“Don’t kill everyone. You’ll gather all the strong men for slaves and send them chained to the camel caravans that travel to the East. Everyone else goes to the blade.”
I had to take Zeria’s amulet off and hide it away so that it wouldn’t stare back at me.
“These Reghen snakes—they are good with orders, but no one is willing to put their hands in the shit,” Noki said.
We continued to eat shit for yet another moon leading Malan’s glorious campaign. First, we gathered all the strong men and older boys. We had to finish off the old men and the crones who were not fit for the slave market, and no one could stand hearing their whining or unintelligible curses anymore. The scum of the Blades were raping the women in the middle of the raid, fearing that they wouldn’t get their fair share. And they were right. This was an old and favorite habit of the Blades. I forbade it. The only thing I could see in the eyes of the screaming mothers, the only thing I heard, was Zeria.
“Take as many women as you want, but after we’re done with everything else,” I said to everyone. “I don’t want to see any man with both hands on a woman and no hand on his blade.”
It was the one rule I enforced that nobody liked.
We would keep only a few women, the youngest and strongest, a handful for us and many for the slave markets. But even the ones we kept were already ghosts, with fading eyes and frail limbs. They were not like the young female slaves of the North, those strong mares with the curved rumps. Those endured; they wanted men, young and hungry, to take them. These southern peasant women, sweet-faced and soft-skinned, could barely stay alive for two moons. Some of the youngest ones survived, accepting their fates, but most of the grieving mothers tried to end their own lives.
And so it came that the words of the Ouna-Mas started to hold some truth. The othertribers fell dead in the afternoon, and by nightfall, I could hear them dancing in my mind and my stomach. We had resurrected the Deadwalkers ourselves, inside of us.
One day, I ignored orders. I separated the men and women for the slave caravan, and I let the others go. They didn’t get far. Noki had gone for supplies and came back with the news two days later.
“The hordes that followed caught up with those you left alive. They had the Ssons torture and slaughter every last one. Even the children,” Noki told me.
“Why?”
“They fear them; the powers of the Deadwalkers.”
The stupid were the most brutal of us, fearing all the wrong things.
The next afternoon, we came upon a bunch of women and children on foot running to hide in a small woodland. They were too slow. Fifty of my men were chasing them. I signaled to two of them to follow me, ordering the rest to stop. Our horses were too fast, and we reached them at the edge of the wood. The oldest one—one of the mothers— stepped in front to protect the young. She took out a butcher knife and held it to the throat of a young girl. Her daughter? They both looked so much alike; their hair the brown of Elbia’s. The mother wasn’t begging or crying. At last, a brave one. I nodded to her to run and turned around with my men, letting them escape.
The Reghen watched from afar but didn’t let me get away with it. “Khun-Malan will know of all this, Da-Ren. As soon as I see him again,” he said.
“Tell him whatever you want, but I am moving forward. I won’t waste half my day cutting up women,” I told him.
Noki had lost his desire for a woman, but he was trying to help me.
“Firstblade, this is no good. If you want to show the othertribers mercy, then let us put them to the knife quickly. When the others find them alive, it’s worse,” he told me again.
It was the next evening that my patience came to an end. A couple of my Packs, had moved ahead faster. I reached them at sunset, walking my horse in the middle of the razed village that they had already attacked. The two-story houses of the wealthy burning with their masters inside. Mothers with eyes wide-open and bleeding throats. The Cross Sorcerer crucified outside of their church. The yard was strewn with children too young to run. The men chased chickens and pigs. No one looked at the children. Purple clouds adorned beautifully the horror of our Tribe above the smoking thatched roofs.
“Give me the order to kill the children, Da-Ren. Not Urak; he’s a mad jackal,” Noki said.
They were still there. Three children sitting on the dirt, next to the charred body of a woman—a woman, I think—their eyes darting around. The vultures were pulling at the last pieces of the day; the horse hooves were beating around them. We were leaving; leaving them there. The Blades were wielding their iron above the necks of the last kneeling old men.
“Let the children go,” I said.
“I did that two days ago, and I stayed all night and watched them,” said Noki.
“Stayed all night?”
“You sleep much? I don’t. I saw them searching around in the darkness. Let me kill them, Firstblade. It’s the best fate,” said Noki.
“Leave an old man with them,” I said.
“They will crucify us too if the Reghen talks,” said Leke.
I had seen one of the three children in Zeria’s Forest. The same brown-haired small head tilting to the right whether it was laughing or crying.
“Leave one of the old men with them,” I repeated.
“Are you sure?” Noki asked again.
I didn’t answer. There was no light, no truth, no hope. Darhul himself had descended on Kapoukia, ravenous and unstoppable, thousands of heads and arms on his scaled body. No one would escape for more than a few breaths. Child or old man. I was already galloping forward. Noki would do the right thing, whatever that was.
This was not the glorious campaign I had been promised, or that I had promised them. The spoils were few. The ghosts too many to count.
What had gotten into me?
Why?
Why was I even asking why?
Why did I feel compassion for the enemies of the Tribe?
Compassion. Mercy. Words that I came to use much later when I was forced to beg myself.
We turned our backs to the crow and the vulture and looked far away to the west. Leke bit into a piece of dried horsemeat and with his mouth half-full said to me, “I told you, Firstblade. When the killing starts, the living are—”
“The ones who lose their souls,” I answered. Now I knew.
“See what your problem is? You don’t respect the Stories of the Ouna-Mas,” Noki said to me. It was something he could say to my face because he didn’t respect them either.
Rikan was there too. His Story said he should have died a Blacksmith. Noki, once Uncarved, ignored the Story that had been forced upon him. He carved himself at sixteen to lie down with women. My Story said that I was marked a cursed ninestar. As if the mark were needed. There was so much bloodshed on my orders that a curse would find me anyway. I didn’t believe in the Stories anymore. He was right.
“If you believe in the Deadwalkers, if you fear them, you can easily—” said Noki.
“I am beginning to believe in the Deadwalkers,” I said. “Now that I see them every night.”
We were covering much smaller distances each day now. It was the season of sowing terror and harvesting life, and that took time. There was also a good side to all of this. The herds of sheep and other animals that remained behind in the campaign were now catching up with us. That was the good side. Yes. I was losing my mind. I wasn’t sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake up.
I went to find the old Reghen, my companion on the first part of the journey.
“These are peasant folk, not demon servants or monsters.”
“Trade,” he said.
“What?”
“Khun-Malan—you should have guessed by now. He didn’t come here to avenge our ancestors.”
I knew that.
“Our ancestors never passed through these lands. They never got this far south,” I said.
“Right. We are here for trade. We keep their gold and sell their lives. That’s all they
have.”
“But they don’t have any gold.”
“No, not them. These peasants have nothing. We want the noble masters of the cities.”
“So why are we killing them then?” I asked.
“A merchant always shows off his wares.”
“What wares? We aren’t selling anything,” I said.
“Oh, but we are. Terror!”
We exchanged the slaves we had been gathering along the way, sending them even farther east, beyond the borders of the Empire. More caravans full of goods, weapons, food supplies, fabrics, and animals were arriving from the faraway East, some led by the dark camel riders and others by folk pale and slant-eyed. We had become herdsmen again like our ancient ancestors, but we were carrying flocks of humans instead of sheep. Where we passed, life was razed, the trees burned, and crops never sprouted again, as if they were sown with thick salt.
During the few moons of winter that followed, I struggled to see how we chose whom to trade with and whom to annihilate. I realized that they were all called Deadwalkers, as long as they had gold and were in our path. If, however, they were too far away and we couldn’t get to them, we called them merchants and partners in trade.
A new demon had come to haunt us, greater than any of the monsters of our childhood nights. The Demon of Gold. That was the real monster, and all the tales we kept telling existed only to obscure this one demon.
I had ignored Malan’s one order, but it came again—this time more impatient, and final:
“You will open the graves and dig up the bodies. You will take anything valuable and then burn them.”
Fire to the corpses. It was easy, and it ended quickly with those whom we murdered, but as the thirst for gold grew, the bodies were not only the fresh ones. I will never forget the first time I saw them digging up a Crosser’s corpse. It poisoned my eyes, my nose, and even my memories. The sickest stink of rotting flesh, the sight of women’s bones, dressed in gossamer fabrics and jewels once made and given to celebrate life and love.
“No man should end up like that after his death,” said Noki. His shovel hacked the humid air repeatedly to send the flies away once more.
“That is not a man,” I told him.
“If it was a woman, then it was a very ugly one. And it stinks,” he said, looking at the opened grave. The grave looked back at Noki; maggots crawling on half-hollow eyes.
“Go to every village, find every graveyard, dig out the black skeletons and burn them.”
To get a few pieces of precious metal and stones. The orders were simple. No matter how many summers, hot and damp, the cadavers had remained there. It was the only way to wipe out the tribe of the Crossers, said the Ouna-Mas. The curse of the Buried and the threat of them coming to life again would end only with fire. The same whispers rose every night from our own fires. Most of my men didn’t even know what gold or trade were. They lusted after the slaughter because they hated and feared. They needed the Ouna-Mas’ Stories of the Buried. It was the only way they could do what they had to do every afternoon.
The Ouna-Mas had triumphed. As they led us into the depths of terror, their Stories became more believable than ever. The men dug up corpses half the day. At night, they saw them rise again in their sleep. In the morning, all they wanted to do was slaughter more othertribers. The Witches were invincible.
I searched more, hoping to find a new Story I could swallow and accept. I used the camel riders as translators and asked the slaves, anyone who would answer me:
“Why do you bury the dead?”
“They have to sleep into the earth. Only then can they be resurrected.”
“Says who?”
“The priest. God.”
“Have you ever seen any of them rise again? One?”
I got no answer. I kept asking.
“Where are your warriors?”
“Most of the men followed the Empire’s army west, and a lot more have left to find eternal life in the monasteries.”
That was when I got confused and came to believe that the monasteries were caves full of invincible men and immortal Sorcerers who would one day come out to devour us.
“And where is that army of the Empire? When are these Sorcerers going to come to battle?”
Again, no answer.
I was eager to face some real warriors, men to parry iron with, not old men and children. Not corpses. I wanted to embrace othertribers alive, not buried, and shout to them:
“My brothers, brave sword-bearing men who hide and let your women and children die; finally! You have come before me. Come, my brothers. Let’s drink. I have come from the other end of the world to slit your throats and quench my thirst and madness with your blood.”
It wouldn’t be long before they appeared.
Interlude
LIII.
The Song of the Fallow Deer
Zeria’s fairy tale. As she whispered it to Aneria. As I heard it.
“Hush, now; hush, little children, and don’t you make all this susurrus. We talked about this. The sun will rise soon, and I have to leave—forever,” the doe said before kissing them one last time. She had cared and nursed them for twelve moons now, but summer was here again, and it was time. No doe should stay more than twelve moons with her fawn. That was the law of the forest.
“Why, Mother? Why not stay together? I don’t want to lose you—ever,” said Fida, the baby girl fawn.
“Oh, my dear, I cannot.”
“I’ll be good, and I’ll listen to you,” said Fida.
“Never stray away.” Hero, her brother buck, jumped in.
“Not even when the birdsong carries me deep into the forest,” added Keri.
Was Keri a buck or a doe? He was a buck for sure, but a strange buck, unlike any other; he didn’t have antlers yet, and he loved singing. A fawn who sings, maybe he thinks that he is a bird. Not that it mattered to mother doe. Keri was the one the forest loved more. And he loved it back.
“No, children, this cannot be done. See, the blue swallow has returned and so has the hoopoe. It’s all fern, bluebell, and bright sunlight now. It is time.”
“But why, Mommy?” Fida asked again.
The porcupines and the hare had hidden behind the reed bushes of the loch. The birds had gathered among the canopy of the oaks, and they were all listening to the doe. The doe bellowed and grunted because she didn’t want anyone else to listen.
“See, my dear Fida, I loved my mother as well, and my sisters did too, and my mommy had sisters, and she had a mother, and they all had brothers, and—you understand?”
“No.”
“If we all stayed together and forever, my little one, what would have happened by now? There would be hundreds of deer here, but nothing else—no bracken, no young leaves, no trees left, and that means no bird and no song, and then no eagle owl and no rat snake. Only deer and hollow trees. Antlers and dead branches. We’d fight among ourselves for the last leaves and still perish of hunger. And there would be no forest and no grass—only the bones of the dead, worms and beetles crawling through the hollow sockets of our rotting skulls. And flies—how much the dead hate the flies. It is the law of the forest, and it was passed down to us.”
“So, it is this evil Forest Witch. She is the one who won’t let you stay with us,” said Hero, his young voice angry and sharp.
“She is not a Witch; she is only a fairy, my son, and she is right,” said the doe. “Come here. Let me kiss you all once again and keep the scent of your youth.”
So she kissed all three of them and said her last words:
“But you have to remember, my children, you might be safe now, and you’ll grow strong, but the year of the wolf will come again, and Graybur will return to the forest. And you remember my words: you cannot fight Graybur with your antlers, Hero, no matter how strong you’ve grown, and you cannot run away from him, Fida, no matter how fast you are. You have to call the forest, and only the forest will help you.”
“I don’t understand
, Mother,” said Keri.
“You cannot understand now, Son, but you will in time. A mother’s tale is a memory of what you haven’t seen yet, to remind you of the good, the evil, and the song. You will, my most strange and beautiful child, love of my life.”
And so the mother doe walked away, past the oaks and the beech toward the west, and her fallow skin turned milky and blended with the morning mist. And every animal talked about the white deer that was never seen again.
Three years flew by, peaceful as the waters of the sleeping moonlit ponds. Hero, Fida, and even Keri grew tall and strong. They became the pride of the forest, though the dark wells that filled their eyes reflected the sadness of their mother’s memory. But all animals loved them, for they were playful and never harmed a living being. So when the autumn of the killing wolf came, it was the other animals that came to warn them.
The porcupine walked slowly to Hero and said in his most serious voice, “The hawk and the eagle have spotted the gray wolf; he descends from the northeast mountains. Graybur has risen again, and he is coming to make this forest his lair and his feast. You know what you have to do, Hero—fight; that’s what I always do. I stretch my spines, and no wolf paw ever dares come near me. Fight, Hero. You are strong. Never before has a buck had antlers so tall and wide and sharp.”
Hero didn’t remember his mother’s words, and he never truly believed in them. He trusted his strength and his pride and the flattery of the porcupine. Magnificent Hero, they all called him. So he answered the porcupine, “I’ll go and find Graybur before he enters the forest, and I will stop him there.”
The owl was watching, and he stopped hooting. Instead, he took his forest voice and warned Hero:
“Don’t you dare do that, silly buck. Remember what your doe mother said. You cannot fight Graybur. The more you fight him, the more the wolf in him grows. He wants you to fight him as a wolf would because that’s when he wins. He pulls you into the fight, a fight that makes you both more of a wolf. But he’ll always be a stronger wolf than you. That’s his game, and you cannot win.”
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