I didn’t have to see the fourteen eyes glowing like embers. I heard them. The wolves—not the Uncarved or the Wolfmen, the wolves—the four legged, the hungry, appeared at the edge of the Forest. The blood and the night had called them. If we left Gunna there, they would soon be all over him. They would go first for his ankles and his wrists. The poor boy could not do anything to defend himself. I had no doubts his spine was broken. He was not going to die well.
“We’re finished here. Everyone, back to your huts,” Malan said.
I bit my lip, my eyes cutting fast from Gunna to Malan as he kept walking away. Everybody obeyed in total silence.
I signaled to the smallest Starling next to me.
“Hey, come here.”
I took his torch and pushed him away.
“What are you doing? An Iron End, they said,” I yelled at Malan.
He turned and came up to me a few feet in distance.
“His wolf ancestors will take care of him. They’ll protect him,” he said with a low, but clear, reassuring voice and turned to walk away.
Didn’t I know by now? I should have seen it five long winters ago. Darkness and madness reigned in Malan’s head. Was it only I who could see this, or was I blind with envy? No one made a move. Malan made for the huts, and everyone followed him. I grabbed from the back the neck of the young Uncarved next to me. I took his bow and its quiver. I was also an Uncarved Wolf. Protector of the Tribe. I could bring an Iron End myself.
I ran toward Gunna and lit with my torch the dried twigs I found around him. The wolves waited at a distance. They were in no hurry. They had all night. I was alone. It would be their feast sooner or later.
At my feet, Gunna lay taller than ever before. The boy was at the seventeenth fall of his life. A fateful fall. His eyes had no peace in them. They were carving his agony in my heart. Silent screams were his plea for help. Live, die. He lifted two fingers signaling me next to him. I knelt, my ear next to his mouth.
“Red…”
Again, the same. What was he saying? “What?”
“Redbreast…” he whispered.
“Redbreast? Is this what you’re telling me? You’re funny, you, big warrior. Close your eyes, rest. I’m here.”
The blood all over his tunic. Redbreast? Making a joke? Fuck you, Gunna, fuck you for dying on me and having me kill you. You are the last one I have left.
I raised my bow.
His lips were trembling. Begging. Still breathing.
“I can’t save you, friend. I don’t have such magic.”
In the heart. Two demon fangs, the broad iron arrowheads. The only way the giant would die quickly.
A prayer. Make one up, Da-Ren. Enaka, I beg you to accept him. Don’t send him down to the cold fucking caves. His eyes stopped twitching. I wipe away your tears, my friend. They are mine. No one will see them. You die brave. His wrists and ankles would not suffer from the wolves. There was no way for me to carry his body. It was too heavy. The wolves would not let me.
I ran back to join the rest of the boys. Malan, the First, was waiting for me, standing in front of everyone else.
“Again, a stupid mistake, Da-Ren. I told you to get lost.”
I was still holding my bow.
The boys were looking at him as if they expected something more. He made some hesitant steps toward my side. I would strangle him if he got closer. He stopped and took two steps back. All he would dare to do was talk.
“It was not for you to do anything, Da-Ren. Gunna was mine. You will do what I—” he started saying.
I nocked the one arrow I had left on my bow and raised it.
We were both trying to look calm and strong. But my head was boiling hard.
I pulled the bowstring, aiming for his chest.
His legs froze. He looked around to see if anyone was there to save him.
A Reghen jumped between us. Unlike us, he was shaking.
Bera, the ninestar, came toward me. “Stand down, Da-Ren,” he said, trying to find his calming voice.
My hands were trembling. It was not fear.
“Drop this bow, Da-Ren, or you die here.”
I was biting my lip hard to hold myself from releasing the arrow. Bera slowly lowered my left arm to bring my aim downward, away from Malan. I released. The arrow flew low at an angle and hit the ground between Malan’s dusty boots.
The four-legged wolves were howling at the Forest’s edge as the brave, muscled body of Gunna welcomed them. At dawn, I alone would gather whatever remained and take it to the pyre.
Malan disappeared in the hut that the two of us were left to share.
“He’s a mad jackal. Doesn’t anyone see that?” I asked Bera.
“You are the weak one. Malan did the right thing,” the Reghen blurted out.
He was a young Reghen. About my age.
“You stupid boy! I hope your horse finds that mud puddle someday,” I said.
No one had ever called a Reghen “stupid boy” until then. It was like spitting the One Hundred of them in the face. And every one of their Stories and Truths.
But I didn’t want any more of the Reghen’s Truths.
It was the first time during my five winters’ training that I met a challenge I didn’t care for.
Gunna’s torture brought no enjoyment to me.
I had not planned it for many moons like Malan had.
I had been poisoned in the Forest.
Blue was the poison of Zeria, of the Kar-Tioo pond.
I was not a Reekaal.
Chaka, the Chief Guide, who had been seeking only One for countless summers, came next to me, his face cold as if I had just crossed his path for the first and last time.
“You are not the One.”
That was all he said. But I knew that already.
I was not born to be Khun.
I realized it suddenly, harshly, mercilessly, and irreversibly, as I heard from a distance the feasting of the wolves. As unbelievable as it sounded in my own head, I didn’t look forward to being Khun. I didn’t have it in me. I cared about the brave. A Leader draws his strength from the weak. Maybe I still had the desire to lead the brave to the glory and slaughter of the Final Battle. But I had no desire to put my dick deep into the brains of the weak, which was pretty much everybody, just to mess around with them.
I couldn’t bear to accept that someone was better than I. I couldn’t bear having to bow my head to any other Uncarved or Guide. Above all, I couldn’t bear the moment in a few moons’ time when I would have to say the words “Khun-Malan, my Great Leader.” But none of this was enough of a reason to become Khun.
The Reghen were right. All the others who had given me slanted looks when I had put Gunna out of his misery were right. They were right for one simple reason: it was what they wanted. It was what they could believe and sing. Malan’s Story. You can’t go against the Khun, the one the Unending Sky shines upon. He is the Legend of Legends. You bring your blade down on him and find only air instead of his heart. Your arrows fall between his boots, never higher.
And the Khun knows how to lead the many, those who seek the Witches’ signs, the Stories.
“They have been riding better since that night,” Chaka said to Bera a few days later.
He made sure I was next to them, listening.
“Who?” asked Bera.
“The younger Uncarved. They take care of their horses, they rest them, and they look out for the puddles.”
“What are you saying, Chief?”
“Malan did well. He made them better warriors without even opening his mouth. I say that no Uncarved will fall from his horse again while Malan is among us. Or, by Enaka, I’ll sit still and you can piss on me.”
Gunna’s flesh and Malan’s madness fed the Tribe and gave it strength.
That Legend lived for many winters to come. From the night Malan left Gunna at the edge of the Forest, they said that no Uncarved was ever again mortally wounded falling from his horse in training. Many summers pas
sed without losing another boy. Only the Story of Gunna and Malan was spoken. Nothing about Gunna’s Iron End. And that was the only Truth the Reghen would sing.
They didn’t carve me that same night, though many of them wanted to. Even I wanted to be carved, but there had to be a second Uncarved. But they did exile me for good to the hut of the Uncarved Eagles, together with six younger ones who would never become Leaders. Malan would be alone in our old hut. “To protect you from killing each other,” they said, but, at night, Reghen and Ouna-Mas came and went from Malan’s hut. I also saw Sah-Ouna slipping in one night. And a second.
I now counted the moons we had left on the fingers of my one hand. If Khun-Taa did not die soon, then the Truth declared that both Malan and I had to be carved. But something told me that Khun-Taa’s death was coming fast.
During the next few nights, funny stories popped around the dung fires about Reekaal who shat themselves when Malan went near the Forest. Even if he had never actually been in the Forest himself. Everyone had forgotten what had happened during the last Great Feast of Spring at Wolfhowl. The Goddess had shadowed their minds. Enaka sheds light on the True Leader and darkens all the foes around him.
I had been gone for a long time, longer than even Sah-Ouna would have wished. The Story of my brave legendary father had been forgotten in the Forest, and Rouba, my only real father, had died there also. Zeria had rescued my soul and hid it in an oak’s hollow. She had reached the caves of the dead to claim it back.
There would be more sacred ceremonies and other bloody rituals, but the next Leader of the Tribe, the sixth Khun, had been chosen ahead of all this. Everyone knew that.
“If Khun-Taa dies, then Malan will be the first Khun whom I ever trained. He is the One. And that is the way it has always been,” said Chaka. “The Reghen say that back in the beginning, every night when we had to choose the new Khun among the surviving Uncarved—” He stopped for a few breaths as the young Uncarved were hanging from his mouth to hear his words. “—there was never any question. When that night comes, everyone knows already who he is.”
Why should he whip me when he could utter such words with a broad smile?
My quest ended and my shame became complete on that first night when I slept in the hut of the younger Uncarved. At dawn, I would wake up in a peace I had never known. I would not be Khun; no more would I chase, like a stupid dog, some bone they had thrown in front of me. I had become a warrior and a man in my own campaign, in my own trial, in my own Forest, and my training was now complete.
That was what I said to myself before I went to sleep. So that I could sleep.
Defeat sleeps cold and alone, always looking for some excuse to snuggle under.
XXXI.
The Witch, the Amazon,
the Cow
Island of the Holy Monastery, Thirty-fourth winter.
According to the Monk Eusebius.
We were approaching the second anniversary of Da-Ren’s arrival at the Castlemonastery when we completed the first transcription of his story. Da-Ren waited in vain to see Baagh’s trireme emerge from the waves of the open sea, together with the powerful Sorcerers of the Cross.
“There are no such men whom Baagh knows, only old hermits. Anchorites,” the First Elder told me once after Baagh had disappeared.
No one came, and we didn’t have any news from Baagh. We had only the first draft of Da-Ren’s tale after nine hard months of writing. It was quite a sterile account of the events, written with a quick and abrupt style using the few words that he knew.
Monastic life had sucked the warrior out of the arms and eyes of Da-Ren. His frame had become leaner, and his weakness made him more acceptable—more like the rest of us. He now wore a brown hooded robe, without the embroidered cross. Not gray like a monk’s. It made him look more like a merchant than a monk, as he had bought it, along with a pair of sturdy sandals, new from the ship that brought our supplies. The boots he had been wearing when he had arrived were suitable only for the island’s harsh winters, and by now had become useless.
The only work that kept our thoughts away from Baagh and his empty promises was the storytelling, especially his. Baagh had ordered me to write down every detail, and Da-Ren, who wanted to get it finished as quickly as possible, was getting irritated during the first year.
“I want to understand more, Da-Ren. I’d like to know more about your tents, your clothing, your horses?”
“I have ridden hundreds of horses, Eusebius. Do you know the one thing they all said to me?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Horses don’t tell stories. What do you want to know about the horses? Wouldn’t you rather I spoke to you of the people?”
“I want to know everything.”
“Have you ever ridden, Eusebius, hmm?”
“Only the mule down at the village.”
“What do you think—that if I tell you about horse stirrups, you will understand me better?”
“I have heard about stirrups.”
“We were the only tribe that had stirrups. Stupid when you think of it, but countless thousands of your empire’s warriors died because of this. We could balance with our legs on the horses and use both hands to shoot the bow. They had never seen stirrups in the empire before we came.”
These details would certainly be of interest to the Emperor and his Generals in Holy Thalassopolis, the reigning city of the Southeastern Empire.
“What other secret do you want to learn, Eusebius? That I kicked the animal’s sides with my heels to get it going? That it grazed on grass two times a day? Tell me what secrets to reveal that Baagh’s Cross Sorcerers don’t know.”
“You’re mocking me, Da-Ren. If you don’t want to, then don’t tell me anything. The less you tell me, the less I have to change the next time we rewrite.”
Only when we had finished the first transcription of the story, and I had read it to Da-Ren, from beginning to end in a pompous voice, did he understand that we had to do what I was saying.
“This is nonsense,” he said about a description I was reading. “No, this is wrong. But, yes, it was winter. Didn’t you understand that?”
Many times when he heard his story, he would say the worst thing: “I’m sick of this. I’m too tired and have forgotten.”
It was strange, but when we wrote his story in short form, it was more painful. The scenes ran like bloodied arrows, stopping nowhere to rest. Only when we lengthened it did it become easier on the ear.
That was how Da-Ren was finally convinced, and I with him. We had to rewrite and rewrite. It would never be good enough, but we had to rewrite as many times as our patience allowed. If and when the wise men ever came to hear his story, it would have to be much better written.
“You should read the Sacred Books, the eternal ones,” I said, “to see what you like about them. They might help to open up your mind and loosen your tongue.”
I read to him all the new codices that the merchant ships brought to the monastery, even the old dying scrolls from the libraries of the South, and Da-Ren gave me gold coins to find even more.
And so we rewrote the story during his third year on the island. When Baagh still didn’t appear, we had nothing else to do but retry a third time during Da-Ren’s fourth year. Da-Ren’s and Baagh’s gold had run out by then. We did not have supplies to do a fourth draft and, thankfully, we didn’t need to.
It was the third winter when we rewrote for a second consecutive year. We searched for the right words, and we took out those we didn’t like. We added color on papyrus. We added horses. A few.
At this point of the story, when I learned that Da-Ren would not be Leader of his Tribe, I always asked him the same thing: “You didn’t keep your promise, Da-Ren. You said the word ‘why.’ You had told me before that the whys didn’t matter, but now you broke down and told me many times why you would not be Khun.”
Unlike the many times he fooled me when I asked him about his soul’s repentance, there were times like
these when he had nowhere to hide.
“Do you know how many thousands will be massacred before the end of this story, Eusebius? To etch Malan’s fate in red? How many tens of thousands perished in this tale that is just now starting to boil? But that is what the men and the First Witch of my Tribe wanted, the One Leader for the Final Battle.”
“And that wasn’t you?”
“A Khun looks down on us from the top of the hill. We are small to him, born only to die. He doesn’t see the difference between animals and men. Not even between men of the Tribe and othertribers. He would feed them all to the fire of his Story. I didn’t have that in me. That…gift.”
“You didn’t have Zeria in you either, but you found her. Why?”
“Are you going to start with the whys again? What do you know about women, Eusebius?”
It was obvious that I knew nothing. Nobody in the Castlemonastery did, and that gave me an idea. I had spent so much time writing, and I wanted to share some of it with all the monks. I asked the First Elder to read the story. He refused. I asked him if I could read it to the peasants. He said that would be blasphemy and no one would feel pacified listening to a tale of slaughters and infidels.
“Maybe I can just choose a few passages about their lives.”
He thought about that for a while and said, “Only about domestic matters. These barbarians do not honor family or wife or sister. Tell that story to the villagers. It will water the plant of their faith to the True God.”
I found that odd. I asked Da-Ren to sit down with me and write the story of the women of his Tribe. I read it to the villagers on a dark winter night in the stable next to the church. Most of the monks joined us as well. Many women were there, even the miller’s widow who had claimed that Da-Ren had violated her. The unmarried twin sisters were there. They were the ones who worked the fields alone, and it was said that they were not even sisters, that they had just been orphans together since they had arrived at the island with the refugees. Even the mad old woman who never attended church came. She stayed away from the monks. The peasants would go to her for help only when the Almighty God refused to listen to their prayers. And that was more often than not.
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