Words that kindled no hope, only a funeral pyre. They weren’t good words. But they were true. From the heart. My fault. Maybe my words reached the hearts of some. But they gave wings to no one. The Chiefs lowered their heads and left to take the words to their men. The sounds of trampling horse hooves and Noki’s voice stopped them.
“Now there’s a good omen!” shouted Noki, pointing. Out of the darkened east, which was first to lose the light at dusk, came the horses. It was a group of Rods, a Reghen, and an Ouna-Ma galloping fast upon us.
“We bring the Truths for tomorrow’s battle,” the Reghen said as he dismounted.
I turned toward the Chiefs and said, “All of you wait here. I will speak with them and then tell you. No one leaves.”
I retreated into my small tent with the Reghen and the Ouna-Ma.
“Why is the Ouna-Ma here?” I asked.
“To speak to the men at dawn. The Rods outside are giving the order to gather everyone at first light.”
My words weren’t needed after all. Malan had sent his own Storytellers.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“These are Khun-Malan’s orders. No one has been told until now. Couldn’t risk betrayal. Place guards. If anyone tries to desert to the othertribers, shoot him down without delay,” said the young Reghen. They hadn’t sent the gray-haired Reghen I knew well.
I heard Malan’s plan with my head held low. It was simple and clever. It could work, and it had only one drawback. The few hundred men who remained with me would fall to the very last at dawn tomorrow. I went outside and told the Chiefs what we had to do. Ten Packs were doomed. They had to charge against the enemy’s cavalry on foot. The others had a slim chance. But whether they liked it or not, no one had a choice. No one in the Tribe had ever deserted or cowered in battle.
“Did they command you to lead the ten Packs tomorrow against the cavalry?” Leke asked me afterward.
“No, they didn’t have to. They knew I would do it.”
“Damn them, black snakes,” said Noki.
“I wanted to challenge their champion rider in the duel of Varazam. Now I will have a thousand of them facing me tomorrow,” I said.
“More. But we will be by your side,” said Leke.
The three of us remained under the large tent.
“No, Leke. You and Noki will fall back with the others. You will swear to Enaka. I want you to—lead them to victory.”
“What victory, Da-Ren? They left us here to gain time and save themselves like the Crossers did in Melea. They abandoned you. It’s the last night for us all. I’m going to find myself a Leftbreast for tonight,” said Noki.
“Do you remember what Chaka used to tell us? They’ll skewer your dick and roast it over hot coals if they catch you,” I said.
“And right they’ll be. You know what will happen to them if they are captured alive tomorrow.”
Noki left with a wide grin on his face.
I had told the Leftbreasts’ Chief to keep her Archers at the back of the lines so they could get away first. They couldn’t run like us. They would be the first to fall into the clutches of the othertribers. She spat between my feet and left without saying a word.
The camp was simmering. A humming sound from men celebrating around distant fires grew as if it were the Feast of Spring. No one would be getting any sleep that night. They were all drinking milk spirit, wine, water, the life itself slipping through their hands.
“Leave now, Leke. Don’t waste your time sitting here. Get all the meat we have left, pass it around to your men, and give the wine to the Packs I’ll lead tomorrow. Go now, get some rest.”
“I’ll rest for good come tomorrow night. This was some campaign,” said Leke.
“And much earlier than tomorrow night,” I said.
Leke didn’t want to leave me. He gave me his wineskin to share, but I pushed him away. I wanted to remain completely alone, to find her one last time in the silence of the stars. Maybe in the dead of the desert night, I could dream one last time of the pond of Kar-Tioo, the rustling of the autumn leaves, the first piercing arrow of love, the evening that she saved me. She had been so wrong. I would never make it back. Broken promises. Children…
I walked back to my tent, which stood dark and without a fire in a quiet corner of the new camp. But silence and peace were not my fate that last night. There, outside my tent, stood the Ouna-Ma, waiting alone, the one who had come with the Reghen at dusk.
Make sure to fuck that Ouna-Ma. So the Khun had ordered.
Her piercing ululating song was suitable for my funeral pyre. As I approached, her song changed to the hymn of the Blades, a melodious, heart-wrenching voice. No one else was around. I could hear my men faintly in the distance celebrating the onslaught of their deaths. The Ouna-Ma took off her veil as I walked toward her. She was a young one I had never seen before—smaller, fiery, and darker than the others I had lain with. As if Sah-Ouna had borne her from the sun and the sand of the desert. She took off her robe with one quick move. Her shaved head was painted in silver ornaments, streams of silver stars and moons reaching all the way to her waist, the painted starlight dripping over her naked body like shimmering waterfalls. I embraced her, and right there nothing else mattered. I was victorious before the defeat about to dawn.
I would take her there beneath the scintillating stars of the desert, wrapped in the sheets of the cool sand. She would carry my seed inside her. I would plant it in her like my ninestar rage. I wondered how many Ouna-Mas had carried my seed inside them and what births had come of it? Death or Sson? Life or revenge?
Her fingers softly squeezed my arms, pulling me closer to her, and I kissed her. We continued to twist our tongues and move our hands around each other without saying a word. The battle drums of the othertribers were beating louder and closer as if they were now inside my chest. It was the last night. She was the last one.
All my life, the Ouna-Mas had spoken to me in single words. “Sieve,” and “Drakon.” This one said three:
“I ride you.”
I let her. I lay on my back and let her climb and rest below my waist so that I could look up at the whole sky, the dead warriors and the Goddess up there. How beautiful were our Stories! Made to soothe our heads at night and breathe fire within our chests at dawn.
I was so tired. I had done it all. Women, battles, Blades, Firstblade, the blood of Varazam. I couldn’t wash it off. Pain, Elbia, pain, Zeria. There was nothing left anymore. I couldn’t make it back to Kar-Tioo. The time had come for me to go up there to the stars and rest next to the immortals. I was ready. I wanted to be inside the Ouna-Ma as a fearful butterfly hopes for a last night in its melting cocoon, and I wanted tomorrow’s battle even more. The magnificent view I would have from up there.
A ravenous desire to die had grabbed hold of me. I’d die inside of her. She swung back and forth on top of me, dancing and writhing, her skin sweating like a horse in battle, our fingers meshed together in a desperate hold, her nipples touching my lips, her teeth biting my neck, me caressing her beautiful long head.
She let out the screams of the she-wolf and the moans of the loving mother, and as we continued our wild rhythm to the sound of the distant drums, everything became one great cry of pleasure. I shut my eyes at the end and followed her into the belly of Darhul. The One Demon had come to stand opposite me in this final battle. The black water of death flowed from within her and flooded through my frozen body. The white fire debouched deep inside her belly. I was beautifully dead. I’d be alive in her forever.
We lay there, our bodies next to each other, separate again, only the sand dressing the gooseflesh of my arms. In one glance, in half a breath, I had seen tomorrow in her eyes, the coming dawn, death, birth, woman, and victory. Tomorrow, the sand would cover me completely. Unless Enaka wished a miracle or a curse upon me, this would be my last, the last woman I would take. I had died, I was reborn, I rose to the stars, and I could live forever in the wind and moonlight of this night.<
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Why would I still wish for life? I was spitting on the golden face of the Goddess. So beautiful were the false Stories of the Tribe.
“Tell me.”
“What do you want, Da-Ren?”
“Anything. One last Story.”
Her gaze rested on me for a few breaths, as she was silently searching for the soothing words.
“We defy everything,” she whispered.
She was singing the Legend of Nothing, the sacrifice of the First Reghen, the three brothers who killed the Drakon.
“We sacrifice the best.”
“With our sacrifice, the entire Tribe we protect.”
“We fear nothing,” I cried so loud that the stars heard me and glowed back brighter.
“Or else, and far worse, we die for Nothing,” she whispered her last words.
Before dawn, the silver-haired Ouna-Ma, who was probably younger than twenty summers, wiped the sweat cooling her brow, passed her tongue over her upper lip, and with her black eyes bottomless wells of despair and lust, left me with a final word:
“Tomorrow.”
Sieve, Drakon, Tomorrow. The Witches always spoke in single words. As if they feared to have more to do with me.
Tomorrow, Da-Ren’s Story would end.
Tomorrow, I would be the defeated Firstblade of the greatest battle.
Tomorrow, all my men would be dead. The ones I had trained in Sirol and promised them victory and glory.
Tomorrow, I would burn with her again in a triumphant fuck to celebrate our victory.
Only the brightest desert stars were still awake, glimmering pale above the dark-yellow hemline of the eastern sky.
Tomorrow had come already.
LX.
A Gold Beaked Hawk
Twenty-Fourth Summer. Firstblade
Tomorrow was faintly clearing over the horizon in the east, where Malan and the rest of our men had retreated. Tomorrow was coming at me with thirty thousand Crossers from the west.
The Ouna-Ma had left my side, but the imprint of her body was still on the sand. I stood on my feet, the tents around me were still deserted not even a single guard around. All vanished. I followed the bellows and the shouts and found them, a mob of more than a thousand, in a wide circle. In the middle of the circle, the Rods were guarding a wooden makeshift platform. The silver-haired Ouna-Ma climbed on top of the platform, took off her veil, lifted her eyes to the Sky—the same eyes that not long before were looking only at me—and devoured with arms open and eyes shut the cheers of the thousand men around her.
No animal was sacrificed, there were no auguries, and no time for ceremonies. Unlike most occasions, she didn’t speak about Truths and Legends to the men, but as the One who knew their fate.
“Brave Archers, fearless Blades. One is Enaka, one is Sah-Ouna, one is Khun, and three were the First Reghen. Too many to count are our Archers and our Blades. Invincible. A great day of victory has dawned for the One Tribe. Sah-Ouna sends her dream.”
The ecstatic cheers grew louder. Some of the men were staggering from wine and lack of sleep. The Reghen signaled silence, and they all held their breath to listen to the dream of the First Witch.
“This she saw, and this you must believe. A gold-beaked hawk spread its proud wings and flew over the three cities of the othertribers. It carried three bloodstained arrows in its claws and dropped one on each of their cities. Enaka will be victorious, and you will all join her in the stars of the night sky. To battle and eternal glory we go!”
Eternal glory.
The Ouna-Ma stood naked, her skin a soft brown color, my bites of passion clearly visible around her neck as she gave the signal for the onset of battle. She raised her fist four times toward the four points of the horizon, beginning with the east. In each direction, she yelled “Hei.” The warriors in front of her replied with four “Hei” to each of hers and raised hundreds of fists in the air. None of the men’s fists possessed the strength that her tiny hand did, the one that had been caressing me softly. After twenty “Hei,” everyone was happy to die. We were the Blades and the Archers, the too many to count, and no one would miss a few hundred of us.
They had abandoned me to fight an army fifteen times our size on foot and I had to listen to tales about gold-beaked hawks and Sah-Ouna’s dreams. And worst, young and old warriors around me burst in triumphant shouts, intoxicated with joy, on the dawn of their doomsday.
This is the witch’s dream, this you must believe.
If you are to remember one thing from my Story, remember this. Forget the senseless bloodbaths, the desperate kisses, and the heroic deeds. Remember only this.
In the thirty and more winters of my life, I met hundreds of witches and sorcerers, and not only from my own tribe. They all claimed to hold magical powers and be able to perform miracles, yet I never witnessed a single one of all that was fabled. They didn’t fly like birds when they covered themselves with the blood of a black bow-horned buck goat, they couldn’t decipher the whispers of the river wraiths, they didn’t turn into hairy she-wolves when Selene was silver full. They couldn’t even heal the mosquito fever with spells. Not one witch. Not one sorcerer. But they all had one magical gift. The more ludicrous their words and claims, the more men believed them. More of them. Even more. And then some. Regardless of the tribe. This One Spell. The most demoniacal, invincible, and all-powerful spell.
The Ouna-Ma descended from the platform, followed by the Rods. They mounted the only horses there, their own, and rode away in a cloud of dust back toward the east. They left us, just as suddenly as they had come, heading back to where Malan had escaped.
I lined up all the Archers and the Blades behind the moat to cover as much width as possible; their arrows nocked and ready. I stood in the middle, in front of the twentieth Pack that was made from the youngest Blades. Most fixed their gaze at the sky; a few looked at me as I was walking by them.
A second cloud of dust appeared from the east at our back, almost a hundred riders of Malan’s Rods galloping hard toward us. The day would be long and the surprises many, more than I would be able to see. Cheers rose up from the men.
“Will you stand by us?” I asked the half-naked man who was leading them.
“No. We have other orders.”
They dismounted and tied large branches with wide leaves to the backs of their horses.
“What are those?”
“Palm branches.”
“Where did you find them?”
“They were always here. We didn’t take them when we left.”
“And what do you want them for?”
“For dust.”
I didn’t understand, but I didn’t care anymore for meaningless words.
The sun was up already scorching the battlefield. There was no bird song, no trees around, but the sounds of drums and horns, grew louder, from the west where the enemy was camped. The othertribers were marching in a steady pace against us. If only we had our horses.
“Rain of arrows when I give the signal,” I said. “It won’t be long now. And then, you do as I said.”
The moat in front was filled with long spears, the horse killers, their sharp tips pointed forward and their bottom ends stuck firmly into the sand.
Malan, Reghen, the Ouna-Mas were all gone; I was the Leader now. It’s rare for a man to rule a thousand and four hundred brave with one move of his hand. So much power, almost magic; few feel it in a lifetime, but many envy it. And it is a sham. Because, just like the dust of the desert, they will scatter with the first wind. This is what defeats powerful armies. Not the enemy, but the awe and respect they have for their own power.
The hordes of othertribers debouched from the west like thousands of ants gushing out of their nests. The gold of the desert was slowly covered by the black of the men coming our way. I could see them better now as they were walking, slowly and steadily, holding giant wooden shields, pavises, each carried by two men. They had prepared themselves for battle against our Archers and brought the
ir great wood- and leather-bound shields. The crosses, the angels, and the eagles on them were getting closer. It was not going to be that kind of battle. We had no horses, and our bows would be useless without them.
When the Crossers were about one thousand feet from us, they paused their slow march. They saw no movement from our side other than a rain of arrows that couldn’t do enough harm. They could count how few we were. They had sent about four thousand on that first wave of infantry. There was one of us for every three of them marching, and they had a lot more waiting behind. At the sound of their horns, they threw down the heavy wooden pavises and charged at us. Most of them were wearing chainmail. We would be faster.
When they reached us at six hundred feet, I lowered my hand. I gave the signal my men had been waiting for. We unleashed a few more arrows and then I turned my back to the enemy and started running back along with my men. That was what Malan had ordered me to do.
The Rods, with the palm branches tied behind their horses, were the first to retreat eastward. They had remained behind my men, and when I gave the signal, they began to gallop away, raising tall clouds of dust. Instead of making a wall between us and our pursuers, they were in front of us, and we were chasing them. We were drowning in a sea of sand. Just as Malan had ordered.
The shouts of my Chiefs followed me in our disorderly retreat. The screams of the othertribers chased me. The dust from the horse hooves was choking us. I had not prepared for the dust. The Reghen hadn’t warned me. They had their reasons.
We were lighter and quicker on our feet. We easily increased our distance from the pursuers. Their arrows couldn’t reach us, and soon I couldn’t even see them behind me. They were on foot, so they would have to stand still to shoot. I ran as fast as I had ever run in my life, to set an example. I pushed and screamed at the slower ones to hurry.
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