The twelve thousand warriors and their horses sank and swam slowly in the sea of golden sand. A few of the Ouna-Mas and the Reghen rode camels, which were far more suitable for this terrain. But I had trust only in my horses. They had carried me here successfully, and my two favorites were still healthy and strong. They were slower than the brave O’Ren and unworthy to carry his name. I was slower too.
“The blades are pulling my arms down. They feel heavier,” I said to Leke.
“The winters do that to everyone. Even to an Uncarved.”
It wasn’t the winters that were weighing me down. I was half a breath slower than before. Long ago, when I was an Uncarved, my spirit was one step ahead of my body. My fury was inside the flesh of my enemy even before my blade. Now, in the desert, it was the opposite.
We passed sand dunes and then dry, low rocky hills and marched toward Antia. The men of the three cities cut our road before the ancient city of Apelo that stood deserted, in an arid valley only a day’s journey from the port of Antia and the Thousand Island Sea. We had journeyed to the end of the world. There was nothing farther south, only the wastelands of fire and dust, where naked black demons lurked, and an egg would cook on a rock even at night. One more battle, and then only Sapul would be left. And then if Sapul fell, we would meet our final destiny to the West, beyond the Endless Forest. It was midsummer again, the season when the horses had built back their strength, and there was no rain—the season for battle.
“This is the fifth summer away from Sirol,” the older warriors reminded me as if they couldn’t believe either how far we had come. Still alive; five summers away from Zeria.
“It will be the last one,” I replied.
On the first day, the Trackers talked of an army almost equal in number to ours.
“We will wait,” Malan said at the Council of Leaders.
“For what?”
“For all of them to join,” he said. We looked at him startled.
Two nights later, the othertribers’ army had grown to twice the size of ours. On the fourth night, the Trackers counted the fires three times more than ours.
“All the other tribes! I am telling you, all of them are gathering. Armored to the teeth; these are no peasants. We saw even more ships coming from the Thousand Island Sea,” the Tracker said.
But they were across from us now, and we no longer needed the Trackers to count their fires or to hear their kettledrums and cymbals in the night.
“Great Khun, we have never faced such an army,” warned the wise Reghen.
“Yeah, there’s more than I expected,” said Malan. “We should offer terms of peace.”
Everyone was shocked. I wasn’t. By now, it was clear that Malan didn’t share his plans with us; his words were just another kind of subterfuge.
The next morning, thirteen Trackers put white banners on their spears and cantered the whitest horses toward the Crossers. They were spread evenly against the front line of the enemy camp, some north, others at the center, and the rest south. The Crossers greeted them with a rain of blazing arrows and that was the end of the negotiations for peace.
The next couple of days were filled with impatience, but the evenings were still pleasant, emanating a sweet and musty smell of traders’ spices and sweaty young men. Four days we waited for the other side to make a move. The othertribers waited too because their numbers were constantly growing with all kinds of warriors, from mercenaries of the south to peasants. We waited because Malan said so.
On that fourth night, I dreamed that the desert was covered black by the swarming enemies and the Demon with its nine serpent heads emerged from the sand hills. All my Blades fell on his scaled body, screaming, hacking, and piercing, but the beast was unstoppable. His jaws ripped out their limbs; his talons tore through the flesh of the best of the Tribe. I saw them all cold and still, their corpses covering the sand, their eyes wide-open asking why did I betray them. I knew—I don’t know how, but I knew—that not one of them had joined Enaka up in the stars. They were all cursed to rot forever in the desert.
I awoke startled and panting slightly after daybreak. The horned creature that was crawling up my arm was only a beetle. A bad omen to start the day. Before I finished that thought, I saw Leke galloping toward me with great haste. I barely had time to taste the gruel, the last food I would eat for days.
“Attack, we’re under attack,” he said.
“Where, what?”
“The Seventh…were guarding the prisoners on the western side…a storm of arrows fell upon them. Prisoners got away, with our horses.”
“What are you talking about? When did the othertribers reach us?” I asked.
“They weren’t othertribers.”
“What were they then?”
I rode with Leke to the prison camp that the Seventh guarded. Three of our men were lying dead, pierced by arrows.
“We were late. About a dozen othertribers stole horses and escaped,” their Chief told me.
“Fool, were your men sleeping drunk?” I asked.
He knelt and pulled an arrow out of a young man’s body.
“Look at this, Firstblade,” he said, giving me the bloodied arrow.
I would know the arrows of my Tribe anywhere.
“Do you claim that they were shot by our own Archers?” I asked.
“He is lying. The prisoners stole the bows,” Noki jumped in.
“And became great shooters suddenly. Shooting the double-curved bow? Leke, take ten men and come with me. We’re going to Khun-Malan.”
I mounted fast, eager to confront Malan at his tent, but before I was out of our camp, I saw many riders coming toward us. It was Malan himself, along with a dozen Rods, two Reghen, and Karat, the Archer Leader. I hadn’t seen Malan galloping so hard, as if he were in battle, since the night he had become Khun. The war council took place right there, not in Malan’s tent.
“In the name of Enaka! What are you doing? Have you gone mad?” I yelled to Karat.
“Silence, Da-Ren. There is no time. Just listen.” Malan was shouting orders to his Rods, pointing left and right, soaked in sweat, his voice so loud that it seemed to raise the dust clouds around us. “Retreat now. All the Reghen, Archers, and Rods ride back to Varazam with me. How many Archers do you have here?” he asked Karat.
“Over two hundred Packs.”
“You will leave twenty Packs here, and the rest will head east with me.”
“Leave here? Where here?” Karat and the rest of us stared at Malan without understanding. Everything had changed in one morning.
“Here. To defend. Don’t ask; they’ll get their orders later. Choose who stays and get on with it!”
“Am I to stay as well?” asked Karat.
“No, you’ll ride east with me,” said Malan.
“Why are we running, my Khun?” asked Karat.
“Don’t say another word. No one speaks a word! We won’t make it in time,” said Malan.
Malan approached me.
“You, Da-Ren, do you command only twenty Packs?” Malan asked.
“Yes.”
It was as many as I’d always had. Every spring of the campaign, I replaced the few dead with more youths who had finished their training. Some of my youngest ones had left Sirol only on their thirteenth winter.
“Choose fifteen Packs of Blades to hold the line here.”
Hold the line? The Tribe had never held a line in any battle.
I had entered the caves of death alone hundreds of times till now. I had even pissed down the throat of Darhul and made it out alive. I was overwhelmed by questions, not fear.
“Da-Ren, you will be the One Leader of the Tribe in this battle. Keep your best and most swift-footed men here with you.”
“You don’t have to order me. I’d never leave them—”
He was in a mad rush and interrupted me. “Yes, great. Just follow my orders this time.”
“What do you want us to do?” I asked.
I didn’t underst
and what he meant by swift-footed. I looked at the two Reghen standing atop their horses next to him and formed the word swift-footed mutely with my lips to ask them. What did they know? They lowered their eyes without saying a word.
Malan approached with his horse and grabbed mine by the reins. His next order came hard and unexpected like a slap in the face:
“All who stay will dismount their horses. We are taking the animals with us. You will hold the camp on foot. Infantry.”
“What do you mean infantry?” asked Karat.
Malan spoke only to me.
“If you have faith, we will crush them, and your men will be the glory of the Tribe. I have a plan. The Ouna-Ma will bring the Truths of the battle today at dusk. Have faith. For the Tribe and for victory.” He made to leave with those words and then stopped cold and came back.
“One more thing,” he said.
“What?”
“Make sure to fuck that Ouna-Ma before she leaves again.” He grinned. He wasn’t worried or scared. Those were his final words, and then he rode away to the east with the Rods.
One of the two Reghen stayed behind to order us around.
“You have almost six hundred Blades and eight hundred Archers. With the slaves, you will be close to two thousand brave men.”
Brave men. I could unveil easily the meanings of the Reghen words.
“I can count,” I answered. “Across from us, there are more than thirty thousand in an open plain.”
“Makes no difference,” he said.
“None. You’re right. Without any horses, we’re already dead anyway. I don’t want the slaves. Take them with you. They will betray us in the middle of the battlefield,” I said.
“The orders—”
“I will slit their throats tonight if you leave them here. I won’t go into battle tomorrow with othertriber slaves on my side.”
“Keep them now for the work, and let them loose at dusk. Better they bring the news to the Crossers.”
“What work?”
“You will immediately move the camp two thousand paces to the north and defend there. And you will not light a fire in each tent, but one in every five tents so that you don’t look too many.”
“We will only provoke them more.”
“Yes, we are going into battle.”
“Are you coming too?” I asked.
I was going into battle. The Reghen would be leaving with Malan.
I rode with him along the front line of the camp, and the Reghen showed the exact spots that we were to defend.
“Dig moats and build palisades with whatever you can find: carts, supplies, and anything else. A wagon laager. Begin now, Da-Ren. You are already lagging. Whip those slaves to work.”
The othertribers would decide how much time I had and if I was late.
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying. What’s a palisade and a laager? This is madness.”
“Not to worry. We’ve left Craftsmen and slaves who will guide you with the preparations. We will send you the Khun’s orders at dusk. Do only as you’re told. We will prevail,” said the Reghen. He touched me ever so lightly on the shoulder and signaled his last goodbyes. His eyes looked worried despite his assuring words.
Not to worry.
I had very little time—I didn’t even know how much—to explain all this to my Blades and to the Archers I was commanding. The Chiefs of the one thousand and four hundred warriors gathered at midday to listen to my orders.
It wasn’t the number of the men that scared them.
“We are only thirty and five Packs,” I said to them.
“We are a hundred and another hundred times more than that,” said one of the Archer Chiefs. Each one of them had enough arrows to bring down two hundred men.
“There are twenty times more across,” I repeated for them to understand.
“No matter how many they are, they won’t see me. When I turn my horse, no one can catch me,” said one of the woman Chiefs who led forty of the best Archers. Two Packs of Leftbreast Archers had remained with us. The time had come for me to tell them about the horses. No one would understand. They would prefer to be left naked or blind on their horses, regardless of how much or how well I had trained them to use their legs in battle. The light faded fast from the eyes at the sound of my words.
“You want us to dig moats and build fences and fight without horses? They’re going to bury us in those moats, Da-Ren,” they said. Those loyal to me spoke with such lifeless words. The Archers spoke with a thunderous rage.
“Doom to all of us, Da-Ren! Did you do this on purpose? To prove yourself? You think you won’t fall?”
“It’s not my plan.”
“Then don’t follow it. This time there is no Sson to take your place and save you.”
I would kill you, now, but you’ll die tomorrow anyway.
“I will follow the orders,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because it is what the Tribe has ordered, and so it will be,” I said. “The Khun has a plan. They will bring the Truths at dusk. Follow the orders, and everything will be over by tomorrow.”
“And if—” a furious Archer went to say.
“If what? If you try to flee? If you ignore orders? Go ahead; the Ssons will be waiting to…save you,” I answered.
That was the rest of the Truth. There was no other choice.
“Khun-Malan left you here. To slow down the Crossers for the rest to escape,” the Archer Chief said to me.
His words pierced me like a blazing arrow in the eye, but there was no time to feel the pain. The othertribers had certainly seen our riders retreating; they would have changed their strategy. They could attack even before nightfall.
“Malan said they won’t attack tonight,” the Reghen assured me. “If they do, our plan is dead.”
“How does Malan know?”
“It is their holy night. The night of the Sleeping Mother, they call it. Their Sorcerers won’t bless an attack.”
We finished with our makeshift preparations and fortifications much earlier than I expected. Our blades had been sharpened for days now and waited unused, the bows strung and ready, and both quivers filled. The men gathered around the few fires of the camp.
“We’ve reached the end. Enaka is waiting for us, Firstblade,” Noki said to me at dusk.
“We will go to her with irons high,” I said.
I had ordered Noki to leave and guide the few Blades whom I had sent with Malan. I thought he was gone for good, but just before the sun set, I saw him galloping and screaming in joy as he was getting closer.
“Why did you come back?” I asked.
“All my brothers are here. You sent me away with the young boys. I was bored,” he said.
“Madness.”
“This, and the Leftbreasts,” he smiled.
I already missed the days that I’d never live, the wonders I’d never see. Just a little farther away was the Great Sea. The Trackers who had seen it called it “vast and frightening, magical and a soothing sight for my soul, the end of all journeys.” They all made it sound like something I had to see before I died. There were other cities richer and bigger than Varazam where I would never set foot. And the pond of Kar-Tioo. I wanted to see her again. Only her.
But what saddened me the most was that I would fall in battle leaving behind a shameful Story. Da-Ren, son of Er-Ren and a bitch slave, the first Leader of the Tribe who was ever defeated. I had, after all, lived through twenty-four summers. I never believed I would make it this far. But my Story was missing—the one that hadn’t been told around campfires. Villages and children had become ash and blood in my hands so I could watch the Ssons and Malan take all the glory for themselves. The thought that we could be defeated in battle didn’t fit into our minds even when Malan left. But when the horses were gone, the warriors smelled death approaching. Except for a few who were very young or very drunk.
“If we prevail tomorrow, glory will finally mark the Blades eternall
y, Leader,” one of them told me.
The sun became a giant disk of red fire that evening and went to lie exactly behind the enemy’s camp. We waited under a large tent canopy in the middle of our camp for some news from the Trackers. I had only the Chiefs of the Packs there, more than thirty men and two women.
“Look, over there, the banners of the othertribers!” One of the Archer Chiefs pointed.
I don’t remember many of their names anymore. I commanded them only for one day, and the next morning they were dead. I could see the countless banners waving in the wind.
“Our Sun has reddened behind their banners.”
“A bad omen,” another added.
“What is the bad omen? That the sun sets in the west?” I asked.
Leke leaned over my shoulder, laughing. The onset of death had mantled him in calmness, and he embraced me like a baby. One of the two Leftbreast Chiefs who remained with us, among dozens of men, was not laughing. Perhaps she was one of the few who knew how to count. Maybe she understood.
She spoke the right words:
“The men and women want to hear your words, Firstblade. The older ones smell it; the Tribe has abandoned us here. The young ask, but no one gives them any answers. You must speak to them.”
What could I say to the men of the blade and the women of the bow on their last night? There were no beatings of hooves, not a single neigh to give anyone courage. I walked for a while alone to find the words and returned to the Chiefs.
“Listen to me. Go back to your Packs and repeat what you hear.”
I didn’t have to try to make my voice serious and solemn.
“Men, an unequal battle, the greatest of our lives, dawns for us tomorrow. Close your eyes for a moment. See the othertribers attacking us. Keep your eyes shut and go back to your first carving. Now, open them and fight. Fight for our ancestors who died in the steppe of the East so that we could have the bow and the horse. Fight for the children who died in the Sieve to give us the bravery and the blade. Fight as if you were the chosen champion of the Tribe in the duel of Varazam. Fight for the Story of your father, your own, and the Story of your Tribe. Above all, when you are hit tomorrow and fall to the ground, get up one more time and fight one last time, for your brother next to you. Stand by his side.”
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