Drakon Omnibus

by C. A. Caskabel

“Oh, that one. What about it?”

  “It is a horse for a Khun. I know how much this pains you, but you must offer it to Khun-Malan as a gift. A small sacrifice, as he said.”

  You cannot imagine how much this pains me, Reghen.

  “Is that all, Reghen? You had me worried.”

  I turned to Leke, cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted for the Reghen to hear.

  “Hey, Leke, they want O’Ren. Anything we can do?” I turned my sorrow to a wide grin.

  “Nah, I don’t think there is any more left, Chief.”

  “Not even a rib?”

  Leke shook his head left and right, stiff-lipped. He kept a grim face, trying hard not to burst into wild laughter. I mimicked Leke’s grimace, as I looked back at the Reghen. He was watching us startled, then half-opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.

  “Bad luck, Reghen. No ribs left. I’ll have to find some other gift for the Khun. White pebbles or something,” I said.

  A few breaths of silence passed between us, before I walked away giggling. I was on my horse, a gray-white one, but he was not O’Ren.

  “The auguries. Don’t forget,” the Reghen shouted as I galloped away.

  I wanted to laugh, cry, and scream with rage at the same time. Despite all my titles, I was nothing but a trained dog for Khun-Malan to command. I slept next to a puddle of vomit and milk spirit and woke at dawn dazed and thirsty.

  “So, are we heading back to the Dasal? To fetch? Sah-Ouna’s orders?” Noki asked when the sun broke.

  “There is no time for that. Gather whatever slaves you can find in our camp.”

  “That won’t be good enough for them.”

  “That’s all they’ll get. We won’t find anyone in that Forest unless we venture north. And we have no time to make it there and back so fast. We almost killed ourselves doing it in nine days last time. I am not going back to any forest.”

  I have said my goodbyes to Zeria already.

  “You know, they just brought some fresh catch, from the North. We sent two Packs out there to escort the Trackers, and they captured some farmers. And women. They have them caged down by the Nineteenth.”

  “That’s—great!” I said.

  “Do you want to choose?” Noki asked.

  “No, I’ll let you.”

  He frowned, and the men standing close by, looked at him then at me, silently. What kind of brave Firstblade wouldn’t want to choose the women himself? I was losing them.

  “But better I come and take a look,” I said.

  We rode to the Nineteenth, and they lined up in front of me a sorry bunch of peasants, covered with rugs, mud, and filth. I chose a man with a swollen arm that would fester and rot very soon. A frail girl on her knees, coughing blood. They all had fair skin and hair, and some of them had the eyes Sah-Ouna wanted. At the end of the line, there was a girl, about twenty winters young, eyes green as the Forest, long brown hair, same as mine, tall, and strong. She could have been from the Garol tribe, the ones whose colors I shared. My men pulled her out of the line. I approached to try to see underneath her filth. She spat on me.

  “She’ll do,” one of the men said eagerly.

  Yes, she will.

  “You are going to the Wolfhowl,” the man of the Nineteenth said as he pushed her. He was looking with the eyes of a mauler, salivating close to her breasts, almost ready to jump on her.

  “No, she is not,” I stopped him. “This one comes with me.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Am I what? I am your Firstblade; that’s what I am.”

  Leke jumped in, grabbed him by the hides with both hands and knocked him down.

  “Salute the First, you dog! And get lost!”

  They tied the girl, hands in front, to my horse and she followed us on foot. I walked the horse as slowly as I could. Noki was riding next to me. He shook his head with a sour, dejected look.

  “You can’t save them all, Da-Ren. That’s what I say,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “And you can’t save them for long.”

  He was looking back at the girl; he had seen through me already.

  “Save her? I only want to fuck her, Noki,” I said and turned my neck to look at her. Her breasts were bouncing joyfully under her rugs, her long hair waving as she was following the horse.

  “You, of all men, should have guessed that,” I added.

  All I could do was hope that he would believe me. It wasn’t hard. I wasn’t lying, anyway. No patience for the weak in this campaign. Those were Malan’s words. If the men thought I was turning weak, everything would unravel fast.

  At night, they brought me the girl, her wrists still tied in front.

  Sometimes lying is easy. Because all you have to do is choose one of the truths and ignore the others. I wanted that girl the moment I saw her. I cut the ropes and showed her the horses resting at the closest pen.

  “You can go,” I said. “Leave.”

  She didn’t seem to understand a word. Or she had nowhere to go. She gave me half a smirk, then a smile. Not a smile of innocence, not a caring smile. A scornful smile of someone eager to play and fight. Naked flesh and fire. I grabbed her left wrist, and she slapped me with the back of her right hand. I hated slaves, whimpering, crying. I despised their fear. The only women who set me on fire were the naked Ouna-Mas with their purpose and their fury, their strength. She was no Ouna-Ma, but that woman had the fire of another northern tribe. And her eyes were the green of the Forest I had left behind. My hunger grew.

  She ate fast, stopping only to look at the hides that covered the tent’s entrance, she washed quickly outside my tent, and I gave her new clothes that she didn’t put on. She fell onto me with the rage and passion of a young she-wolf who smelled the coming of death and craved the last drops of life. I fought with her body for two nights, devoured it, pulled her hair hard each night I rode her like the bravest horse of the North. She kissed, she bit, she screamed victoriously, and she asked again and again.

  Ari kaa! Ari kaa! were her words every night. Those othertriber screams and moans aroused me more than anything; I was ravaging a demons’ tribe, my seed reaching the ends of the world, giving birth to sons of Darhul. My seed challenging the Goddess. On the third night, I asked the slaves and the men and learned that her words meant take me. But she wanted a lot more than to quench the fire in her loins. Take her with me. She was begging me not to leave her behind. She demanded it more and more as my last night in Sirol was approaching. I took her hard, she took me screaming, and in the end, I fell into a restless sleep, weary as if I had wrestled for a whole moon with a ravenous demon.

  Nightmares came to end my last sleep in Sirol. I dreamed of Zeria drowning in the Blackvein. She was not calling for help; she was descending into the cold water silently. I jumped up and shouted, my eyes trying to find the light. The green-eyed girl was on her knees next to me. Her fingers were caressing Zeria’s amulet, the silver double-headed ax hanging from my neck around a leather band. I pushed her hard, she punched and kicked, and I dragged her from the hair out of my tent. She cursed me as my men took her away, but I had decided her fate already.

  “Noki, take her to Sani; a gift from me.”

  If I took her with us, she would soon be under the knife of Sah-Ouna. Those eyes so green…

  “Sani, you said? Can I keep her?”

  “No, I said it’s a gift for him.”

  “Sani doesn’t have much use for her. I hope he doesn’t send her to the Wolfhowl,” he said.

  I never thought he would. Maybe I was wrong. The girl was pulled away, her hoarse voice cursing me in her own tongue, spitting, her bright eyes fixed on me.

  Everyone I left behind cursed me that night. Everyone I took with me cursed me forever later.

  It was the deepest black of the night, and for a few breaths, Sirol had fallen asleep before the great march of the morning. I took the saddlebag with the three white pebbles that the Reghen had g
iven me and made for the banks of the Blackvein. By the time I reached the water, the early sun was painting the eastern sky.

  The dawn we were born for, the great campaign, the trial that would mark my place in the Unending Sky, was upon us. For one moment, I asked myself what madness had possessed me to put my own name in the draw. What goddess, what demon inside me, was trying to keep me back at Sirol?

  Was this journey the fate of Da-Ren?

  Across, in the west, the oak trees of Kar-Tioo were still sleeping naked, dreaming of the spring to come. I spoke Zeria’s name one last time and hurled the three white stones into the black river to protect her soul from the demons.

  XLVIII.

  Those Who Didn’t Live in Even One Story

  Twentieth Spring. Firstblade

  Blackvein swallowed the white stones like an evil goddess craving sacrifice. The ripples on the dark surface were soon replaced by a fire-gold blade of light as the sun rose bigger than ever, calling me to the steppe, the land of my ancestors. Some of my ancestors.

  Half of the tribe, almost thirty thousand people, would not be coming with us. Only a few hundred of those left behind were warriors. A few youths who had not yet completed their training among countless women, children, and elderly slaves. These endless mobs of unfortunate souls who envied our fates sent us off with an unceasing ululating song. It spread across Sirol, the old women and the children, their backs and arms covered in dark felt, rattling their tongues like snakes. The macabre and wordless song was better suited to the nights of the funeral pyres, but the women knew what awaited them. The white-brown oxen started pulling the wagons, their bellows intermixing with the ululations. The days had been dry, and the dust from the wagon wheels and the horses soon covered all sight, dancing to the sound of the horns, cajoling each Pack to march north. Thousands of men oozed out of the belly of Sirol like freshly spilled guts and spread out at a torturously slow pace to the entire width of the northeast plains.

  Malan’s entourage and guards were riding first, and he had almost all the Ouna-Mas, the Reghen, and Rods with him. Flanking him were the Archers. Behind them was an endless mob of slaves, help, Blacksmiths, Hunters, Tanners, and Fishermen. Next came the Craftsmen, the bow makers, the wainwrights, the tent and the machine builders, a slow horde moving at the pace of the biggest oxen struggling to pull the siege towers.

  Women and children followed, more than fifteen thousand of them. When I saw how many were leaving, I realized that we might never come back. The Tribe had to travel as one, as our ancestors did. The men needed young women to plant the seed, so those who could survive and give birth had to join us. The Tribe needed strong children, whether they were babies wrapped and tied to the hunched backs of their mothers, twelve-wintered to be sieved, or sixteen-wintered ready to join the warriors after their springs of training. The strong had earned a journey of hope to the ends of the world.

  The Archers were almost ten thousand strong and surrounded us on all sides. I put half of my Blades in front, close to Malan, and the other half at the tail end of the hordes. Altogether, I commanded fewer than seven hundred, counted to the last. A hundred Ouna-Mas and Reghen came to weave their Stories and Truths every night. To keep the Tribe together, tight and unbreakable, one skin, one body, one soul, and one heart. Only ten of the hooded Truthsayers and the veiled Longskulls stayed behind in Sirol with the weak and the old, to sing them their last Story of hope. Thirty-five thousand were left behind, and the other half of us marched north—more than ten thousand warriors.

  I took a less favored path along with a few of my men, climbing the hill at the corner of the Iron Valley where Chaka the Guide had taken me long ago when I was still Uncarved. I could see everyone from up there, our hordes still pouring out of the Iron Valley in straight lines like the last blood of a wounded deer. The evening had come, and the fires of Sirol were flickering weaker and fewer than ever before. Leke pointed at those left behind.

  “Those won’t live in even one Story,” he said.

  “You don’t know the fates Enaka etches for each one. They might find their Story in Sirol,” I said. I had said the same to Sani before I rode out.

  “Let’s hope Enaka brings us our Story first,” said Rikan.

  “The Ouna-Mas have spoken to me. Khun-Malan has promised me that this will be a campaign of eternal glory. The Blades will be in front; we shall lead. He said so.”

  “Eternal glory? Is that what he said?” Leke shook his head and smirked with a snort of irony.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Glory—usually means that we’ll die quickly,” he said, looking toward the stars that were lighting the first spring sky of the campaign.

  Many of the men had more winters than me on their backs. They would follow me into battle, Forest, campaign, and anywhere else I’d go, but they had some wisdom of their own to share. I didn’t want to make more promises, and yet that’s all I kept doing.

  “We will earn the Story we deserve, I promise,” I told them.

  On the second morning, Sirol faded south, and I bore the weight of the Firstblade onto my back, one that I would never unload. Our horses took the route between the north wind and the eastern sunrise and didn’t change course for three moons.

  The elderly, slim Reghen who had given me the three white stones rode usually at the end of Malan’s entourage and close to the leading Blades. He often stayed behind and caught up with me.

  “I am to keep an eye on you and the Blades,” he told me.

  “That’s great! I will have many questions for a man of the Truth,” I said with a fake smile.

  We first passed the verdant valleys, where our trail was easy to travel and pleasant. We rode next to shady trees, shallow, crystal rivers, and wild-flower fields. The hordes were moving too slowly, though, and the old Reghen, was good company. The lands were deserted and I asked him.

  “We haven’t seen anyone but a few outposts of ours. Isn’t this strange? These valleys look fertile and—”

  “They are too close to Sirol, no one would survive here. No one did,” he answered.

  We would travel together for many moons, and we had to kill the time that wasn’t passing as quickly as our hearts and blades desired.

  “We are not marching; we are crawling,” he told me on the first summer morning.

  “Even this trail is torturous for the oxen. So many carts and wagons,” I said.

  “We need supplies. And arrows. At least a thousand arrows for each Archer. The wagons must come with us,” he said.

  I became better at counting the hundreds and the thousands with the Reghen. I tried to think as he was thinking and sharpen my mind to master the planning that a campaign needed. I didn’t have much else to do. I wore out my horse on the first moon by riding to the front and the back of the marching army, and I was bringing him all the news and my observations.

  “If you spread the men to ride one behind the other, from the first to the last, they’d cover about seventy-five thousand paces,” I said to him on one of the days we spent passing through a dry narrow gorge among the first mountains.

  “That’s not how we planned it. We haven’t gotten very far. We will waste many summers like this. I want you to keep an eye on what is slowing us down and come back and tell me,” he said.

  I kept sturdy mares to graze and rest at the beginning and at the end of the horde so I always had a fresh and fast horse to cover the distance. It gave me something to do. As far as I could tell, everything was slowing us down. Small rivers that had to be bridged, the carts piled with women and children, and the siege machines. A thousand arrows for each Archer. Ten thousand Archers. Fifty hide-covered wagons in front and the same number at the tail, all carrying arrows. And we would need many more arrows before the end of the campaign.

  “Everyone slows us down,” I said to the Reghen.

  “It is not everyone, Da-Ren,” the Reghen said. “One thing slows us down. The slowest. The slowest of all commands us, and we all move with its s
peed. Find it. We throw it out, and then we move to the next one.”

  After a few days, as I was looking at the Craftsmen struggling to pull one of the siege towers and the heavy catapults over rugged terrain that had been cut off by a river, I knew. All of us—riders, oxen, and even those on foot—had been stuck for days waiting for a dozen machines to pass.

  “I will tell Khun-Malan to send back those towers,” said the Reghen.

  “The Craftsmen say that we won’t be able to conquer the cities of the South. They have enormous walls, rising high—”

  “That is true, but they’ll have to build those monsters there, when we see the walls. The ones they carry now will never make it there unless we all die waiting for them.”

  “They don’t want to part with them,” I said.

  “No one wants to part with much of anything here. Whatever they carry and command is their strength and the meat that we ration to them. You get your best Blades and go tell the Craftsmen to return with the siege towers to Sirol. And make sure they don’t.”

  I didn’t understand, but I did as the Reghen said.

  When I ordered the Craftsmen to turn back, they changed their attitude. No one wanted to return to Sirol.

  “We will dismantle them now and rebuild them when the Khun needs them. I am not sending my men back,” said their Leader, a man with long black whiskers and sparkling, smart eyes.

  The machines became wood for all purposes—for bridges, for wagons and tents, and for the Chiefs to roast their lambs. We would build them again, many times, before the end of the campaign.

  “The machines can be replaced. The Craftsmen are very important,” the Reghen told me.

  “What do you mean? Are they more important than the Blades?”

  He laughed.

  “More important than the Archers even,” he answered, making a large circle with his hands to include every direction the Archers had taken.

  “Even more important than the Ouna-Mas?” I asked.

  He squinted, either from the glaring sun or from curiosity.

  “You are too smart for a Firstblade. No good will come of it. The Blades are meant to hack, not to think.”