Drakon Omnibus

by C. A. Caskabel

  “I know that he has the gentle heart of the dove. He will always protect you. He went away because that was the only way to keep us safe, but one day he will come back. He will come back for the same reason: to save us from the gravest danger. The stars will bring him back.”

  DRAKON

  Book IV

  BUTTERFLY

  C.A. CASKABEL

  Copyright © 2018 C.A. Caskabel

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-1983698064 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-9906150-3-3 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  www.caskabel.com

  BOOK IV: BUTTERFLY

  “She is the Pack leader, my sweet.”

  LXVIII.

  Run Away

  Twenty-Fourth Autumn. “Firstblade”

  Like the raging fire-breaths of a silken drakon, the dark-yellow sails emerged from the straits of Thalassopolis and cut through the Black Sea to take us north. The oars fought against the sea waves, to cross the indistinct border which belonged neither to the Southeastern Empire nor our Tribe. After a second night of brutal sailing, the wonders of Sapul, the marble bathtubs and the silver platters, faded from memory. The Reigning City was already but an obscure dream.

  Real and unrelenting was the storm that came. The Sky was torn in two by lightning bolts separating the Empire of the Cross from that of Enaka. Both gods were furious with me. Betrayal, desecration, and defiance were the only offerings I had ever placed upon their altars. I could hear their rage in the thunder:

  “Why is this ninestar abomination still alive, the blasphemous Firstblade who belongs to no Banner and no Tribe?” shouted Enaka’s Sky. She poured down the rain like sheets of crystal arrows, to destroy us.

  “The heathen who set ablaze our sacred temples, the first to step in Varazam, the hero of Apelo, the first who dared enter the palace of Thalassopolis and the Church of Holy Wisdom. That Satan’s dog is still alive and always manages to escape the fury of the Archangel.”

  The God of the Cross unleashed golden rivers of lightning to scorch our hull.

  But nothing could stop us now.

  “We bought the best sails, the fire-yellow byssus, made from the flax of the Far South. Not even the claws of the Devil can tear them asunder,” said the captain.

  The keel was lined with wool, tar, and thin lead leaves to keep it dry. The storm lasted for three autumn nights. Our ship leapt and fell a thousand times in the hungry sea, but it took on no water. The carved white swan on the stern lowered her head and kissed the foaming tongue of every plunging wave, and her kisses softened the angry sea into submission. The demons hissed and screamed for my death but fell defeated yet again. “Da-Ren will not fall,” whispered the men to calm their weary minds as they battled the storm with oars, sails, and curses. I was the invincible and immortal Drakon; the pelting rain and the furious wind raised only tufts of my long hair to slap my cheeks gently. A small and insignificant punishment.

  I had two blue eyes as my amulet now, two lazuli stones that I had picked off the Holy Book in Thalassopolis. They were safely hidden in a leather pouch tied around my neck. Zeria’s silver amulet was buried deep in the sand hills of Apelo, among the sand-washed skeletons of brave horses and men. It had protected me well till then.

  The defeated gods hid, ashamed, leaving a broken Selene to swim in the night sky and lead us to our final harbor. It was a ship of fate and determination, of infidels and monsters, lovers and singers. In the night, Agathon steered the paddles and sang his tales about the blood of the immortal sea drakons. Raven, the surviving Ouna-Ma who had fallen in love with Noki and had renounced the rules of the Goddess, started singing on the evening that the waves subsided, and her words swelled the sails like a divine wind. The men joined in by pounding their boots on the deck and their sheathed blades on the bulwarks, giving her the rhythm, with passion and laughter, with tears and anticipation, as if they had been away from their land for five long summers. We were getting closer.

  The words of her song were the ashen wolf, the double-curved bow, the long-necked horse, the Iron Valley. For the first time I balanced, unsure, on the balls of my feet, I raised my arms shoulder-high and started to twist and sway to her words and the beating of the blades. I turned for a hundred or more breaths, slow then fast, slow and fast again, and lost myself in a sweet dizziness. This one and only time in my life, I danced, just before I set foot again on my land and Zeria’s.

  We saw seagulls again four days later, and we swerved to the west. Soon after that, land appeared north of the estuaries of the Blackvein. We were back. A thousand feet from shore, my men could wait to set foot on their homeland no longer. They jumped up and down like children and embraced one another. They would have dived naked into the water, had they ever learned to swim. Wild horses were galloping free in the wide sandy shores, their hooves spraying the brine over their long manes. The smell of horseshit would bring tears to the men’s eyes, had they ever learned to cry.

  The dusk was turning to night when we saw the torches of the Tribe’s harbor.

  “We are not mooring in this harbor,” I said. “We don’t know who rules over it.”

  We extinguished our torches and ordered Agathon to take us to the beach. I left a handful of the men to guard Agathon and the ship and made it ashore when a patch of clouds darkened the half-moon sky. Before dawn, we were walking on solid earth again as myriads of seashells cracked beneath our boots. We hurried up a mound from which we could watch the harbor as it was waking up to the sounds.

  “No birdsong,” said Noki, as we watched the harbor men waking and dragging their feet slowly to the boats. A couple of fishing boats were moored in the sole quay, and the only sound was the undulating slurps of the sea. “These men…they walk like they’re dead already.”

  “Or starving. How many do you count?” I said.

  “Twenty at best, with the old and the little ones.”

  We started descending, and as we got closer to them, they huddled together, their panicked shouts louder and clearer.

  “Khun-Malan rules!” shouted Leke, and I stopped to stare at him.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “You don’t want a fight, Firstblade, do you?” he asked.

  “Nah, not yet. But nock your arrows and be ready, you never know,” I said.

  A short man with an ashen beard broke through the crowd and walked toward us. He was followed by a barefoot boy who had the same dull eyes and a taller man who hobbled behind them. “Where are you coming from?” the short man asked.

  “From Khun-Malan’s campaign,” I answered. “Who are you?”

  “I am Chief here, of the harbor,” he said, his hand extending slowly toward the few huts at his back. “You are the first ones back! Were you with the Khun, really? How did you make it here?”

  “By sea. I am Da-Ren, the Firstblade of the…Khun,” I said.

  “He is, I know him,” said the man with the lame leg next to him. He had the stature of a warrior.

  The Chief moved close to my face. “I am Akhur of the Craftsmen. Left behind with those who couldn’t follow. What happened over there?” He was too close. Rows of teeth revealed a sick man, a foul breath of hunger and rotting gums. His left hand was short of two fingers. I took a step back.

  “Triumph. We conquered and pillaged!” said Vani, one of the few faithful who had followed me all the way back.

  “Half of Sirol says that our men were lost in the seas of Darhul,” Akhur continued, grinning at the thought that misfortune had befallen us.

  “And the other half?” I asked.

  “We heard a Tracker made it back, to the outposts. He died before reaching Sirol. He spoke of gold and strange rich lands. He
said that Malan will never return. No one will.” He paused there. “And where are you going?”

  “To the Iron Valley, the nest of the Tribe. Who leads the camp of Sirol?” I asked.

  “Sani, the old Blade,” said the man.

  “We’ll be all right,” I said looking back at my men. “Go signal to Agathon to enter the harbor.” I turned to Akhur. “How many horses can you spare?”

  “None.”

  “I need thirty. You’ll get barley and dried fish, and you’ll get the horses back once I am in Sirol.”

  “Dried fish? Ha! Do I look like I need more stinking fish?” said Akhur.

  “I have cold iron too, if you don’t like dried fish,” I answered, tapping the sheath with fast fingers.

  “I can’t spare anything for you,” he said spitting in front of me. “I don’t know you and thirty horses is all we have.”

  I glanced at Noki, shaking my head.

  I have no patience for this shit, Noki. I must find her soon.

  “By noon you bring the thirty horses. I spotted twenty from up the hill,” Noki said. “Ok, Ghur?”

  “Akhur.”

  “Whatever. You get some trakhana and wine. Things you’ve never had before. You will be grateful. We ride out of here tonight; it’s done. Now, unless you want your pelt to become the horse trapping, turn around and do as I say.”

  Noki was towering a full head over the old man. Akhur’s men were fewer, yet I heard a couple of them shout, “We’ll never give up the horses.”

  I gripped my blade tighter. This was a desperate bunch of outcasts who didn’t have much to lose. As I started to move on them, I saw them backing down, their faces easing in awe, with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. A couple of them even knelt.

  I turned and looked behind me. Raven had unveiled herself and was approaching us, whispering slowly, her eyes fixed on Akhur. She walked up to him and touched his cheek, and he knelt too. She was soon surrounded by the children, the men, and the old crones.

  “So many winters since I last saw one,” were Akhur’s last words to me. He left to fetch the horses.

  “I’ll bring them back,” I said, yet I knew already that these men didn’t starve for meat, but for hope.

  It was a good trade for Akhur.

  Before noon, Agathon had moored the ship to the amazement of the local men.

  “Haven’t seen such a ship before,” said Akhur. “Is it ours?”

  “Not anymore,” I said.

  Agathon wouldn’t stay long.

  “What of him?” Leke said. “He betrayed us at Sapul.”

  “His son did,” I said.

  “Do the honorable thing, Da-Ren,” Baagh pleaded.

  And so I did.

  “Unload all supplies you can spare, and you are out of here, mad man,” I said to Agathon.

  A broad smile of exhilaration was painted across his face as Baagh translated my words. Agathon fell on both knees, palms joined, and fingers twined in front of his tearful eyes, and he started addressing me in a cheerful voice.

  “What did he say?” I asked Baagh as Agathon turned his back and ran to his boat.

  “He said you are a stinking barbarian dog, and he’ll see you in hell.”

  “Not for a while,” I said, laughing, and waving at the bearded man. “I’ll miss your tales, you drunk!”

  Agathon, his family, and three of the six slaves, who chose sea over land, sailed back south on the same evening. One of my warriors, Ubitan, asked me to stay with them. He was a young man, his skin darkened by the sun of the desert and the pelago. Throughout our journey, he was the most eager to learn from Agathon how to rig the sails and mend the boat.

  “I want to see the fires of Thalassopolis again. To sail once more through the Thousand Islands,” he said, gazing south and away from me.

  A few summers ago, I would have opened up his guts, but now I had more respect for a man who chose his own Story away from Khuns and Chiefs. The sea had stolen his soul and eyes. I was never to see him again. The dreamers and the adventurers didn’t owe me anything. Like the seagulls, they were free to fly away.

  The horses that Akhur brought were miserable and weak, but they’d have to do.

  “I don’t know, Da-Ren,” said Noki. “I am not sure.”

  “That we should go back?”

  “Those men here have eaten rat and seabirds. I didn’t see a single goat or sheep; their children are dying, their mouths rotting. They say Sirol is the lair of the cursed and the forgotten. They talked of a plague.”

  I must get back to her, Noki.

  “We’ll know soon enough. We ride,” I said, forcing a smile of confidence on my weary face.

  The Iron Valley trembled again beneath the hooves of our animals, like a mother embracing her lost sons after two thousand nights. I was riding a chestnut gelding, riding strong for the first time after Apelo. Leke, Baagh, Noki and the rest kept next to me. As Baagh had promised we had made it back in one moon, two days short of that if I counted right. We were missing the Reghen who returned to Malan of his own will, the Ironskull Ouna-Ma, and only two of my men. One had suffered a sickness of the bowels at the beginning of our journey and didn’t last long. We threw his body into the sea, as the boat was not suitable for any pyre. Ironskull had disappeared in the middle of the night, and no one had taken the burden of her death on his shoulders. Raven was riding with Noki, robe slit high, legs pressed on each side of the mare, arms wrapped tightly around his waist, hair free of the black headband and grown over her long skull, leaning against his back, her raven eyes gazing away toward the sea that she’d sail no more.

  We camped the first night in a grazing range, the landscape broken only by the outline of a single walnut tree.

  “Can you find this place again, Da-Ren?” Baagh asked.

  “If I have to. I can remember,” I said.

  “Walk with me. Make sure that no one follows us.” He was counting, and every time I tried to interrupt him, he would shush me. “Two hundred paces north of the walnut tree, then one hundred west. Under the black rock,” he said.

  He was talking and at the same time digging next to a dark boulder. I tried to push it; it was the weight of a grown man.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I am burying it here, two pouches of gold. Help me roll this boulder over.”

  “I thought we only had one pouch left,” I said.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “God gives,” he grinned. “If you need to escape, if I need to escape, you get one, Da-Ren.”

  “Escape from what? To go where?” I asked.

  “If you need to find me again, you come here. Get one, leave one for me. I’ll do the same. You find a way to sail south. Make it to the Castlemonastery, at Hieros Island.”

  “The monks who conquer death? Do you trust me with the gold?”

  “We don’t have many friends here, Da-Ren. We have to trust someone,” he said. “This is the last of our gold.”

  After five summers of journey and slaughter, the only loot I had amassed were the two lazuli stones around my neck.

  The next morning brought a weak drizzle, and we slowed down.

  “We will pace ourselves. Don’t ride the horses to death,” I said.

  “Yeah, you never know when we’ll need them fresh. We might not be welcome,” said Noki.

  “Did you see those men in the harbor? What a fate to starve here for five winters!” said Leke.

  “They said that in Sirol, they have eaten the meat of woman and child to survive,” another of my men interjected.

  “We’ll know soon enough,” I said.

  As the weather improved around noon, our mood did as well. We had returned to the land of the strong, the soil that bred the warriors. The chariots of the Goddess had smoothed the earth flat for the horses to gallop on and made the meadows bountiful for the animals to graze. There was plenty of fresh water and life, unlike the steppe, the deserts, the seas and the salt lakes we had journeyed to. Th
is was the land that bore iron for the blades, strong maple heartwood for the bows. It was a land without temples or castles, its only church and god being the Sun who painted small ponds and winding rivers with the colors of the redcurrant, the peach, and the apricot at dawn and in the late evening.

  Thirty-five thousand we had abandoned in Sirol. Old men, women, and children together with a handful of warriors. They would need Stories—about the campaigns of yesterday and the hope of tomorrow—and I had to bring them.

  “What do you think we’ll find?” Noki asked.

  “We are back,” was all I said.

  Leke was not intoxicated by the dream of the Forest, and he was talking more sense than me. “Maybe we’ll find only corpses and ashes. Whoever is alive, we don’t know if he’s friend or enemy anymore. Many moons have passed,” he said. “Let’s stop for the night on Jackal’s Hill before the camp. Send someone down to see what’s going on.”

  It was late on the third evening when one of the men shouted, “There!” pointing toward wisps of smoke rising to the north.

  We headed for them, and found a bunch of tents and a few huts.

  “Only three men, a few women and children. A few goats. They say they are farmers,” said Leke.

  “How do you know what they are saying?” I asked.

  “They are of the Tribe, Da-Ren,” he said.

  “Farmers? Of the Tribe? And so close to Sirol?”

  “Hear this! One of them said that these are Sani’s farms and he’ll crucify us if we harm them.”

  “Sani’s farms…” I repeated the words to grasp their meaning.

  “So, what do we do?” asked Leke. “The men are hungry.”

  “Get a couple of goats. Don’t hurt the men.”

  “There are a couple of women,” said Lebas, looking at me, waiting for my approval.

  “No, none of this. You wait,” I said. “We are close to Sirol.”

  “Firstblade, we’re only a day away, if we send someone over those hills he’d see the fires,” said Leke.