XIV. As for myself, I have faced in person only last night their most infamous leader, Malan, and the female hierophants and idolatrous priestesses who rule the fates of those jackals. The nobles of Varazam have placed their hopes on a duel to take place tomorrow, yet I am certain that no matter the outcome of the duel, the heathen will not break the siege. I fear that the next mindless act of the nobles will be to betray the city of Varazam and try to save their own lives in exchange, yet their Khun has sworn—I listened to him with my own ears—to bring the whole city under the knife regardless. And I am now certain, that unless God provides us with an heavensent miracle, ordering our Emperor to send help, no man, woman, or child will survive the siege of Varazam. For I have never seen a tribe so remote of mankind’s virtues, such ravenous beasts with insatiable blood thirst.
XV. I scribe this papyrus on my knees begging for your help, Protospathos Carpus. I fall and kiss your feet asking for the Emperor’s clemency for his true servants in Varazam. And I implore you to reconsider your metaphor, of parallelizing these lands with the hair and nails of the Empire. I know you for a great scholar of the ancient history books and a sage, and you and I both believe that an Empire is always brought to ruin when it ignores the borderlands and the farmlands. For it is when the capital of an empire succumbs to an hydrocephalus self-indulgence and self-appreciation that the peasants and the common folk of the farmlands revert to the allure of the heretics, becoming deluded victims of falsehoods. And even if you consider those lands insignificant compared to the magnificence and the brilliance of Thalassopolis I must remind you that it takes only a wound of one’s little finger to fester. Then the flesh rots and the blood becomes poison, it spreads to the whole hand, then the arm and does not stop until it reaches the heart, finally causing a most violent death. Therefore, with great zeal I must ask for the last time for your help, as I am certain that if these hordes are successful in conquering Varazam, it will not be long before you see them outside the walls of Thalassopolis—believe me, you will—and by then they will be greatly multiplied in numbers and strength.
XVI. May God preserve you and guide you and our Emperor, beloved brethren.
Scribed by Evagus the Anchorite to be delivered to the Protospathos, Carpus Asinas.”
Regarding the events of Varazam, these two letters were the only illuminating exchange. Evagus provided me with more letters, most of them of later events, which I will include in the crypton manuscript as I see appropriate. They are the ones which elucidate why the transcription of Da-Ren’ story was of great importance to the Palace and the Protospathos himself.
As for the final outcome of the siege of Varazam, I must revert to Da-Ren’s sanguinary account of events.
LVIII.
The Merchants of Varazam
Twenty-Third Winter. Firstblade
Morning dawned. I had dived into a dream and woke up from a nightmare.
“Time to wake up now, Firstblade,” said Leke kneeling next to me. “The duel.”
I plunged my head in the water, drinking as much as I could to recover from the opion. I was ready; wearing already the same tattered jerkin and trousers I slept in, carrying the same useless blades.
Everything around me—walls, desert, sun, and sky—had taken on the same golden color of the sand. Only the people stood out, the bodies of our warriors on the sand and the heads of the besieged along the parapets, all dark and small like crawling ants. The next time I would see those heads, they would be piled up in pyramids, detached from their bodies.
I moved closer to the walls with a Reghen, a young Ouna-Ma, two Rods, and Noki, to meet their champion. The othertribers had lowered their own men in woven wicker baskets from the castle—only two of them in horseback. We came face to face only a few paces apart to inspect each other’s weapons. They had sent a small guard and the three envoys. The giant warrior whom I had seen in Malan’s tent rode in the middle, mounted on a black stallion, a stable-bred beast that looked strong and fed. My gray-white, one of Tribe’s best, a Firstblade’s horse, looked no better than a mule in front of it.
The champion of Varazam was clad in chainmail from neck to knees and elbow. He would die from a knife in the neck; I knew it as soon as I saw him dressed like that. He wore a white scarf that left only his eyes visible and a helm with a carved solid crest and a nose guard all shining gold. His shield was also painted gold, with the solemn face of a brown-haired man or woman in the middle. The painted figure wore a gold disk around his head and had dark brown wings, a blue tunic, and a crimson cape. My adversary wore tall leather boots and manikelia to guard his forearms. He held two spears in the right hand and had at least a sheathed sword that I could see. Not even Malan dressed so regally. The Reghen said something, Baaghushai translated, and the warrior of Varazam threw down his spears and unsheathed his sword in a slow ritualistic move.
We left the Reghen and the one envoy there to be the witnesses and the judges of the duel, each one holding a hawk, and we trotted back to our lines.
“Run him round and round. His horse will tire faster,” said Noki.
“May Enaka be with you, Firstblade, and bring glory to our Tribe!” Leke shouted.
Deafening bellows rose from my Blades, then the Archers, then everyone else and I could make out only the words of those next to me. The Blades were getting ready to salute me “irons high,” but before they did, I swerved and galloped away from my men so that I wouldn’t hear them anymore. I wanted to fight this champion of the Cross. I wanted his life more than my own. I carried only a long blade, no shield or armor, and my nightmare from the night before.
The judges let go of the hawks, and the birds beat their wings to fly high, their bodies careening above the battlefield. At the signal, the dark-skinned warrior of Varazam began galloping toward me. The distance between us was at least four hundred paces and would close fast if I charged against him. But I had received my orders from Malan when he summoned me to his tent. As was the Khun’s command, I turned my horse around toward my men and rode away from the duel, hiding behind the line of the shocked Blades as it opened and swallowed me. Their cries of surprise lasted only two breaths. Someone else had jumped out of our side and taken my place. A Sson.
All four Ssons of Malan’s guard were gruesome looking, but one of them was taller and sinewy beyond anything human. Unlike the other three who featured fearsome patterns on their skin, he was painted with thin red and blue lines like veins. From a distance, he looked like a man skinned, a creature of great suffering. I had never seen his brow or his gaze resting, always intense as if he were in a battle every breath of the day. He had a peculiar stride, that of a preying fiend, raising his knees high, running fast like a bird stepping lightly on shaky ground.
The Sson had separated from our lines and was running toward the rider of Varazam. He had no horse or armor, no long or even small blade, and no hides or boots. Naked, only a cloth that barely covered his crotch, and a dirk on each clenched fist. He was hiding the small blades behind his forearms, the iron flashing in the sunlight, visible to us but not his opponent.
I had nothing more to do. I wouldn’t be fighting anyone. I was just a bait for Varazam’s envoys, used to resemble a man rather than a monster. The Ssons were not present in Malan’s tent the previous day. It was a dark fate for those envoys, and they would never have proposed a duel if they had seen the longskull monsters.
The Sson was running barefoot, fast toward the armored rider. From the distance of the castle walls, it all looked ridiculous—a fight that would soon end in their favor. The great warrior of Varazam charging on horseback and the Sson almost naked, a slender figure running like a flightless chicken on the sand. The people of the city probably felt hope for the first time in many moons. Their faraway cheers had become the wind that thrust their shining champion and his coal-skinned stallion toward us.
When the distance between the two closed, the armored rider heaved his sword high, ready to strike. He never did. The Sson dived
, head first, close to the horse’s hooves. For an instant, I thought he had been kicked and trampled by the stallion as he rolled in the sand. Instead, it was the horse’s front knees that hit the ground awkwardly before it collapsed on its left side. Blood was spurting from its front leg.
His rider, heavy like a rotted trunk, crashed onto the dry soil. He had fallen badly and crawled with great effort to push his leg from under his horse’s ribs. Staggering on one hand and knee, he tried to get up. He was dragging his left leg, his tall body and heavy armor all weighing on his right knee. The air was dusty, and the sun was strong. The Sson rolled and, without stopping, got up onto his two feet behind the Varazam champion, who didn’t even see him. The Sson leaped into the air and stabbed him in the neck with the small dagger, once, twice, many times, as fast as he could. The first swordsman of Varazam fell down, gurgling blood from his mouth and writhing to his death. The duel ended before anyone had a chance to realize what had happened. It lasted as many breaths as it takes an old woman to kill a lame hen.
The Sson grabbed the rider’s fallen sword, heaved it high, and lowered it three and then thirteen more times on the thick-muscled neck of the dead warrior. He knelt beside him, stuck his face to the man’s bleeding neck and, shaking his hideous head left and right like a crazy beast, started to feed on blood. He stood up after many breaths with his face, mouth, chest, and even his loincloth soaked in blood, holding the warrior’s head in one hand. With the other, he dragged the headless body in the dirt. He walked knees high as fast as any man could while pulling the weight. He got close to the Varazam envoys and threw the headless body at their feet. He let out an eerie screaming laughter toward the sky and turned running toward our lines with his trophy in hand. The heads along the wall were thinning out like black sesame seeds plucked by invisible birds.
As for me, I shut my eyes tight to keep tears of rage from streaming down my face. I was not the spirit that would breathe victory into the chest of each Blade and Archer and whisper defeat to the besieged. I was nothing but pig shit that had been burned in yesterday’s fire only to fuel someone else’s Story. The Sson was the new true master of Varazam.
I hid away from my men near the pens where we kept the slaves. The gray-haired Reghen found me there that night alone but for my wineskin. I was staring at the captives’ dejected faces.
“Don’t despair. Their fates are far worse than yours.”
“I am not them. I am me. I never hid, and I never knelt.”
“But Khun-Malan was right; you see it.”
“I would have killed the champion of Varazam. I know I would have. Don’t you believe me?”
“I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. Would you have drunk his blood?”
The Reghen’s hundred heads spoke with one another when they weren’t speaking with us. They had nothing to do but talk. The Legends said their words traveled with the wind. Even when one was a great distance from the other, they were united as one. That was why they always came up with the best answers. For everything.
I spilled out all my envy and bitterness.
“So, what will come out of this? They won’t open their gates now. They will never let the monsters inside.”
“You’re right. That is how most of the brave and honorable men will think. They will resist till the end. They will never surrender. But they are not all brave. Or honorable.”
We continued the siege for two more moons until winter was upon us and the Longest Winter Night was approaching again. We received some supplies when the slow-moving caravans and the trailing herds of animals finally managed to arrive.
Malan and his Reghen were soon justified. The terror and despair that the Sson had sown crawled through the walls like iron worms. Neither the Craftsmen, nor the scorched slaves, nor the thousands of Archers were able to accomplish that. It took only a handful of ruthless traitors. Cowards who were tortured one night too many by the nightmare of the Sson drinking blood from the headless body. Hunger, thirst, plague, fire, and siege towers were powerful weapons, but not as powerful as a tale of horror.
Betrayal brought down the walls of Varazam, as the master of the city himself sent only one envoy that time. He came alone and offered to lead us to an underground tunnel secretly at night. In exchange, we would spare the lives of a few nobles. He claimed that there was a tunnel expanding under the walls and leading to a secret gate we could open from inside. The besieged had dug many such tunnels so that they could bring down our siege towers and for their messengers to use. They had destroyed most of the tunnels, especially those used by messengers who never returned. But this one was wide, deep, and well supported with wooden beams.
They had never set fire on those tunnels to bring down our towers because if a tunnel collapsed, some part of the castle wall could collapse as well. Malan sent the Blades to enter first in the tunnel, and I was the first man of my Tribe to step into Varazam.
“The First Pack, goes first, behind me,” I said.
I passed inside the castle with half of my men and we opened the gate in the most silent moment of the night. It was a small gate, wide for two horses to walk next to each other and it would be easy for the othertribers to defend and seal it. We needed something more, so before we exited the tunnel, we lit torches with pine’s blood and set the beams on fire exactly underneath the walls. Wood would bring down the stones, so was Sah-Ouna’s prophecy. We had by our own fire trapped ourselves within Varazam’s walls, and I could only hope that her prophecy was true.
On the moonless, foggy Longest Night of winter, the holy night of the Crossers and the silent night of my Tribe, the night of the Ouna-Ma’s Story of Birth, a part of the northern wall, twenty paces wide, collapsed with thundering noise. The othertribers ran panicked. Some tried to gather forces to block the passage, but we were already inside, and their best men were away from this part of the castle. Malan had ordered a fierce attack early that day with whatever means we had on the opposite side to cause a distraction. We sacrificed many men there. We would not be stopped this time. My men were already, pushing aside the stones, opening a wide path for our riders to charge inside Varazam. Blades by the hundreds and Archers by the thousands. Monsters and maulers.
The traitor envoy of Varazam who had opened the gate got ready to leave, shouting to the translating slave next to me that he had assembled all those not to be harmed at the metropolis church chamber next to the master’s palace. Never had I met a man more foolish and desperate than him. He put his hands on my shoulders before running for the chamber, looked me straight in the eye, and mumbled:
“What does he say?” I shouted at the slave, unable to hear a thing as the first battle screams rose in the streets of Varazam.
“He says: ‘Do not forget my face.’”
I never did. I put my hands on the noble’s fat, short shoulders, and without any other thought, I head-butted him and crushed his nose. My boot was on his neck the moment he fell down. On my orders, my men and his slave, kicked him to death. That is the one and only death I am still proud of in the whole campaign.
The curse that had befallen us, the torturous thirteen moons of the siege and many more since the beginning of the campaign, came pouring out as vengeance that night inside the city. The killing lasted five gray-clouded days and nights. Not even the Goddess wanted to witness this Story. We were all Ssons now, thousands of us. Malan’s orders were long set:
“Level everything, even the tombs. Not one of them shall ever breathe again.”
I always stop here.
But it doesn’t. It comes back every night.
My heart wobbles and chokes my throat; a tremor shakes me and spikes the hairs on my skin when Varazam awakes in my mind. Every night.
What is a monster?
One who doesn’t realize what he has done until much later. One who was bred to be afraid of the others, of those different than him, raised to see his victims as monsters. Most of the men were still looking for Deadwalkers and demons who would rise f
rom the palace mausoleums. Demons would be a relief; their absence was despair. A monster doesn’t need fierce fangs or sharp talons. A monster looks hideous even without eyes, nose, or ears. More so. He doesn’t need these things; his senses can be a distraction, and seeing, smelling, and hearing will terrify him. All it needs is a Story, a false Story of hatred. And a mouth. Teeth, tongue, screams.
What does it take to make a Tribe of monsters? Only a charming madman who sings a false Story and a voice that pierces through head and heart. And many Packs of hungry men. They will not question anything. Everyone just follows the Pack. That’s what they have done since birth; that’s all they know. I can find so many explanations and excuses. And they don’t help me at all, because when Varazam comes in my sleep, every night since the slaughter, it’s always blood that gushes out of my eyes and nostrils.
There were marvels in the city that none of us had ever seen before in our lives: stone tombs painted with detailed pale-green and red designs, shrines of worship filled with gold ornaments and wooden paintings of powerful Sorcerers of the Cross, baths tiled with mosaics that showed exotic birds and fish made of tiny pieces of marble and glass, voluminous curtains and dresses, and carved tables. They were the most beautiful things we had seen, and we destroyed them the same moment we saw them, with sledgehammer, fire, and ax. When we had finished, there was nothing left to remind us that people once lived there, but the reek of death from the thousands of headless corpses.
Varazam was not a village. Thousands, mostly families and refugees, had barricaded in there. A few huts burn fast and are soon forgotten, but a city of thousands stays inside the mind forever like unfathomable insanity.
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