I would learn quickly that having my own tent didn’t stop anyone from coming in and waking me whenever they chose to. The first man—I didn’t even know his name—rushed in way past midnight when the rooster usually crows for a second time. Before he shook me awake, the blow horn was already sounding the alarm, and I immediately rose to my feet.
“Chief! Gather everyone!” the dark shadow of a man shouted at my face. A breath of worms and bile.
I crawled out of the tent flaps as fast as I could.
Even the Reghen was shouting and running. He was calling my name: “Chief Da-Ren! Chief Da-Ren. Hurry!”
Chief Da-Ren.
Ogan was next to me and armed for battle. Brave boy, born only to die.
“The Blackvein horn!”
“On your feet!”
Everyone was giving a different order.
Men with torches were gathering around me on foot. They had woken up but hadn’t mounted their horses.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Did you lose a mare?” I even tried to smile at my stupid joke.
“Down at the Blackvein. They are invading. Ride now and stop them,” said the Reghen. “I sent messengers to wake up everyone.”
He pointed toward the south at the banks of the river.
“Then…let’s go! Everyone on their horses!” I shouted.
“You haven’t gotten such orders,” said a much older man with a long beard and a half-shaven head.
“Who are you?”
“Sani, two carvings,” he replied.
He had only two. He could make Chief of the Pack. If it wasn’t for me.
There was no Leader above me to give me orders.
“We ride now! Bring the oil and the pine’s blood for the arrows,” I said, louder this time, looking straight at him. I was already on my horse.
The First Pack was ten tents altogether. One for me, one for the Reghen, and eight for the rest. The help and women were farther away. I could see the Second to the west. The two of us were camped closest to the river. The Reghen was shouting for us to make haste. I led the way. The Second had mounted but stood still. My men followed me with their horses and their curses. Not for long.
“To the hill!” shouted a rider in the dark, and they all turned left. I turned to follow them, screaming madly.
“Da-Ren, Chief of the Pack, you’re following last in battle,” Enaka whispered above my head.
We made it to the top of a grassy hill above the river.
“Who ordered that?” I shouted again.
“I did,” said Sani.
Before I got a chance to strike him, the Reghen was next to me.
“Good! From here, we can see everything,” he said. “Let’s see how many they are.”
“I don’t see anything,” I said.
I could barely see the river; I guessed where it was because the fires of our camp snaked around its north bank. I thought I could see some shadows by the fires down there, but not much. If only there were some light.
“There you see those men, the rafts,” the Reghen said.
My sight was improving gradually, adjusting. A couple of torches.
But there are very few of them.
“Doesn’t look like an invasion to me,” I said.
“Light the arrows,” ordered Sani.
Under the flight of our flaming arrows I saw half a dozen rafts approaching from the south coast of the Blackvein. More and more cries tore through the clear winter night air.
“We must burn the bridge. Stop them. They are invading,” said Sani. “Fire, fire!” he was shouting.
“No,” I countered. “Wait!”
“No time. Now!” he said again.
Six rafts invading Sirol of the thirty thousand Archers?
“I am not sure. Those men, to the east, running for the river? Are they Blades?”
“Who cares? Burn the bridge,” Sani screamed.
He was no leader. He had panicked, I could see it.
I could count about twenty men running from our side of Blackvein toward the rafts. They looked unarmed.
“They are on foot,” I said.
They couldn’t be ours. When they reached the othertribers there were no screams of fighting.
“No, I think they are…prisoners,” the Reghen said. “We gather them next to the Craftsmen camp.”
I think your prisoners are escaping, Reghen.
“The kid doesn’t know what to do,” Sani cried to the Reghen. “By Enaka, we need to burn the bridge now.”
I wasn’t even looking at him anymore. I was watching below.
The raiders had overtaken the few of the Tribe’s men who were guarding the bridge. But they were not invading. They were helping the prisoners board the rafts. And they carried lit torches.
They are trying to set the bridge on fire. They are too few.
“Save the bridge!” I screamed.
“They came to take their prisoners,” the Reghen mumbled.
“Everyone ride for the bridge!” I shouted.
“If we lose the bridge, they will crucify us,” said the Reghen.
I raised my Uncarved arm and motioned for my men to follow me. I started cantering downhill as fast as it was safe for the horse, to get to the riverbank. I stopped many breaths later. Ogan was next to me, but no one else. They all remained behind.
I turned and yelled, “What in the Demon?” I had to go back again and gather them.
“What are you doing?” Leke asked me.
“Da-Ren, protect the bridge!” shouted the Reghen.
“We wait for the Archers,” said Sani, next to Leke.
My left hand grabbed the hilt, and I bit my lip with my upper teeth until I bled. These men I had been given were no warriors. More screams were coming from the side of the bridge. We couldn’t see who they were, but we could hear. They were our guards who were falling.
The Reghen was pushing me with orders: “Save the bridge. We mustn’t lose it. Attack now.”
But my men were not my men yet. They weren’t listening.
“We wait for the Archers,” said Sani. “Always, everywhere.”
“We never go first,” said a man next to him.
I turned my head to meet their faces. Fear or mistrust? I didn’t care much about any bridge. But it was right there that I knew that either I tamed these men or I would be dead in a few nights. The chilling breeze woke me. I had heard enough. The Archers were nowhere in sight. Their camp was at the other end of Sirol. It would be more likely that the orphans or the Tanners next to us would come before the Archers.
A few of my men were turning back up the hill.
I didn’t have a cool head anymore, only rage that I had ended up there. I needed to kill someone. The othertribers. Sani. Anybody.
“Men of the First. Ride forward with me!” I shouted from the bottom of my guts. “Now, by Enaka. Last one gets five!”
Five carvings. I would send him to the Guides. He would never again see a woman or fresh meat. They understood that order.
About forty men followed me. No one overtook me. We tried to gallop wherever the slope flattened. Close to the riverbank, the terrain changed and became treacherous. Blind dark puddles and rocks spread in front of me. I pulled the horse back to stop before we both went tumbling down.
“Everyone dismount; on foot, we run!” I yelled.
Behind me, I heard the voices of my men raging.
“On foot, he says!”
“A crazy fuck of a Chief we got.”
Othertribers and prisoners were setting the bridge on fire.
“You! Bring water. Lead ’em, Sani,” I said to the men on my left, pointing with the blades in my hand. “Rest, follow me,” I said to the men on my right.
I could hear more than I could see. I had to trust the blade more than the bow. Our blades came out to cut the heads and bodies of the othertribers; my long iron hit first to cut through the bewilderment and the objections of my men.
We took back the bri
dge. Blow by blow. Man by man. The prisoners who were running to escape were unarmed. I struck down three. Now, yes. This was what I needed. Life in their death. I wiped out defeat and rage. This was even better than a Redveil moaning on all fours. The screaming guts spilling out of them. Enaka lit more stars to guide our way. I could see three rafts loaded with prisoners heading back south. I leaped into the water. The stars were becoming brighter.
“Burn the rafts! Stop them!” I yelled.
“He’s going to finish us all tonight,” I heard someone saying behind me.
“No, Da-Ren. Back!” shouted Leke.
“No, forward!” I yelled again with the frozen water of the Blackvein up to my knees.
Ogan stood confused for a breath but then he charged first. He was even farther in than I was, and was hacking the othertribers that were trying to reach the rafts. With a roaring smile, he showed me three fingers after he killed his third man.
Few followed me. Most stayed behind and were already retreating.
I would kill Leke, the coward, as soon as this raid was over. But Leke was still standing there, shouting at me to get back. I could see around me clearly now. Enaka lit even more stars, so many that the night brightened in splendor.
Damn, these are no stars.
Hundreds of torched arrow shafts were coming toward us from the direction of the camp.
“Back, Chief, run!” yelled Leke.
I finally realized.
“Will they shoot?”
“They are shooting.”
“Everyone, back now. Now. Now!” I shouted with every bit of strength I had inside of me. We were far from our horses. We were running on foot over the rocks and the mud.
The damned Reghen. I had sent my men to doom.
The flaming arrows of the Tribe’s Archers were descending over our heads. Many arrows, like blind shooting stars from above. Some whistled above me, but I was one of the last. The cowards and those who had disobeyed me were out of danger. They hadn’t even gone into the water.
As I was running out of the muddy water, I looked behind me. The raiders’ rafts were ablaze in the river. To the left of them, the bridge stood strong. I had saved it, and the last of my men were retreating rapidly.
I turned to shout to them.
“Quick. They’re shooting at us. Run!”
We were running uphill to get away from danger.
But who could outrun the Tribe’s Archers?
“Oh, demons, Ogan. No!”
The merciless rain of arrows. Our arrows.
The first arrow found him on the arm. He kept moving, aghast. More arrows hit him. Two more of my men behind him. Why were they running so slowly? Their screaming agony as they were dying, one covered in flames, was the only answer I’d get.
I had killed the othertribers. I had killed my own men.
I kept running toward our torches. The Archers. I passed all of my men. They were spitting curses behind me. Some cursed the Archers. The rest cursed me.
“You snake! What are you doing?” I grabbed the Archer with the black ribbon, their Chief, with one hand and pulled him down from his horse.
His back hit the ground hard. He got up slowly and tried to attack me.
Many hands held us back.
“You didn’t wait for us. I didn’t wait for you either,” he yelled.
“Those men you killed.”
“They shouldn’t be there. It’s not for the Blades to tell me what to do,” he said with a brazen look.
To him, I was no different from a rat.
I was looking at his left cheek. I pretended to calm down with his words. I lowered my head and nodded. I bit my lip and humbled myself. To show him that I understood. That I accepted. As soon as they made the mistake of letting me go, I surged toward him like a rabid mauler. I punched him hard, my knuckles crashing on his cheek. I didn’t see him getting up again. The Archers attacked us. Punches were flying in every direction. One of the Archers landed a full one on my nose. Sani and Leke were next to me, fighting on my side. They dragged me away to safety.
“We’re not finished,” the Reghen said when things cooled down and the Blades separated from the Archers.
We had to attack again. That was the worst. I didn’t have any desire left in me to do anything. I was tired of my own orders already. But now it was the turn of the Blades. After the Archers. We went back down the hill, this time to hunt and slaughter the wounded othertribers.
Dawn broke to carve the sky and the river with the same shade of red. Blood darkened the Blackvein and soaked our boots. The blood of the othertribers and the three men of the First Pack. My pack.
We kept going, mad with rage and exhaustion, until midday. We had to burn the bodies and stand guard as the Craftsmen fortified the bridge. The Archers and two other Packs of Blades, those who had never followed my orders, went beyond the river to hunt down anyone who tried to get away.
“Did you listen to that young fool? ‘The last one gets five,’ he said,” mumbled someone to my left. He was one of the two who were carrying the corpse of a stout man. The dead man had legs crooked from riding all his short life, and more than ten arrow holes in him. Exactly three carvings.
I went back to the camp followed by my men.
“What crazy kid attacks before the Archers? And dismounts?” one of them was murmuring. I had been listening to that same voice all day. It was the one from the night before. He wouldn’t stop.
“Who is he?” I asked Leke.
“Mekor? Be careful with him. He was pledged to the previous Chief. And he favored Keral.”
“We will talk of this tonight after the pyre,” I said. “Rest now, and tend to your wounds.”
I had a scratch on my thigh from one of our own arrows. I was glad of it. The arrow that had found me had reminded me of Zeria. By now, she had become a mythical wind-ghost of the Forest. A dream that vanished as fast as it had come. She was now a thousand worlds away. Even the camp of the Uncarved, just a little farther to the north, seemed like another world—still close but completely unreachable. It had taken only one night for my old world to crumble to pieces, a lost dream chopped to bits by eighty blades.
Sani came by and gripped my forearm.
“You did the right thing, Chief,” he said.
He gave me a slice of dried horsemeat.
He saw my surprise. I didn’t feel proud. I wasn’t eating.
“What happened here today, Reghen?” I asked. “Is this how it will be every night?”
“No, you were unlucky. And lucky in some way. Seems you got the trust of some men here.”
“Some; not all of them. But what happened down there? I’ve never heard of othertribers raiding from the south.”
“Last Harvest Moon, the Archers captured a General of the South beneath the river. He was of noble birth, they say, a nephew of the Emperor himself.”
“What’s a nephew?”
“Yes, anyway, someone important. We were holding him prisoner. Seems like he led an uprising. One of his men probably escaped before the rest and informed the Southerners, who came in for a rescue raid. He was too important.”
“And if more of them come?”
“The othertribers had become very daring lately with Khun-Taa, especially the Southerners. Khun-Malan will change all that.”
Mekor spoke again behind me as we watched the fire take our three comrades. “He lost three men on his first night. Within Sirol! Have you ever seen such a useless shit?”
The Reghen was next to me and held my arm so that I wouldn’t make a move.
“It is difficult to be Chief, Da-Ren. Not to know what is the right thing to do. Should you have attacked first? Should you have waited?” he said.
“We should have attacked,” I said.
“Yes. We should have. If we had lost the bridge, that would have been a disgrace and a disaster. A brave and wise Chief would have attacked. You made the right decision.”
His words surprised me. I hadn’t made a
mistake.
It was a small pyre, barely worthy of warriors. The tongues of the flames engulfed the men who had obeyed me. The fast-talking Ogan would never say another word. He had been a brave kid. His Story was honorable. Short.
“That is why we Reghen always favored leaders like Malan. Like you. Young. Uncarved.”
“What, why?” I asked, a bit dazed, my mind still on Ogan.
“Because you are not rotten. Old men rot. Out of jealousy, envy, and defeat. They creep. The young never stop. They haven’t yet learned fear. The Truths and the Legends are fresh in their minds. They were raised that way, and they rush in without the weight of an old man’s fears. We want new blood. The Tribe moves forward. It must not rot. Khun-Malan leads.”
“Khun-Malan leads,” I repeated.
It was the favored hail of the day around Sirol. Khun-Malan led, and I had to save his bridge.
The Reghen had never joined the battle; he stayed at the summit of the hill the previous night. That was the main reason I wanted his opinion. Not because he was a Reghen. Because he had chosen the best view, he had seen everything without anyone blocking his sight.
I said to him, “I had to attack. And the Archers should have waited.”
The Reghen signaled goodbye.
“I leave you now. You don’t need me anymore. So many things happened in one day, and you learned so much, things that I thought would take many moons to learn.”
He had mounted his horse, and he spoke to me for the last time.
“The Archers shouldn’t have waited. They, too, did the right thing. Just as you did.”
Indeed. He had nothing else to teach me.
“A Chief of the Blades. Hear that!” Malan had said a couple of nights ago.
The Blades were the quickest way for Malan to send me to Enaka in the Unending Sky. Their Leader, the one who had charge over all eighteen Packs, died a moon ago. The Chief of the First Pack, the one I replaced, had fallen recently while backing the usurper, Keral. For all I knew, I could have been the one who killed him that fateful night.
I had thirty-five men left. I gathered them all around the fire.
“Speak.”
Ask, and you shall receive. I asked for rage and pain and received exactly that. Their voices overlapped, fast, angry, and loud.
Drakon Omnibus Page 40