“That’s nonsense. Don’t listen to him. A bear, that’s all it was,” said Chaka.
“A bear? This early?”
If it were anyone else, I might have believed that it was nonsense. Gunna was no coward. And he had four large scratches, carvings almost, on his huge arm.
The horrible death of Tzeba was one of fate’s few unexpected gifts for me. In his place came Rouba, the old Guide, the one who had taken me under his wing during the Sieve four winters ago. The first time I saw him at the crack of dawn, I ran to him, cheering and jumping. When I saw him again that first night, my thoughts darkened as the other faces of the Sieve came back with him.
There were fewer of us Uncarved, and Rouba took an interest from the beginning to practice more with me. Chaka didn’t seem to care, and he allowed that.
“You’ve grown strong,” Rouba said after a few days when I showed him my skills with great vigor.
“Chaka seeks only One,” I said.
“You’re strong enough to make a thrice-carved warrior instead of a fisherman or a boot maker. One of these Uncarved boys is going to be the next Khun. Khun-Taa’s time is coming.”
“There is no way I’m letting these fuckers—”
If any one of the other boys was Khun tomorrow, I would find a quick and disgraceful death. That much was certain.
Rouba was not impressed with my fat mouth.
“I talked to Chaka. He doesn’t think of you as First. Maybe second or third. He said you need practice with the bow,” Rouba said as we were parrying each other’s long blades.
I kept hearing Chaka and Bera and the rest, as they had spoken every day for the past three winters:
“This snake-curved bow is the life of the Tribe.”
“Without Enaka’s gift of victory, we are dead.”
I had never loved the bow. I wanted to see the eyes of my opponent in a blade fight. When they were glimmering with fear, I’d strike fast. When they were shining strong, I’d wait patiently to rip that confidence out of him until he was swinging, desperate. The bow had none of that. An arrow could sneak through from half a thousand feet away and open up a man like a sack.
I did all right with the bow, but I just wasn’t the best. I had become taller, and the shorter, stouter boys were better on the horse. I was quick and better with blades for the same reason. I hit them from above before they even had a chance to touch me. Even Malan. All except Gunna.
“You will grow up to be a Blade,” Rouba said as our irons were clanging against each other.
The Blades were warriors, not helpers, but their Story was not one for the stars. There was no Legend of the Ouna-Mas that ever spoke of brave Blades. Only about Archers. The Blades fought man-to-man with iron and almost never with bows. They usually came in when the battle was dying out. Like the flesh-eating birds.
“The Archers are hawks; the Blades are vultures,” Rouba would say.
“I will be Khun,” I answered him.
At that point, he hit my blade hard. As I took a clumsy step backward, he tripped me with his leg. I fell ass down. It was the last time he managed to do that. I was getting stronger, and he was growing older every dawn.
“You are a ninestar, Da-Ren, and you’re not even First among the Uncarved yet,” Rouba repeated.
Once on every Eagle moon, Chaka spoke with the Reghen and announced the order. He would tell us who was First in rank among our equals in age. The joking around was coming to an end. If our turn was to come that winter, the eighteenth for me, he wanted us to be prepared. The battle among us had simmered for four winters, but it now started to boil. Sah-Ouna was often at our little ceremony. One red ribbon was tied around the arm of the one who stood out as First.
But Khun-Taa proved immortal, like Darhul. Soon we would be named Wolves and enter our last spring Uncarved. Gunna was First most of the time, Malan quite a few times, and I fewer. The others, never.
Since we had become Eagles, our training changed, and we began to go out all over Sirol. We saw men, animals, slaves, women, even the orphans’ tents. We had to learn everything fast—about siege machines, battle tactics in the open plain, and techniques of enemy encirclement. We went to the tanneries, the Blacksmiths, and the slaughter yard. We should have stayed at the slaughter yard for a whole moon for training. It would prove useful in our later lives. In mine, for sure.
The one most useful thing we learned was how to count. Up until then, I didn’t know hundreds or thousands. I could count up to a few tens—until forty, one Pack of warriors—with great effort. Most of the time, I wouldn’t count. I knew by instinct if someone was missing or if something was spare.
“A Khun must know how to count Packs. He must know how many warriors there are in fifty Packs. And distance, feet and paces, thousands of them, or else he cannot ever lead a campaign,” the Reghen told us.
My mind opened quickly when we were let loose to see and to learn in Sirol. I started to wonder. And so did my dick. I was still a virgin, but by now I had seen many warriors and slave girls fucking in the camp outside of the tents in the summer. I even saw Noki once. He was carved, but his calm smile was exactly the same, as if he didn’t care. The rest of them did care. Women looked at us as if they wanted to ride us, men as if they wanted to beat the shit out of us.
So passed our Eagle spring, summer, and fall in training, the last careless, colorless ones. And then came the winter of the Forest.
It was that time before the three-day full-moon Great Feast of my eighteenth spring and the most important day for the Tribe.
Chaka was dead serious and grim when he delivered the news. “Listen, you are the last six Eagles. We are a few days from the Great Feast. After this ceremony, you will become Wolves and enter your final training. Now your turn has come. I’ll carve the four older boys during the Feast in the Wolfhowl. You’ll be there.”
“Wolfhowl,” mumbled Gunna. Balam, Akrani, and Lebo did the same.
The sound of the word took me back to the arena, with naked, barefoot, twelve-wintered ghosts around me. “You will join the Goddess’s Feast, along with thousands of other warriors, Ouna-Mas, Sah-Ouna, and Khun-Taa. Together with the men and the Witches,” added Chaka.
The next morning, Rouba said to me, “Things are not good. I fear for my Tribe, boy.”
I knew his fears. They were spread around Sirol, slithering like Darhul’s snake heads, poisoning every man’s words.
“We have to leave this place. Everyone talks about it,” I answered.
“Yes! By Enaka, yes! You, the young ones, don’t feel it but we the old have known it for long. We always traveled, since the age of the first Khun. But you have been trapped since birth. In this iron valley,” said Rouba.
Sirol itself meant “iron valley,” a name to honor the red, iron-rich soil which gave birth to our blades.
“Where will we go, Rouba?” I asked.
“That I don’t know,” he said. Rouba went on his right knee and started drawing with an arrowhead on the dirt. He took all the time to explain. “West and northwest is the Endless Forest. South, the Blackvein. And farther south the cities of the Empire.”
“Can’t we go there?” I said.
“We have; many times, we went as far as we could. We reached Sapul, the untrodden city. To the northeast; the vast meadows. They lead back to the steppe, the sacred soil we came from.”
“Why don’t we go back to the steppe?”
“Sacred but barren soil. What’s left? Nothing. Oh, here, to the southeast, the Black Sea.”
I had heard all this from the Reghen many times, but I liked to listen to Rouba explain it in his own way. The Black Sea, the slimy lair of Darhul and his nine heads.
“The curse is, we are too many. It would take a moon to cross even the Blackvein; all fast horses and oxen carts.”
“It is the Forest then,” I said. “That’s what the Ouna-Mas say. The West is our destiny.”
“Is that so? The Ouna-Mas haven’t spent a night in the Forest. Ride
for two moons north; keep the wood to your left. The wall of trees will not end. It goes on forever. And if I am right, it is that way to the west, once you are in there.”
“Have you been…in there?” I asked.
He lifted his eyes, and looked to the west while he kept talking.
“One whole moon on foot into the wood. I kept going west. I found just rocks and trees. And more of them.”
“Did you see the Reekaal?” I asked.
“Huh, no, none of those bloodeaters. But I saw the Dasal. Many times.”
I had never heard much about the Dasal.
“They are savages, they live in the Forest in small settlements,” Rouba said.
“Are they a big Tribe?”
“No big Tribe can survive in the Forest. They are scavengers, only a handful, and useless as warriors. I’ve seen them, unlike the Reekaal. The Forest hunters, the Dasal, are real,” Rouba told me. He was the first one ever to speak to me about the Forest without repeating Legends.
We had settled in Sirol, where grass and water were abundant for the horses and there was enough iron in the earth for making weapons and tools. The warriors kept raiding the surrounding areas, in the fall, always away from the Forest, but things became more difficult with each passing winter.
That same night we had all gathered to listen to Chaka about the Feast of Wolfhowl.
“This is unheard of,” said Bera, looking around for others to agree. “How long have we been stuck in the same valley?”
“Summers and winters come and go,” said another.
“Without a campaign, we’ll crawl starving and naked of glory to our death,” added Chaka.
All agreed. They were cursing because the meat slices were carved thinner and there were no fresh horses to replace the dying. They kept looking at the hut’s entrance to make sure that none of the Reghen’s two hundred ears and eyes were close and continued.
“Khun-Taa is too old for new campaigns,” mumbled the venomous tongues, especially those of the fivecarved Guides who were the same age as the aging One Leader of the Tribe.
“We have waited long enough for Khun-Taa to die. The time has come for Sah-Ouna to bless a new beginning. Now, at the Feast of the First Moon of Spring,” said Chaka. “But first, you will join the Blades tomorrow. They leave for the Forest.”
“To the West?” I asked.
Rouba, who until then had been listening silently to the others, spoke: “Don’t send them in the Forest; they cannot fight there. Archers are useless there; even horses are not much good.”
“They are not going deep. One day, in and out. I got my orders and that’s how it’s gonna be. The Reghen ordered a manhunt. They want the Uncarved to join,” said Chaka. “The Great Feast is upon us.”
“And Sah-Ouna needs fresh lives to sacrifice,” added Bera. “I’ll go with them and the warriors to guide them.” He didn’t look excited about the hunt.
At dawn, the childhood Stories of the most carefree era of my life and my training with the Uncarved came to an end. There was no ceremony. I swallowed the cold gruel, strapped the scabbards and the bow onto my back, and jumped onto my horse. By nightfall, I had fallen into the black-and-blue waters of life where only grown men swam.
I was to find out at last.
The one thing that turns a boy into a man in just one day.
It was so simple.
The one thing that lifts him up in the air like a baby and throws him to the ground like a puppy.
No one had told me till then.
XXII.
Blue
Eighteenth spring. Uncarved—
A few days before I became a Wolf.
“A woman. Othertriber, young, soft, the one with eyes of color. We fetch her; we bring her back for the Great Feast of Spring. Then we come back,” said the Chief of the Blades. These were his only words before he put boot on stirrup to lead our pack forward.
The one with eyes of color? He was on horseback and had no time for my questions.
Cloudy but windless dawned the day of my first manhunt. The kindred spirits of the wolf, the mauler, the eagle, and the owl were on our side as we marched out of the camp. We would hunt together. A dozen Blades led and paid little attention to us. Two Guides and whatever was left of my pack, the six Uncarved, were riding farther back, next to the oxen-pulled cages.
The Blades were chewing on dried meat, and most of them were talking and joking around while their Chief rode first, sulky and quiet. Everyone would steal glances toward the Forest, which rose to the left of us. A lifeless brown-and-gray wall.
“We’re not going to fight pumpkins today,” said the ninestar Bera.
“Where are we going?”
“Half a day’s ride, toward the north. We will enter the Endless Forest by afternoon. The Blades will hunt the Dasal. It’s where the Trackers saw them a few days ago. They’ve come south for the winter.”
“The Dasal are evil spirits. Shouldn’t we bring more men?” asked Lebo.
“They’re flesh and blood. All you have to do is put them in the cages after the Blades capture them. And watch that they don’t escape.”
“But the Legends—”
“We all know the Legends, kid. Any othertriber who lives in the Forest is a demon. The Dasal are not Reekaal, but they dwell in there too.”
The horses continued their course on the outskirts of the Forest, without entering. The Blades told us that the oxen and the heavy carts couldn’t move through the dense tree branches and the rough paths and we should stay out of the Forest as long as possible. Maybe it really was that way. Our warriors were useless on foot, and the horses were useless in the deep wood.
All my fellow Uncarved had come: Gunna, Lebo, Malan, Akrani, and Balam. Chaka had tied the red ribbon on Malan’s arm, and the pale-faced boy was First among us.
Gunna was repeating the Stories we had all heard from the Reghen about the Reekaal. He hadn’t stopped doing that since the night he had seen them. Or whatever it was that he had seen. The Stories sounded even more frightening because the giant recited them.
“Lidless, red eyes, never close. They skin alive whoever enters the wood. Their nails, long as blades.” He pointed at the scars on his arm. “They hang their prey from the branches and rip open at the neck. Suck out the blood and marrow while life still twitches… The Reekaal bewitch the trees and the Dasal and enter their bodies. Every living thing in there, tree or man is their servant.”
“Nonsense for seven-wintered children,” mumbled the arrogant Balam, riding next to me with his head high. “I’ll kill the first one I see today.”
“Have you ever been inside the Forest, you featherbrain?” Gunna asked him.
“Don’t talk to me that way. Soon I will be the Khun.”
“Like shit you will be! Just step in there first. Come on, go fetch us a kill.”
“We won’t see Reekaal; they only come out at night,” said the Ninestar.
“Tell them about the Dasal, Ninestar,” said Lebo.
Balam let the reins and pretended to jump on him with his two arms stretched out. “Boooooh Dasal!” he yelled.
Drops of sweat were shining above Lebo’s lip and his first young beard. The veins of his neck were pulsating, pumping the blood to feed his first warrior Story.
Midday came, but the sun was still hiding behind a patch of faint clouds. We were late, but the Blades continued at a trot. Night was going to catch up with us.
“I’ve seen the Dasal many times. They live in small settlements, huts, in the deep of the wood. They don’t have horses or strong bows like ours,” said Bera.
“How do they fight?”
“They don’t. Not us, they can’t. They hunt, gather mushrooms, and dig for roots. We’ll catch a few for Sah-Ouna’s sacrifices and go back.”
“But do they have eyes of fire, red and yellow? Like Gunna claims?” asked Akrani.
A loud raspy sound, like the sharpening of long knives, flew out of the thick bushes. Everyone froze.
“What…what was that?” cried Lebo.
“Shhhh, demon’s howl,” said Gunna.
“Pheasant,” said Malan, calm as an old Guide who had been there many times.
Not much later, two of the Blades came out of the bushes holding the pheasants pierced by their arrow shafts.
Bera turned to us and continued. “Eyes of fire? The Dasal? No, they aren’t owls.”
Lebo jumped in. “The Dasal have green eyes. I was raised in the Trackers’ tents before the Sieve, and I heard all the tales. One thing they all said, is that the trees themselves were the Dasal. Man is tree and tree is man.”
There was a grin on Malan’s face as he turned and whispered to the rest: “Pheasant is demon and demon is pheasant.” Balam tried to muffle his laughter.
“Keep speaking, Lebo,” I encouraged him.
“The branches come alive and grab you; their tips get under your nails and into your nostrils. The Dasal don’t kill with an ax. The tree holds on the living for entire moons, melting their bodies, emptying the blood. It takes many winters for a man to die this death until all warm life is sucked out and he wrinkles like a one-hundred-wintered, rotten corpse. The Trackers used to say that they saw warriors, still trapped within trunks, after tens of winters, living dead.”
“That is stupid talk, Lebo,” Balam said.
“Those Trackers have some crazygrass Stories,” said Malan.
“Yeah? Ask the Blades who have come here before. They will tell you what they’ve seen. Dasal with blue eyes, the color of the sky. That is why we are here. Sah-Ouna has ordered them to find a blue-eyed or a green-eyed one for the sacrifice. She craves for the eye that has the gift of the Sky and can see into the future, even after she rips it out of the head.”
“There are no people with blue eyes, stupid.”
The Chief of the Blades heard our senseless words and joined in. I expected him to say there were no such creatures.
“The Dasal are just men, but when you catch them with the neckrope, they know they’re going to die and will fight like wolves. If you’re not quick enough, they’ll bring their ax down on your head or stab your chest with a hunting knife. They are strong men. They hunt in the Forest all day, living next to the Reekaal, and are not afraid. You strike to kill. No fear or hesitation if you are in danger.”
Drakon Book II: Uncarved Page 6