Da-Ren had sat with me patiently to give me his account of the women of the Tribe, and I read it from the papyrus, for all to hear and renew their faith in our God.
The Tale of the Women of the Tribe
When I was born, Khun-Taa was the Leader of the Tribe. He had brought us to Sirol in the Great Valley between the Eastern and the Western Empires, in between the Endless Forest and the Blackvein River. During the first summers, Khun-Taa often went on campaigns to the South and looted cities and villages, but he never dared to go near Thalassopolis, the city my Tribe calls Sapul. The Southeastern Empire was all-powerful, and the Kings of the Cross Worshippers hid behind the city’s indestructible walls and wouldn’t come out to face us.
For thirteen bloody summers Khun-Taa raided the South and when he got tired, he camped in the Great Valley and concerned himself with the Change. We stopped moving every spring. The Story of the Change was the Story of Sah-Ouna, the woman he found under the full moon on the twelfth spring of his reign. The Blades captured her across from the Blackvein, between the bare willows half-naked—
The priest had left already. That man was not a monk. He was a man of God. As my faith waned in later years, he became the opposite of God, everything that I came to despise about God. He carried the burden of a thousand rules, rules that the Holy Books never mentioned. His own rules. The more of them he made, the more power he had.
The First Elder shook his head, and I understood that I shouldn’t use another word like that even if it was written down. I would ignore that rule a few more times. He was right, though. The miller’s widow had fixed her dreamy gaze on Da-Ren, her hand rubbing between her legs. I continued.
—and brought her to Khun-Taa. Sah-Ouna was meant to be fucked like a slave, but she possessed three unique gifts, and they were more than enough to transform her into the Wise-woman of the Tribe and the Guide of the Leader.
She knew the powers of each plant and every spell. She had a thirst for power. And everyone believed her to be sent by the Goddess because she spoke our tongue. She spoke our words without any difficulty, even though she had been born south of the river.
She was younger then, much younger and some say beautiful beyond what any man could resist. That wasn’t even her name; no one remembers her real one. Khun-Taa became wet clay in her hands.
Sah-Ouna was a dark mystery for the men but a very visible catastrophe for the women of the Tribe and the othertribers. She insisted on separating the women, taking them from the men’s tents and throwing most of them with the animals. She had understood that a warrior would either listen to the one Goddess of the Sky or to the one woman who shared his tent.
Even now, I don’t believe that Enaka planted Sah-Ouna at the banks of the river to wait for Khun-Taa. Maybe she lived in her hut with one of our warriors who had gotten away from the Tribe, in love for many summers, until he died or she killed him. She then waited and planned her revenge. Maybe she had children or lost them to the Tribe’s warriors.
One way or another, Khun-Taa made her our First Witch when in reality, she was only an othertriber slave of the South who spoke our tongue.
Whenever I tried to bring up this forbidden Story to other warriors as I grew older, I kept getting the same answer.
“It makes no difference. Enaka uses strange means to send us her Voice.”
For as long as I lived, two things remained invincible against my blade: the frozen wind and the blind faith in the Witches.
But Sah-Ouna didn’t just boil roots and herbs in her cauldrons; she plotted to create a new Tribe. To do that, she had to change only one thing. The women. She separated them into three groups from a very young age.
Very few women, the most fearless who stood out early in the Sieve and endured the training, became warriors. Always Archers. They could not become Blades to fight in man-to-man combat. Women like Danaka in the Sieve. Like Elbia. No, not like Elbia, forgive me.
I stopped to take a breath, to honor the innocent dead. Only Da-Ren and I understood.
The women. The Archers. None of them could ever become Khun of the Tribe, but some of them could become Chiefs of a Pack of women Archers and command forty of their own. They had their own Packs and fought alongside the men but never among them. Their Chiefs took orders from the Leader of all the Archers, and in battle, they were equal and, in some cases, even better than the men.
Fewer still were those who were born with a gift and were chosen from a very young age to become Ouna-Mas. Those with the long heads, pitch-black eyes. They were taken as newborns by Sah-Ouna. They had the gift, they learned the Stories, and they could read the signs of the Unending Sky and Selene. They—and only they—also had the privilege of fornicating for pleasure. At night, they would take off their black-and-red robes and reward the best warriors. Witch would ride warrior like a horse. Warrior would fuck Witch like a dog.
The First Elder approached and whispered to me to stop this at once.
“This is revolting blasphemy,” he said.
“I didn’t write this. It is the words of the infidel. That’s why I read it. It will disgust the peasants and make their faith stronger,” I said, as my excuse.
Surprisingly, the First Elder let me continue. Nobody wanted me to stop. I could read their eyes.
The first, second, and third woman we had all ever lain with, after leaving the tent of the Uncarved, was one of Sah-Ouna’s young Witches. If an Uncarved was to lie with a different woman first, the hut would forget him and cast him out of the Pride of the Sieve.
Every Ouna-Ma left a deep carving, not on the left arm but on the right breast just beneath the nipple, after the first coupling, to show all that he had come of age. A few drops of blood for all of us to remember that even if we didn’t have the carvings of the weaker warriors, our fates would always belong to the Ouna-Mas. Although all were younger than Sah-Ouna, they were usually a few summers older than we were and never got with child. The roots they boiled and drank took care of that.
And then there were all the rest of the women, the endless herd of cows, thousands of them who were neither warriors nor Ouna-Mas. They had only one purpose, and that was to get with child and give birth. Always males, if the Sky allowed, or else they would end up eating whatever the pigs left over. They were always coupling with as many men as possible until their bellies were full. The warriors fucked them day and night. Only from behind on all fours. That was the order so they would conceive only boys. The men never spent an entire night with the women. Only a few breaths.
The other monks had long excused themselves and left the stable. It was time for prayer, and I imagined the prayers would be longer and filled with guilt that night. It was the third year after Da-Ren had arrived. I had spent a lot of time with his story, but less with the Holy Books. My faith had been challenged and found weak. Maybe because I knew the end of his story, or so I thought.
No one was permitted to own such common women for many moons. They could keep them for only a short while, as long as it took for the seed to quicken in their wombs. They succeeded, and the women left to give birth, or they failed, and had to leave and let some other Pack try. Most of them were used by many different tents each moon, and that was necessary. That way, no one concerned themselves with whose child belonged to whom. All and none of the children belonged to everyone, to the Tribe.
Rarely, some discovered the poison of love, even for a while, against every Truth of the Tribe. Or—another way to say it—someone’s cock rubbed itself better in a certain woman’s hole. These unfortunate men tried to keep a woman to themselves for one whole moon. Hardly ever for two. And I have seen the revenge of Sah-Ouna, half-rotted corpses of crucified women who had stayed more than three moons in a row with the same warrior without spreading for any other. Women in love. The Reghen and their two hundred eyes made sure to be everywhere and see these things.
That is the true story of the women of my Tribe, as I lived it.
It was deep in the night. The peasant
s around me sat with mouths gaping in awe. Maybe it was the barbarism of these faraway monsters. Maybe it was just the storytelling that someone had put on papyrus and read to them something beyond the Five Holy Books. Their own life stories were not that different.
There were only three fates that this world of ours had for the women of any tribe: the witch, the amazon, the cow.
Here in front of us was the crazy fortune-teller who lived in the last hut of their settlement. She read the leaves of the trees, the goat’s shoulder blades, and the flight of birds. She had once been very beautiful, and it is said that she had taken many men to her bed. The priest was terrified of her and she of him.
Here in front of me were the fighters of life: two well-built, tall women, sisters some said, who harnessed mules to the plow, and kept every man who wanted to possess them at a distance. All the rest? Whether they were young or old or with full bellies like cows, they all had that same nauseating smell that came with feeding animals and children all day.
The peasants left, and I opened the stable door. The dawning light fell on us and the barren island.
“Do you understand, Eusebius? Zeria had been condemned by my Tribe from the first moment she had laid eyes on me.”
I had understood something more. Men and women lived separately in Da-Ren’s Tribe. I knew nothing about horses or women; that much was true. I turned the question back to him.
“What do you know of women, Da-Ren?”
XXXII.
Stake and Lard
Eighteenth autumn. Uncarved—Wolf.
Freedom. Those few nights, before they carved me and after my return from Kar-Tioo, were the only ones I found the bitter repose of defeat and the peace of indifference inside me. I sought nothing. I was never going to be Khun, I didn’t know what I was going to be, and there was nothing I could do about that anymore. I had all but completed my training. My fears had been swept away. I didn’t have to stand out or even to obey in the field of training anymore.
I was naked, unsuspecting, and careless. The wind and the rain passed through me as if I too were made of the same. I became invincible and invisible. Chaka decided to speak to me again finally, to guide me once more now that his guidance meant nothing.
He gave me a warning. “The Reghen say that Enaka always remembers us when we surrender to frivolous joy.”
The pompous words of the Reghen.
“And what do you say, Chaka?” I asked.
“I say: ‘Don’t piss with trousers down and your ass facing the Forest.’ Because that’s when Darhul remembers you.”
But I wanted, if only for a while, to forget the rivalries, the trials, and to take a break from the countless moons since that first night when I had been dragged by the hair into the Sieve. They wouldn’t just let me enjoy it.
“Now you are Second,” Bera told me, “but that is not a good place. You are closer than anyone else to the First’s blade.”
I was making more frequent trips to the Forest, which had opened all its fall colors: the wild, the bloodstained, the desperately brilliant. It taunted me to stay. I always went alone in the morning, but I could not stay there for the days that it would take me to get to Kar-Tioo and back. I hadn’t seen her again.
A crazy thought stuck in my head during those aimless long walks: instead of Second, I would become First. The First who would cross the Forest. My Legend would say that I was the one who first found the secret path to the West, defying the Reekaal.
I wanted to learn everything I could about the Forest, even those age-old, sacred secrets that the wolves whispered to the Ouna-Mas. Every herb, every tree, every seed, and every path. I wanted to find who had hunted Rouba and me like wild boars. And yes, I pissed many times in there, just to prove Chaka wrong.
I waited patiently for the moment when the Ouna-Mas would order me to go back to Kar-Tioo and bring the precious belladonna. It was my only chance to fulfill my promise to Zeria.
Before that next moon came, the last of autumn, Malan became Khun. Witches, men, and stars conspired for that to happen before the end of winter, when the two of us would have to be carved. The weaver of the fates unraveled the events in one night. The Leader of all the Blades had died, and the Story that would be told was that a mosquito, huge as half the nail on his little finger, defeated him in a duel. Keral, the meanest and stupidest Chief of the Fifth Pack, asked Khun-Taa to make him the new Leader of all the Blades’ twenty Packs. But Khun-Taa told him that he would not decide yet.
It would be Khun-Taa’s last decision: to remain undecided.
Keral summoned his loyal Blades, attacked the sleeping Rods, and stabbed old Khun-Taa in the back in his own tent. For a few moments, he bragged about being the new Khun, defying our Truths and spitting upon the bloody body of Khun-Taa, who had remained standing for thirty winters on his throne and saddle.
The news slithered like a thousand venomous snakes from tent to tent and soon reached the Uncarved camp. It was a cloudless, windless night, and Selene’s heart shone half of half in the Sky, her shape a curved blade. Maybe Keral saw the blade shape and thought the stars favored him. Maybe the Witch had whispered her false prophecy to mislead him, cloud his mind.
Malan gathered all the younger Uncarved who could fight like men, about twelve boys, and the few Guides and gave us his first order:
“The moon has come when we become Leaders and guide our Tribe, out beyond the Endless Forest and into the Final Battle. Follow me tonight, and know glory tomorrow.”
What he really meant was that he would become Leader. But in those very first words, he had given us the vision, the mission, and the adventure. He had already said things that no one else dared say and shoved the scepter of insatiable imagination deep into our assholes. My first instinct was to run a hole through him that very instant. But it was futile. The Guides and the Uncarved youths already followed him with their blades and bows in hand.
I stood frozen, only my fingers twitching on the blade’s handle, next to the horses outside of the huts of the Uncarved. Two Uncarved Eagles, one spring younger than us, stayed next to me.
“What?” I asked. “Don’t you follow?”
One tried to mumble an excuse; the other looked away biting his lips. Their faces were identical, twin brothers, real brothers from same mother and father. I’d seen them many times. Handsome boys with broad shoulders, slim waists; brown-haired like myself.
I had to choose whether to follow or not, and that decision would determine how and when I would die.
“And you? Don’t you follow?” the one mumbled to me.
“Tell me your names again,” I said.
“I am Alian, that one is Olian,” said the one who asked me.
I am thinking, Alian.
As Zeria had said, the moment decided for me. We heard first the trampling hooves of the horses, and then we saw Keral’s warriors storming through the main gate of our camp. The Blades hacked two kids first, a couple of young Owls who were standing guard there. They came to murder Malan in the darkness.
“Are you coming?” I asked.
Alian had already grabbed his bow and quiver. Olian was stepping back to hide in the darkness.
The Blades wouldn’t stop at Malan. They were coming too fast, the irons shining high. They wouldn’t ask; they wouldn’t see. They would have to eliminate every Uncarved. One more breath of indecision and my flesh would be the lamb, their blade would be the spit.
I had already reached Malan, Chaka, and the rest and stood right next to them.
“Stay close to me,” I said to Alian.
“For glory and Enaka,” he answered.
It was a stroke of good luck that we were fighting against Blades, the worst archers of the Tribe. Selene’s light was weak and their arrows blind.
“Shoot now, the horses!” Chaka shouted.
I grabbed five arrows between the fingers of my left hand, and the others did the same. The shafts ripped the air, and we took down most of the horses and a few of their
riders. They outnumbered us, and they were on foot now, yelling and chasing after us. I took out both blades and charged upon them with the younger Uncarved and the Guides. I cut through horse, leg, man, and parried irons, again and again. I kept swinging, and heavy bodies fell around me. I fought next to Chaka, Bera, and Malan himself. A tall bearded man was ready to hack Malan, but I pushed my long blade into his chest.
It was a night soaked in black blood, a night that came close to being our last. There were a dozen of us left, surrounded by about twenty of Keral’s men.
“Stupid choice!” Alian said as our backs were facing each other to defend against the coming onslaught.
It was still possible. If I could take out three or four more. But I had boys around me and only two Guides, while Keral had sent strong warriors.
“We can’t win here,” Malan screamed in panic.
“Make for the gate. Now!” yelled Chaka. He had fought bravely to open a way out but his right arm was bleeding crippled and the short blade on his left hand was equally useless.
We were backtracking to get to the gate, whirling and swishing blades faster and higher. I killed seven men that night, fighting at the side of the next Khun. That in itself was Story enough to stuff down Enaka’s throat once I saw her. Seven traitor warriors of the Tribe. Traitors like me.
We had opened our way and had almost reached the gate when we heard the beating hooves, and saw the torches of dozens of riders charging toward us. We were trapped in a pincer. I turned and smiled a bitter smile at Alian. There was no breath left for words.
“Yeah, we made the stupid choice, kid,” were the words I never got to say.
But those riders were not foes. They were the Rods and the Archers sent by Sah-Ouna and Enaka to protect the One. The Goddess cared little for my deeds and my Stories, but I had chosen the right side. Keral’s men were hacked to pieces.
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