Dawn broke to carve the sky and the river with the same shade of red. Blood darkened the Blackvein and soaked our boots. The blood of the othertribers and the three men of the First Pack. My pack.
We kept going, mad with rage and exhaustion, until midday. We had to burn the bodies and stand guard as the Craftsmen fortified the bridge. The Archers and two other Packs of Blades, those who had never followed my orders, went beyond the river to hunt down anyone who tried to get away.
“Did you listen to that young fool? ‘The last one gets five,’ he said,” mumbled someone to my left. He was one of the two who were carrying the corpse of a stout man. The dead man had legs crooked from riding all his short life and more than ten arrow holes in him. Exactly three carvings.
I went back to the camp followed by my men.
“What crazy kid attacks before the Archers? And dismounts?” one of them was murmuring. I had been listening to that same voice all day. It was the one from the night before. He wouldn’t stop.
“Who is he?” I asked Leke.
“Mekor? Be careful with him. He was pledged to the previous Chief. And he favored Keral.”
“We will talk of this tonight after the pyre,” I said. “Rest now, and tend to your wounds.”
I had a scratch on my thigh from one of our own arrows. I was glad of it. The arrow that had found me had reminded me of Zeria. By now, she had become a mythical wind-ghost of the Forest. A dream that vanished as fast as it had come. She was now a thousand worlds away. Even the camp of the Uncarved, just a little farther to the north, seemed like another world—still close but completely unreachable. It had taken only one night for my old world to crumble to pieces, a lost dream chopped to bits by eighty blades.
Sani came by and gripped my forearm.
“You did the right thing, Chief,” he said.
He gave me a slice of dried horsemeat.
He saw my surprise. I didn’t feel proud. I wasn’t eating.
“What happened here today, Reghen?” I asked. “Is this how it will be every night?”
“No, you were unlucky. And lucky in some way. Seems you got the trust of some men here.”
“Some; not all of them. But what happened down there? I’ve never heard of othertribers raiding from the south.”
“Last Harvest Moon, the Archers captured a General of the South beneath the river. He was of noble birth, they say, a nephew of the Emperor himself.”
“What’s a nephew?”
“Yes, anyway, someone important. We were holding him prisoner. Seems like he led an uprising. One of his men probably escaped before the rest and informed the Southerners, who came in for a rescue raid. He was too important.”
“And if more of them come?”
“The othertribers had become very daring lately with Khun-Taa, especially the Southerners. Khun-Malan will change all that.”
Mekor spoke again behind me as we watched the fire take our three comrades. “He lost three men on his first night. Within Sirol! Have you ever seen such a useless shit?”
The Reghen was next to me and held my arm so that I wouldn’t make a move.
“It is difficult to be Chief, Da-Ren. Not to know what is the right thing to do. Should you have attacked first? Should you have waited?” he said.
“We should have attacked,” I said.
“Yes. We should have. If we had lost the bridge, that would have been a disgrace and a disaster. A brave and wise Chief would have attacked. You made the right decision.”
His answer surprised me. I hadn’t made a mistake.
It was a small pyre, barely worthy of warriors. The tongues of the flames engulfed the men who had obeyed me. The fast-talking Ogan would never say another word. He had been a brave kid. His Story was honorable. Short.
“That is why we Reghen always favored leaders like Malan. Like you. Young. Uncarved.”
“What, why?” I asked, a bit dazed, my mind still on Ogan.
“Because you are not rotten. Old men rot. Out of jealousy, envy, and defeat. They creep. The young never stop. They haven’t learned fear. The Truths and the Legends are fresh in their minds. They were raised that way, and they rush in without the weight of an old man’s fears. We want new blood. The Tribe moves forward. It must not rot. Khun-Malan leads.”
“Khun-Malan leads,” I repeated.
It was the favored hail of the day around Sirol. Khun-Malan led, and I had to save his bridge.
The Reghen had never joined the battle; he stayed at the summit of the hill the previous night. That was the main reason I wanted his opinion. Not because he was a Reghen. Because he had chosen the best view, he had seen everything without anyone blocking his sight.
I said to him, “I had to attack. And the Archers should have waited.”
The Reghen signaled goodbye.
“I leave you now. You don’t need me anymore. So many things happened in one day, and you learned so much, things that I thought would take many moons to learn.”
He had mounted his horse, and he spoke to me for the last time.
“The Archers shouldn’t have waited. They, too, did the right thing. Just as you did.”
Indeed. He had nothing else to teach me.
“A Chief of the Blades. Hear that!” Malan had said a couple of nights ago.
The Blades were the quickest way Malan had found to send me to the Unending Sky to meet Enaka. Their Leader, the one who had led all eighteen Packs, had died a moon ago. The Chief of the First Pack, the one I replaced, had fallen recently while backing the usurper, Keral. For all I knew, I could have been the one who killed him that fateful night.
I had thirty-five men left. I gathered them all around the fire.
“Speak.”
Ask, and you shall receive. I asked for rage and pain and received exactly that. Their voices overlapped, fast, angry, and loud.
“It is always the same. If we attack in the raids sooner than we should, the Archers hit us. Blind. They don’t care.”
“When we delay, we don’t get any of the loot.”
I remembered Rouba saying, “The Blades are for slaughtering the unarmed and the women. They are vultures. The only true honor of the Tribe is the bow. The merciless rain.”
“They don’t respect us as their equals.”
“We have to make heavy shields and learn to fight like the other tribes. In battle, only the Blades fall.”
The soldiers of the Southeastern Empire beneath the river were not Archers. They were formidable sword fighters with armor of steel and iron shields with leather covers. In man-to-man combat, they had the advantage. If we didn’t outnumber them massively, then we would lose more in battle. In the Tribe’s victories, most of the dead were always Blades. The Tribe had yet to see defeat. Because we had the bow of Enaka, the invincible weapon.
“We are the only ones who see the white of the enemy’s eyes up close.”
“We are the bravest but are always last to get the women. And the worst meat.”
“Even the Craftsmen eat better.”
“The Rods have five horses each.”
All of them had miserable tales to tell, and none had glory. I, too, had a tale, but I didn’t tell it. I remembered a raid at the Garol in the North when I had gone there with Rouba. The Blades had gone into battle only when victory was certain. They had killed the old and taken the women violently before the others came. They had torn babes from the breasts and heads from bodies. All of this with just their blades.
Bloodthirsty warriors, cowards, and lesser in battle, who hid behind the Archers and yet managed to die faster than anybody else. I would fight for the rest of my life beneath the emblem of the two unequal-sized crossed irons that marked the scum of the Tribe. Together with those who wouldn’t have great Stories to tell when they would meet Enaka. Only short ones.
XXXVIII.
Behind Me
Eighteenth winter. Chief of the First.
Loneliness. Not squirrel, or dog, or wolf. Loneliness was the unbearab
le new skin I had to wear. Away from Zeria, Rouba, Bera, and the other Guides, the Uncarved, anyone else I had ever known. A solitary boy Chief among older men who could smell my inexperience. Alone in my tent. Loneliness was an enemy they hadn’t told us about in the Stories.
I had been trained at the blade and the bow. The most common trial of each Uncarved was to slice pumpkins with eyes closed. That training would make me the fear and torment of every pumpkin. But I knew from the first moment I joined the Blades that it wasn’t enough.
My third day as Chief dawned.
“You are the youngest Chief we’ve ever had,” said one of my men who had been there for three winters.
“They brought a fresh one like you five winters ago, but he lasted half a moon. You better watch out, Chief,” added Leke.
“Watch out for what?”
Everything.
The cloudbreaths had parted before dawn. It was a clear-sky day, perfect for riding and shooting.
“We ride for the training field,” Sani said, this time trying to help me rather than challenge me.
We reached a vast and empty field of shit-colored mud and snow-covered stones. The few poles were broken and there were no pumpkins or targets to shoot. I had no idea what to tell them, and I couldn’t even imagine how someone could train there. I wouldn’t even want to ride a horse through that. The men had already separated into smaller groups, each one having its own talk. One group was fighting amongst themselves; another was casually striding around with neckropes. In a third group, farther away, the men were taking turns drinking from a waterskin and from the laughter I guessed it was milk spirit, not water.
“Start,” I shouted.
“Start what?” asked a man close to me. He was a man with a long beard, the body of a bear and the eyes of a mad jackal.
“What you do every day.”
“What are you going to do?”
I didn’t answer; I didn’t want a fight.
“Who is this?” I asked Leke, not looking at the man.
“Hey! You asked before. Learn my name. I am Mekor,” the man replied, waving his wide-open hands above his head. Mocking me.
Mekor again, a name I had heard of a lot and would hear for a few more breaths.
“I want to see how the Blades practice,” I said.
“I say you want to see the tit of your slave mother, shit hair.”
There, too, I had the lightest hair color of all of them.
It was true that I wanted just to watch them train because I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t afraid of anything, but it was already too late. My first trial, and last if I failed, would be to finish with Mekor.
He took out both of his blades, and I did the same. Then I thought twice. I had already lost three men.
“Lower your blades, man. I am an Uncarved; you will die here. Don’t be stupid,” I said.
“You’re no Uncarved anymore.”
Smart thought, big mouth, fatal words.
He was wearing a chain-mail armor like nothing in the Tribe, each iron ring smaller than my nail. He had stolen the armor of an othertriber and it fell short and tight on him, almost to his navel and a bit below his elbows. I hated armor. It wasn’t of the Tribe.
“Where did you find this fancy dress? Stole it from the Southerners?”
“Killed him. I’ve killed many.”
“Oh! How? Running scared up the hill like yesterday?”
The men were laughing, the sun was falling bright, his blood was bubbling mad under the stolen helmet. It looked like an upside-down acorn. No Archer of the Tribe wore a helmet. “Blades are vultures; they wear whatever they find,” Rouba had told me once.
Rouba, it’s time to find out if you trained me well.
I took off the soft squirrels. I had nothing but a leather jerkin over my sleeveless tunic. I stayed across from him at ten feet. He motioned for me to come and meet him, but I remained still.
“Hungry again? Or do you always wear your gruel pot on your head?” I said to Mekor.
Leke was clutching his belly, laughing, on his knees.
Mekor sheathed his small blade and raised the long one with both hands. He charged, bellowing, to bring it down on my head, but I made a quick move to the right, and he missed. He continued to wield it high, but he was too slow, like a huge bear in chains. That armor would be his death.
“I still let you live if you quit now,” I said. “You’re too slow.”
That was what had made the greatest impression on me when I had lost those three men at the river. All of them were slow on their feet. They lived night and day on their horses and had all but forgotten how to walk.
“Will you fight, you butt-fucked lizard, or are you going to the snakes without lifting a blade?” he said.
I had no intention of going to the snakes. I let him swing his irons without touching a hair on my head another three times. I was tall and a relatively large target, but I had the fastest legs of all the Uncarved. We kept dancing around, and I waited for the moment when he would have the sun directly in his eyes. Then, I closed the distance between us fast and tried a crazy move. I threw my short blade like a spear toward his face. He fended it off with his, but before he had a chance to stand firmly and parry again, my long blade had taken his fingers. Two, maybe three.
He screamed and tried to raise his blade again. I hit him, deep and hard, low in the bare forearm. His blade fell. I could have sliced his throat right there. But that wasn’t necessary. Not yet.
His wounds were not fatal, but he wouldn’t be a warrior anymore. A one-handed, crippled, burly man who would be fishing salmon from now on with the rest of the bears. He was on his knees, facing me, holding his maimed bloody hand, and screaming. The thirty-four men around us were silent, waiting for my final move. I turned my eyes away from him and shouted for all to hear.
“I am Da-Ren, the son of Er-Ren, who fought the Cyanus Reekaal and lived to talk about it. I wasn’t carved on my twelfth winter like all of you Rabbits, and I am the only one of two who survived till the end Uncarved. The other one is Khun. Any scum who wants to go to Enaka today come up here and talk lizards. Anyone?”
They listened, and all of them understood. Except for Mekor. My guess, he didn’t enjoy fishing. I saw him with the corner of my eye as he pulled a third blade from his belt, a small dagger. The dagger flew past me, barely grazing my cheek, and my mood for talking was cut abruptly. I ran at him before he got up and, a breath later, opened his throat with the thrust of my blade. The First Pack had one warrior less.
“Continue, great warriors. I want to see how you train for battle,” I said to those remaining. “Is there anyone else who wants to leave the Pack?”
Only one more did, the one who had been sitting close to Mekor on the previous two nights. He tried to stab me in the back that night after we gathered to eat outside my tent. Slow feet, stupid eyes. To my surprise Sani warned me from across the fire, his lips opening to “watch out” and his eyes darting quickly to my right. I turned with a sudden move and stuffed a lit tar-covered torch into his mouth. I was out of patience. Out of mercy, I opened his stomach with my iron to end his muffled groans. A quick death. I couldn’t blame him. He was loyal to his friend and his old Chief. Good for him. Enaka would like his Story. If he could tell it to her with burning tar in his mouth. Thirty-three…
“So? Watch out?” I asked Leke.
“Now everyone will be watching out,” he said, laughing. “You did good. You cleaned up the Pack in two nights.”
It was about then that I stopped killing my own men.
Chief of the Pack. Of brave men. I had to convince them, to trample on them like worms when they weren’t convinced, and that was easy. I had to inspire them, and that was difficult—not to let them think for one breath that I could be afraid of them. I had to make them rip their own hearts from their chests, roast them, and serve them to me on a spit if I asked for it. If I couldn’t do that, they would feast on my own heart that same night.
I hadn’t learned that either with the Uncarved. I had wasted five springs in trials with pumpkins and walks in the Forest. If I had lived one winter with the Blades, I would have been a better Chief now. I may have even been the One Leader of the Tribe. If I had lived.
Sani got up before the men started leaving and addressed everyone.
“I am with the Chief. This stops now. If anyone else tries to harm him he will have to kill me too,” he said.
“Me too,” Leke added and so did a few other voices.
Respect. Not bad at all after three nights. As we were sharing the milk spirit around the fire to drown the horrors of the day and the night, I asked each of them, “How long have you been with this Pack?”
“Nine winters,” said Sani.
“Three.”
“Two.”
“I came one moon ago.”
“Eight.”
All of them had come on their eighteenth winter, and none of them had reached their thirtieth.
“And where are the older Blades? Do they camp at another Pack?” I asked, thinking I had been put with the youngest.
“Yes…the big Pack,” said Sani, the nine-wintered, showing me the twinkling stars above our heads.
If I was very lucky, I had ten more summers of life. But there was something I had learned with the Uncarved. The first Truth of the warriors of our Tribe. The first command any leader of men was taught to say: “Behind me.”
Behind me meant that a Chief always charged first in battle and usually fell first. He did not pass judgment, as the Reghen did, from the summit of the hill.
Outside my tent, I noticed a pole and a wooden slate hanging on it. Small iron pegs were nailed into the slate. I knew from training that every Pack had a slate such as this and counted how many men belonged to it. I ordered Leke to take out five pegs for the five we had lost the past two nights. I would have done it myself, but I got confused. Underneath it, there was another slate. And a third. Many instead of one.
Drakon Book II: Uncarved Page 24