“Don’t worry. I will help you during your first days. You have been sent here by Khun-Malan; they will obey you,” the Reghen told me.
I wasn’t at all worried. I had the cool composure of someone who had never thought, didn’t expect, and was not afraid of being there. I was swimming in another man’s dream. A bit curious I was, and that was all.
The First Pack, the one I was to command, camped in the southeastern corner of the settlement, near the river. At the edge of the fence. I had known that fence well since I was a boy, many winters ago. Across from there, if I continued toward the east, I would fall upon the first tents of the orphans. That was where Malan had sent me—across from the tents of the piss-carrying boys where we had grown up. So that I could see it every morning and smell it every night when the easterly wind blew all the way into my tent.
The Reghen gathered all of the men of the First in front of the evening fire and announced who I was. I received many hard looks and a few lifeless cheers.
“A worthy Chief! A worthy Chief!”
Whatever words the tradition dictated. The cheers faded fast.
I knew two of them. One was an unwelcome and forgotten face from the Sieve, Urak. He wasn’t a twelve-wintered anymore. He was bearded, grimy, and uglier than I cared to remember him. He lowered his eyes as soon as he saw me. The other was Ogan, who had just arrived with me and wouldn’t stop turning his head in every direction and talking.
The men were gathered and waiting, looking at me, their meat, and the fire.
“Say something,” the Reghen told me.
Say what? I didn’t care to say anything.
“At daybreak, we’ll have words, men,” I said. A heavyset, long-bearded man greeted me with a drawn-out belch before I finished my words and brought a round of laughter.
It hadn’t started well.
I didn’t know what to do, and everyone could see it. The older ones were chuckling. I took a cup of the milky mush and sat next to the only one who had put a little spirit into his cheers.
“What’s your name, warrior?
“Leke, three carvings, Chief.”
I had already seen his carvings—thick, old, swollen, deep, unmistakable.
“And how long have you been here, Leke?”
“This will be my eighth winter. I am already a rusty iron.”
He looked young and strong, but his words said his better days were behind him.
“Who is the Leader of all the Blades Packs here? I have to go and meet him in the morning.”
“We don’t have a Leader of all the Blades yet. The last one who tried to—”
“Yes, I remember. Keral. I was there. And still, there is no one?”
“They said that Khun-Malan will choose a new Leader for all eighteen Packs of the Blades before the winter is out. They are in no hurry since the raids have stopped till next summer.”
“Winter we rest. Spring is the fresh beginning,” I said in a loud voice.
My head started to thaw, and I was beginning to think. I couldn’t handle any damned Leader over me.
“Let’s hope the Khun chooses a brave one,” Leke said.
Oh, that he will, Leke, I promise.
I would be the next Leader of all the Blades, even if I had to swallow blades and shit them from my asshole.
I stood up to say some words worthy of a Leader. I passed my eyes for a breath over each warrior there. I took off my squirrel skin. I was alert for the first time that day because now I had a purpose, even if it was not a great one. I took out both blades, raised them into the air and crossed them over my head to honor the Blades banner. I lowered them ready to begin my first speech.
It wasn’t necessary. Almost all of the men slowly stood up before I had uttered a word, and about forty pairs of eyes fixed straight at me. A few came closer, three or four paces away. They weren’t looking me straight in the eye, but rather at my naked left arm. The mark of the ninestar triangle wasn’t visible. My long hair hid it well. They would find it soon, but it didn’t have to be on the first night.
With everything that had happened over the past couple of days, I had forgotten one strange detail. Above the black ribbon of the Chief, there should have been a deep carving—the one the Ouna-Ma had given me with her ring half a moon ago. As I looked at my arm, I could see the carving, but it wasn’t deep. It had healed and looked more like a scratch. The carvings of our Tribe were scars that could not be missed. They ate through the flesh and swelled to a flush of pink, and hair no longer grew there. Not mine. Ten feet away from the nearest warrior, I looked as if I were completely…
“Uncarved!”
The word came out of a few mouths. It would no longer protect me. It would only bring death.
The Reghen rushed to end our first gathering.
“Tomorrow, men, the Chief will speak to you. Go and rest now.”
Murmuring among themselves, the warriors started to make for their tents. The night was freezing, and it was best for everyone.
“Now be careful, Chief,” Leke said to me, grabbing my arm softly just beneath the black ribbon.
“Careful with what?”
But he had already disappeared among the others.
Before I left for my new tent, the Reghen pulled me aside.
“I’ll stay the first three days to guide you till you settle in.”
“Yeah, but—”
“It is what the Truths require when a fresh Chief starts.”
My new tent was small, the hides old and stinking of horse dung and made for someone much shorter. Every Rod, even if he wasn’t a Chief, had a better tent. The hole where Khun-Malan pissed was bigger and probably smelled better. The Chief’s tent was an angry slap in the face for an Uncarved. At least it was mine, I said to myself that night when I looked for more hides to guard myself against the frost. My little squirrels were shivering. But I was a Chief, and I had my own tent. I didn’t go, like Leke and Urak, to sleep side by side with other men.
I would learn quickly that having my own tent didn’t stop anyone from coming in and waking me whenever they chose to. The first man—I didn’t even know his name—rushed in way past midnight when the rooster usually crows for a second time. Before he shook me awake, the blow horn was already sounding the alarm, and I immediately rose to my feet.
“Chief! Gather everyone!” the dark shadow of a man shouted at my face. A breath of worms and bile.
I crawled out of the tent flaps as fast as I could.
Even the Reghen was shouting and running. He was calling my name: “Chief Da-Ren! Chief Da-Ren. Hurry!”
Chief Da-Ren.
Ogan was next to me and armed for battle. Brave boy, born only to die.
“The Blackvein horn!”
“On your feet!”
Everyone was giving a different order.
Men with torches were gathering around me on foot. They had woken up but hadn’t mounted their horses.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Did you lose a mare?” I even tried to smile at my stupid joke.
“Down at the Blackvein. They are invading. Ride now and stop them,” said the Reghen. “I sent messengers to wake up everyone.”
He pointed toward the south at the banks of the river.
“Then…let’s go! Everyone on their horses!” I shouted.
“You haven’t gotten such orders,” said a much older man with a long beard and a half-shaven head.
“Who are you?”
“Sani, two carvings,” he replied.
He had only two. He could make Chief of the Pack. If it wasn’t for me.
There was no Leader above me to give me orders.
“We ride now! Bring the oil and the pine’s blood for the arrows,” I said, louder this time, looking straight at him. I was already on my horse.
The First Pack was ten tents altogether. One for me, one for the Reghen, and eight for the rest. The help and women were farther away. I could see the Second to the west. The two of us were camped close
st to the river. The Reghen was shouting for us to make haste. I led the way. The Second had mounted but stood still. My men followed me with their horses and their curses. Not for long.
“To the hill!” shouted a rider in the dark, and they all turned left. I turned to follow them, screaming madly.
“Da-Ren, Chief of the Pack, you’re following last in battle,” Enaka whispered above my head.
We made it to the top of a grassy hill above the river.
“Who ordered that?” I shouted again.
“I did,” said Sani.
Before I got a chance to strike him, the Reghen was next to me.
“Good! From here, we can see everything,” he said. “Let’s see how many they are.”
“I don’t see anything,” I said.
I could barely see the river; I guessed where it was because the fires of our camp snaked around its north bank. I thought I could see some shadows by the fires down there, but not much. If only there were some light.
“There you see those men, the rafts,” the Reghen said.
My sight was improving gradually, adjusting. A couple of torches.
But there are very few of them.
“Doesn’t look like an invasion to me,” I said.
“Light the arrows,” ordered Sani.
Under the flight of our flaming arrows I saw half a dozen rafts approaching from the south coast of the Blackvein. More and more cries tore through the clear winter night air.
“We must burn the bridge. Stop them. They are invading,” said Sani. “Fire, fire!” he was shouting.
“No,” I countered. “Wait!”
“No time. Now!” he said again.
Six rafts invading Sirol of the thirty thousand Archers?
“I am not sure. Those men, to the east, running for the river? Are they Blades?”
“Who cares? Burn the bridge,” Sani screamed.
He was no leader. He had panicked, I could see it.
I could count about twenty men running from our side of Blackvein toward the rafts. They looked unarmed.
“They are on foot,” I said.
They couldn’t be ours. When they reached the othertribers there were no screams of fighting.
“No, I think they are…prisoners,” the Reghen said. “We gather them next to the Craftsmen camp.”
I think your prisoners are escaping, Reghen.
“The kid doesn’t know what to do,” Sani cried to the Reghen. “By Enaka, we need to burn the bridge now.”
I wasn’t even looking at him anymore. I was watching below.
The raiders had overtaken the few of the Tribe’s men who were guarding the bridge. But they were not invading. They were helping the prisoners to board the rafts. And they had lighted up torches.
They are trying to set the bridge on fire. They are too few.
“Save the bridge!” I screamed.
“They came to take their prisoners,” the Reghen mumbled.
“Everyone ride for the bridge!” I shouted.
“If we lose the bridge, they will crucify us,” said the Reghen.
I raised my Uncarved arm and motioned for my men to follow me. I started cantering downhill as fast as it was safe for the horse, to get to the riverbank. I stopped many breaths later. Ogan was next to me, but no one else. They all remained behind.
I turned and yelled, “What in the Demon?” I had to go back again and gather them.
“What are you doing?” Leke asked me.
“Da-Ren, protect the bridge!” shouted the Reghen.
“We wait for the Archers,” said Sani, next to Leke.
My left hand grabbed the hilt, and I bit my lip with my upper teeth until I bled. These men I had been given were no warriors. More screams were coming from the side of the bridge. We couldn’t see who they were, but we could hear. They were our guards who were falling.
The Reghen was pushing me with orders: “Save the bridge. We mustn’t lose it. Attack now.”
But my men were not my men yet. They weren’t listening.
“We wait for the Archers,” said Sani. “Always, everywhere.”
“We never go first,” said a man next to him.
I turned my head to meet their faces. Fear or mistrust? I didn’t care much about any bridge. But it was right there that I knew that either I tamed these men or I would be dead in a few nights. The chilling breeze woke me. I had heard enough. The Archers were nowhere in sight. Their camp was at the other end of Sirol. It would be more likely that the orphans or the Tanners next to us would come before the Archers.
A few of my men were turning back up the hill.
I didn’t have a cool head anymore, only rage that I had ended up there. I needed to kill someone. The othertribers. Sani. Anybody.
“Men of the First. Ride forward with me!” I shouted from the bottom of my guts. “By Enaka, now. Last one gets five.”
Five carvings. I would send him to the Guides. He would never again see a woman or fresh meat. They understood that order.
About forty men followed me. No one overtook me. We tried to gallop wherever the slope flattened. Close to the riverbank, the terrain changed and became treacherous. Blind dark puddles and rocks spread in front of me. I pulled the horse back to stop before we both went tumbling down.
“Everyone dismount; on foot, we run!” I yelled.
Behind me, I heard the voices of my men raging.
“On foot, he says!”
“A crazy fuck of a Chief we got.”
Othertribers and prisoners were setting the bridge on fire.
“You! Bring water. Lead ’em, Sani,” I said to the men on my left, pointing with the blades in my hand. “Rest, follow me,” I said to the men on my right.
I could hear more than I could see. I had to trust the blade more than the bow. Our blades came out to cut the heads and bodies of the othertribers; my long iron hit first to cut through the bewilderment and the objections of my men.
We took back the bridge. Blow by blow. Man by man. The prisoners who were running to escape were unarmed. I struck down three. Now, yes. This was what I needed. Life in their death. I wiped out defeat and rage. This was even better than a Redveil moaning on all fours. The screaming guts spilling out of them. Enaka lit more stars to guide our way. I could see three rafts loaded with prisoners heading back south. I leaped into the water. The stars were becoming brighter.
“Burn the rafts! Stop them!” I yelled.
“He’s going to finish us all tonight,” I heard someone saying behind me.
“No, Da-Ren. Back!” shouted Leke.
“No, forward!” I yelled again with the frozen water of the Blackvein up to my knees.
Ogan stood confused for a breath but then he charged first. He was even farther in than I was, and was hacking the othertribers that were trying to reach the rafts. With a roaring smile, he showed me three fingers after he killed his third man.
Few followed me. Most stayed behind and were already retreating.
I would kill Leke, the coward, as soon as this raid was over. But Leke was still standing there, shouting at me to get back. I could see around me clearly now. Enaka lit even more stars, so many that the night brightened in splendor.
Damn, these are no stars.
Hundreds of torched arrow shafts were coming toward us from the direction of the camp.
“Back, Chief, run!” yelled Leke.
I finally realized.
“Will they shoot?”
“They are shooting.”
“Everyone, back now. Now. Now!” I shouted with every bit of strength I had inside of me. We were far from our horses. We were running on foot over the rocks and the mud.
The damned Reghen. I had sent my men to doom.
The flaming arrows of the Tribe’s Archers were descending over our heads. Many arrows, like blind shooting stars from above. Some whistled above me, but I was one of the last. The cowards and those who didn’t obey me had escaped danger. They hadn’t even gone into the water.<
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As I was running out of the muddy water, I looked behind me. The raiders’ rafts were ablaze in the river. To the left of them, the bridge stood strong. I had saved it, and the last of my men were retreating rapidly.
I turned to shout to them.
“Quick. They’re shooting at us. Run!”
We were running uphill to get away from danger.
But who could outrun the Tribe’s Archers?
“Oh, demons, Ogan. No!”
The merciless rain of arrows. Our arrows.
The first arrow found him on the arm. He kept moving, aghast. More arrows hit him. Two more of my men behind him. Why were they running so slowly? Their screaming agony as they were dying, one covered in flames, was the only answer I’d get.
I had killed the othertribers. I had killed my own men.
I kept running toward our torches. The Archers. I passed all of my men. They were spitting curses behind me. Some cursed the Archers. The rest cursed me.
“You snake! What are you doing?” I grabbed the Archer with the black ribbon, their Chief, with one hand and pulled him down from his horse.
His back hit the ground hard. He got up slowly and tried to attack me.
Many hands held us back.
“You didn’t wait for us. I didn’t wait for you either,” he yelled.
“Those men you killed.”
“They shouldn’t be there. It’s not for the Blades to tell me what to do,” he said with a brazen look.
To him, I was no different from a rat.
I was looking at his left cheek. I pretended to calm down with his words. I lowered my head and nodded. I bit my lip and humbled myself. To show him that I understood. That I accepted. As soon as they made the mistake of letting me go, I surged toward him like a rabid mauler. I punched him hard, my knuckles crashing on his cheek. I didn’t see him getting up again. The Archers attacked us. Punches were flying in every direction. One of the Archers landed a full one on my nose. Sani and Leke were next to me, fighting on my side. They dragged me away to safety.
“We’re not finished,” the Reghen said when things cooled down and the Blades separated from the Archers.
We had to attack again. That was the worst. I didn’t have any desire left in me to do anything. I was tired of my own orders already. But now it was the turn of the Blades. After the Archers. We went back down the hill, this time to hunt and slaughter the wounded othertribers.
Drakon Book II: Uncarved Page 23