“Khun-Malan promised that we would cross the Forest,” said the Reghen.
Sah-Ouna motioned for the two Rods to approach. They brought trays heavy with slabs of raw meat.
“Roast meat. Want some?” Malan asked me.
Not horse or rats. Fat beef. Each of us grabbed a small spit, passed it through a thick piece of meat and held it over the fire. The charcoal gave a mouthwatering smell to the meat, so different that, for a while, I completely forgot what we were talking about. Every bite I chewed melted in my mouth and melted my fear. The beef juices were dripping from my jaw, talking with the crackling fire. They reassured me that somehow we would make it, despite the rage of the Drakons of the North. Some of us, anyway. Meat and wine soothed the minds of the men, and with their bellies full and warm, they talked without restraint.
“You, Tracker,” ordered Malan. “What news of your missions to the Forest?”
The skinny young man jerked his head back twice, trying to swallow a large piece of meat quickly before speaking. He probably knew that he would be thrown out after saying what he had to say.
“We sent many scouts there into the white darkness. An evil demon wanders among the trees. In the beginning, my men went in but didn’t return. We sent more, and they found the first lot, or whatever was left of them, pierced with arrows.”
He showed us one of the arrows that had struck his men.
“So they are men, not monsters,” said the older Reghen.
“Dasal?” asked Druug.
I looked at everyone around me, but my gut told me to play deaf and dumb at this great council. No one spoke of the obvious. Those were our arrows. Who had shot them? Were they the sons of the Ouna-Mas, as Zeria had told me, or our own Archers? Or was he just a scared Tracker spewing lies? I waited for the other Chief of the Blades, but he didn’t dare speak. As the silence continued, I reluctantly voiced my thoughts.
“The Dasal have small bows,” I answered. “And their arrows don’t have such iron heads.”
“How do you know?” asked Malan.
“They don’t have arrows like that.”
The Tracker spoke again. “No, I did not say they were Dasal. The ones who survived spoke of demons of the night. They heard their evil screams, and it froze their blood. Those creatures, they’re not men like us, they laugh and scream at the same time. Otherworldly monsters, like that over there,” said the Tracker, pointing behind me at the long, horned humanlike skulls.
“So they have horns now, do they?” teased Druug.
“Pheasants again,” Malan mouthed with his lips, looking straight at me with a disappointed chuckle.
Malan sat down next to us, as if the foolishness had fallen heavy upon him.
The old and wise Reghen started speaking. “It takes only one day for you to take the throne, Khun, but for thousands of moons, the Forest has remained untrodden.” He had a hundred heads, two hundred eyes and ears. He counted the livestock, and he could smell the hunger of the men and the footsteps of the Forest. It was his way of telling the Khun that he was young and this was not a laughing matter. A mistake.
Sah-Ouna motioned to the Tracker to continue.
“Demons, big as bears and with teeth like sabers, are the Reekaal. The trees come alive as their allies.”
The fear filled his mind, and the Tracker started telling us about the horrid names his men had given the trees. He spoke of the “Embrace of the Reekaal,” the “Hundred Skeleton Hands,” the “Sword in the Heart of the Sky,” and the “Hair of the Old Crone Witch.”
Malan was no longer laughing.
“No one shall ever speak such nonsense, or else I will gather all the Trackers to the middle of Wolfhowl and let the maulers loose.”
The men sat frozen as if the winter chill had slid inside and thrown an armor of silence over everyone. Only one dared to break it.
“Enough with all this. You will follow me, and we shall cross the Forest, now,” said Malan. Large, wide eyes looked at him. “Now, in the heart of winter.”
The men were speechless and the Khun’s words sounded wrong in my ears. He had promised to cross the Forest, but not now, when Enaka’s Sun was weaker than ever.
“It can’t be done,” said Druug the Archer.
Malan’s slap found him on the ear, the one that wouldn’t listen to the commands. Druug was twice our age, but he wouldn’t dare challenge the One favored by Sah-Ouna and Enaka. The One surrounded by Rods in this tent.
“You can stay here if you’re afraid. We don’t have enough food to last for thirty thousand men till next winter. We will cross the Forest now. I will go in front,” Malan said.
We also had forty thousand women, children, and slaves in Sirol. And another ten thousand in the outposts of the east and the north and a few south of the river.
Four gleaming eyes appeared from the darkest corners of the tent, and two black dogs jumped next to Malan. I hadn’t seen them until then as if they had been buried beneath his red throne and just sprouted out of it. A Rod threw each a piece of meat. I had little left on my spit and was still hungry.
Sah-Ouna spoke for the first time, her eyes fixed on the Tracker. “With the air, not with carts and horses. That is how Stories travel. They cannot be caught, and no arrow can stop them.” She spat her disgust at the feet of the Tracker. “You spoke loathsome tales for weak men. As soon as the Forest embraces your men, they lose their hearts.”
“Have you ever gone into the Forest?” I asked the Tracker.
I had interrupted Sah-Ouna.
The Tracker nodded quickly, his eyes darting once to Sah-Ouna and back to me. He was telling the truth. He had been in there. He had seen something. I had had the same look on my face a winter ago when the Forest had swallowed me whole and alive for the first time. Only one winter ago I was First of the Uncarved, the hero of the Wolfhowl. It felt like so much longer.
“Say what you saw,” Malan commanded.
The Tracker, as if he had kept the worst for last, opened his mouth again: “Khun-Taa sent us in there the last two summers. Both times we returned before the winter began. I never made it to the other side. The Forest never ends. There is nothing at the end of it except the foot of a vast mountain chain, frozen and impossible to climb. When I found a pass to reach the top of the mountains, all I found was again—”
They rise again. Mountains. Forests.
“…mountains higher. Forests larger,” murmured the Tracker.
Rouba had told me the same, long ago. I nodded with eyes closed to the last words of the Tracker.
“What do you think, Da-Ren? Do you agree with this?” Malan asked me. “You have gone many times.”
“I have gone, but a few times only. I am not afraid of the Forest like the others. We will have to stay on the southern side. The north, where the Dasal live, is sunless, and the ghosts do not melt in that area.”
“And how do these Dasal live there?” asked Malan.
“No, we have to go everywhere, even farther north to bypass—” the Tracker cut in.
I interrupted before he spread the idea any further.
“The Blackvein is frozen, hard as a rock all the way to the south. If you go north, the wind will become a breath of death and will burn our lungs. Khun, I will go with a few Blades ahead to the northern Forest, to find out what I can from the Dasal. You stay south where the cold is bearable and the horses can pass. I will meet up with you soon.”
“The young Chief is right,” said the Reghen. “The horses cannot go north.”
Sah-Ouna nodded in agreement.
I imagined myself run through with a stake after every lie which came out of my mouth. I wanted all those men far away from Zeria. I was a despicable traitor, and it had happened so fast again.
“We will start in two days. Everyone must be ready,” Malan said.
Malan motioned for me to stay.
The others left, even Sah-Ouna.
“Talk,” said Malan.
“We should wait,” I said.
“We cannot. I want to find the prophecies before the Great Feast of Spring. I will not wait for them to find me.”
We were not alone. Sah-Ouna’s entourage had stayed behind in the tent to my right, resting leisurely on the sheepskins. The three Ouna-Mas had not followed her. Their tongues and their legs were the armor that would wrap around Malan.
The Khun motioned me to join them.
To the armor of their young skin.
How much night had passed in this tent? My men had probably left their last frozen breaths outside by now. I grabbed the last spit with meat on it and exited through the draped entrance. I raced down the hill to reclaim them from the unforgiving night freeze. They had been standing all night outside in the snow without a fire.
“Eat up well because soon we will be hungry again. Come dawn, we ride for the Forest,” I said as I passed the pieces of roast beef to them.
A Rod followed me, yelling for me to give back the spit that I had taken.
Glory to you, Malan, for exiling me to the Blades.
Eternal praise to you, my Khun, for not letting me fall to the lowly fate of a Rod, chasing after spits.
I threw the piece of iron which was burning cold in my hand between his legs and mounted my mare. She was weak and too old to last the winter; before spring I would need a new ride.
None of the men I had with me praised Khun-Malan. No one had anything good to say about him. Only the hanging horsetails and the size of his tent impressed them. But I knew that if they were ever to set foot inside the tent, if they saw the wood-burning fire, the horned skulls, and felt the warm legs of the Ouna-Mas wrapping around their bodies, they would fall to their knees at Malan’s service and offer their hearts to him.
They followed me with admiration because they believed that I was one of Malan’s men, his trusted servant and a faithful dog. One of those dogs he shared his meat with. “What irony!” I would say much later when I learned that word. But even that did not prevent them from whispering among themselves on the road back.
“Where did he say we were going? Did he really say it? Into the Forest?”
“We are doomed.”
“No one ever returns from there.”
“You’ll see; they will send only us Blades. No Archers will come with us.”
That was all I heard behind me as we were trotting the horses back to the Blades camp. I said nothing. I waited for the dawn, for the sun which came out so rarely, to sweeten the moment and breathe some hope down their chests. I gathered all thirty-three of them together and said, “I’m going into the Forest. Khun-Malan will go, too. And if, by Enaka, you want to be called men and warriors, you will follow. Behind me.”
Fearless the Leader rushes toward the demons first.
That is the only true armor for a warrior.
XLI.
Rowan
Eighteenth winter. Chief of the First.
We set off two dawns later. For the Tribe to cross the Forest for the first time. Witches, Truthsayers, warriors and the Khun. To battle our monsters. With Enaka and Sah-Ouna at our sides.
More than a thousand warriors and slaves and a handful of Reghen and Ouna-Mas followed Malan into the Forest. I had managed to convince him to let me lead a separate mission. I took the First Pack and galloped north. We rode parallel to the Forest so that we could enter much later.
“Why do we go north, all alone, Chief?”
Those who asked questions were to be trusted more, those who didn’t, hated me beyond words for leading them there.
“So we can have all that we hunt to ourselves,” I said smiling.
But I had faith. If they saw no terror in my eye, the men would hold. I didn’t lose any men; I only won their respect in the Forest. There, where all others trembled, I was walking surefooted. I knew the paths, the trees, and where to stop to make camp.
“By Selene, you are truly the son of Er-Ren,” said Leke. The rest agreed with silent nods.
I had answers to their questions, even the lesser ones. I knew why some oaks still had their leaves in winter and others did not. To the men, I was a wizard in there. Nothing less. I did remember some of the paths, tried to guess the rest, and I followed my instinct to get as close as possible to Kar-Tioo. Close enough for the Dasal to spot us.
The only thing I didn’t know was what I would do when we made it there—when my fearful men would come face to face with the Dasal, the ones they believed to be servants of the Demon. Was I so strong a wizard to spread my arms and separate the world into two to protect one from slaughtering the other? I could just about manage that with the First Pack. But if Malan with his thousand warriors ever came north, there would be no Dasal left alive—man or woman.
On the fourth day, I saw the footmarks of the Dasal and heard the light-footed shadows among the trees.
“Someone is following us,” said Sani.
We were not far now, perhaps only one or even half a day’s road.
“We make camp here, and I’ll go to them alone,” I said to Sani.
“What? No. Why?” he replied.
“If they see us all charging in, they will panic. They’ll fight or run away, and I don’t want any of that in here. They rule trees and animals,” I said.
“It’s madness to go in alone,” said Sani.
“We will come too,” said Leke.
I took only two men with me, Leke and Temin, who was young and didn’t ask much, and moved north.
I knew we were close to the camp, I’d seen the Dasal’s shadows watching us from a distance, I’d walked through the same rivulets and glades with Zeria a few moons ago.
“Are we far away?” asked Leke. “We shouldn’t venture far from the Pack.”
“We are here,” I said, that same afternoon when I smelled the fires of the Dasal. “Take your blades and bows out, drop them here together, and make a fire.”
“Is this wise?”
“No. But it is how it must be done.”
I started shouting Veker’s name, eager to find the Dasal before nightfall. Not much later I saw him coming out of the woods, six men following him.
“I told you never to come here again,” he said.
I had to find a good excuse. The one about herbs, crazygrass, and exchanges made no sense in the ice of winter.
“If I didn’t… I must talk to you, Veker. Alone.”
They led us back to their settlement. I spoke with Veker in his hut and told him the truth. Or at least a bit of the truth.
“A thousand men have entered the Forest. I kept them away from here but you must help me. Our Tribe is looking for the road toward the West. You have to show me. Better for me to find it than the others.”
“There are many roads. If you go way south or far, far north. Not here. That is why we chose to live here.”
“How far south?”
“Before your river and through the mountains. It’s a treacherous footpath.”
“North?”
“Very far. You’ll never get there now, but—”
“But what?”
“Why do you want to go to the West? The Forest protects you.”
“From what?”
“From them—the other side.”
“Have you seen…them?”
“Yes, I have seen them. The Western Empire. Their damn One God. The Empire is invincible. Only the Forest could stop it. That was why my ancestors hid here, to be free.”
“You came from there?”
“We…” he hesitated. “What do you want here, Da-Ren?”
“Can you lead us?”
“The Dasal live by an oath, and that is to never go back to the West. I would come with you—only dead. Now that your Tribe made it in here, we cannot go east or south either.”
“I can force you.”
“I told you before, if you step outside of the Forest to the West, the Empire will raze you. I have seen both of you in battle.”
“You will come with me.”
“No. Lea
ve now. Before spring, the paths are impossible to cross. I wouldn’t even try.”
“I’ll leave, but I’ll take Zeria with me.”
“Are you mad? It’s only three of you. I had told you never to come back. I make one sign and your men are dead. This is my last word.”
“I have to see her.”
“The only reason you are still alive is because you freed me that night from the cage.”
I never freed him.
“I never freed you. I saved your daughter but not you.”
“A hooded man unlocked the cage. He spoke your name. And his voice was young—”
Made sense. That was how he would do it. Not that it mattered anymore.
“Like mine. And he wore the same clothes.”
“Who was he?”
I swallowed my anger in two breaths and managed to lie. “Someone I sent. Now I must see Zeria.”
“I won’t bring her. Know that Zeria is already—”
I was ready to smack his head against the cut stump he was sitting on and take him with me, tied up if necessary. Instead I pounced on him and knocked him down with a punch. I grabbed his knife and held it close to his throat.
“I am losing my head, Veker. I can’t help you if you don’t do what I say. Call your men. Have them bring Zeria here.”
Veker was on the ground, and I was on top of him. His eyes were fixed on mine as he shouted. Immediately two men came in, holding my blades. I was not scared of them. They looked at each other and to Veker, uncertain of what to do.
Veker shouted something to them, I only grasped Zeria’s name and the men walked out.
I gave him back his knife and he stared at me, wide-eyed. I was at his mercy.
“The rest of my men are close by,” I said. “Kill me and you all die. I am the only one who can save your people.”
He ran out of the hut, leaving me there unarmed. A few breaths later he came back in with Zeria. The corners of my mouth painted the faintest smile. A stream of frozen wind entered the hut with her. I desperately searched for a warm smile.
“Da-Ren, come with me, I beg you,” she said.
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