Da-Ren?” asked Malan.

  No one admitted to being scared or startled.

  “Sad day, but it was long coming,” said Bera who had joined us by the stream. “You’re no longer the greenhorn of the Sieve.” He knelt and we followed his example. “A prayer for the first Uncarved,” he said. “Death became your brother today. This is your first kill. Bury any guilt you have. Your arrows were aching for this. They danced alive for the first time. For their virgin killing.”

  This didn’t sound like a prayer to me. More like a triumphal celebration of death. No child talked proudly the rest of the day about what had happened. No one could claim or fear that he killed Redin. No one knew who the fateful arrow belonged to. The first, the second, the one that ripped through the heart.

  When darkness fell, the Reghen gathered all twelve of us around the fire with the silent Ouna-Ma. This one was younger and darker, and her head was shaved clean.

  The fire had just started to flare, and my breath was still the only thing that warmed my hands. There was a bit more space for everyone around the warmth from that night on. I had taken a firm hold of my short blade, and with its tip, I was carving the wet dirt. I wondered if it was my arrow that had found Redin first. I wasn’t the first one to shoot.

  I stared, bewitched, at the eyes and lips of the Ouna-Ma, and a flame grew between my legs. The Reghen began another Story. We heard many of them at the camp of the Uncarved.

  The Legend of the First Leader, Khun-Nan

  The Fifth Season of the World: The Second Chapter

  Know this, you Uncarved Owls of the Tribe.

  When the Fourth Season, that of the Annihilation, ended and the Fifth, that of the Leaders, began, a fierce warlord, but not yet Leader of the entire Tribe, was Khun-Nan. He had fathered three daughters and three sons, but all save one died during the march to the West. The survivor was his youngest daugh
ter, the one who had been given since birth the name Ouna-Ma. She was the First Ouna-Ma the Blind, the one who could see beyond this world. When, during the night, she would look out, eyeless, at the eternal darkness and scream, everyone’s heart froze with fear. Because they knew it was the Voice of Enaka she let out, the Voice that should not be heard by mortal men.

  But in the solace of her darkness, the Ouna-Ma had found the Sight and could even look into the eye of the Demon Darhul. That is how, they say, she had first lost her sight as a small child. She had slipped one night out of her tent and gone down to the shore of the Black Sea, and there she had spotted, first and alone, Darhul himself rising from the night’s waves. Enaka descended, riding on her chariot, pulled by Pelor, her brave horse, and sent lightning bolts to save Ouna-Ma from the jaws of the Demon. Her life was saved, but her sight taken by the lightning. From that day on, she could see only Enaka and Darhul, the otherworlds, and nothing else.

  In her sixteenth winter, on the first full moon of spring, Ouna-Ma stopped talking. She even stopped screaming, and she silently kept pointing north. For one whole moon, Khun-Nan tried to persuade the Tribe to follow the Ouna-Ma’s prophecy and head north, but the other warlords mocked him. The Tribe then was a lawless horde, and warlords over struggled against the future Khun.

  On the second full moon of spring, Ouna-Ma’s screams were echoed across the camp for the first time in a long while. A brutal northerly chill descended fast and embraced everyone that night. The men looked to the sky, and they saw a black shadow starting to slowly hide a full Selene. At once, they started crying and screaming, tearing the flesh from their cheeks in despair, because they knew. This had been long foretold to be the second sign of the Annihilation.

  “Ravenfeather, the vilest of Darhul’s nine heads, flew out of the sea and swallowed Selene whole.” That was what they said about that fateful night. Selene, the heart of Enaka, was in the belly of the Beast, though they could still see her bleeding and shining ever so faintly.