The men wanted to scream for new raids, but their screams stopped on their crystal-frozen rotten teeth before even reaching the ears of the Reghen. The Truthsayers wore their gray hoods, their only armor for winter and summer.
He found me by the fire in my tent as I was taking off the unwanted armor of frost that was torturing my hands. With slow, careful words of winter, the Reghen spoke.
“Khun-Malan demands to see you in his tent tonight. A council will be held.”
I stepped reluctantly outside my tent’s scant warmth. The earth was sleeping under the white layers of fallen snow. The sun and the sky were hidden too, under white layers of clouds. More snow was coming. A valley of white emptiness above and below. Only in the middle, where gray men and brown-skinned animals toiled, a faint sign of life remained. As the lifeless sun descended on a bleak sunset, I took four Blades with me, to look important, and started out, covered in skins and fur hats.
“What is a council?” asked Sani, one of the four.
“Don’t know. My first one,” I answered. It was difficult and stupid to exhale many warm words in the frosty air.
I had never been to a council before, nor had anyone else because Khun-Malan was the first to call for one. We arrived at the foot of the hill. At the top of it, the new wooden structure that we still called “the Khun’s tent” dominated, fearless of wind and cold. The Rods stopped my companions and forced them to give up their blades and dismount there, in the snow, far from a fire or tent.
I walked up the hill alone. The path to the Khun’s tent was marked by hundreds of poles to my left and right, painted a gleaming black against the white landscape. Iron sconces were mounted on the poles and most of them flickered weakly as I ascended the main path. To warm what? Nothing. The three spheres of the Sun, the Earth, and Selene outside Malan’s tent shined as the dew dripped from their curved surfaces. The Rods were keeping them warm. I looked back down at my men. I could recognize them from their hides and their hats, as if those were their only names. Their faces had been hidden for two moons now.
Thick felt covered the sides of Malan’s tent except for the three-level entrance with the heavy draping fabrics that stopped the freezing winds three times. The Rods to the left and right of every entrance looked even taller than the last time, well-fed and proud. I slowly strode down the aisle with the skulls. The ox skulls were my favorite. As stupid as the oxen were, their skulls looked wise.
There at the end, on the urn columns, they stood still, just as I remembered them—the two skulls, elongated like quivers, humanlike except for the horns and dog teeth.
“Bone, glue, horn,” I reminded myself. It was the ancient art of our bow Craftsmen. There are no monsters.
It is a lie. Don’t be afraid, Zeria. There are no monsters; you know that.
I breathed my escaping thoughts toward the smokehole to send them to the Forest. Her memory was the only armor for me, a shield to protect my hope—not my flesh. I would seek that memory every day and much more at nightfall.
It was warm inside Malan’s tent, as the heat of many scattered hearths emanated from every corner. The throne was in front of me, ahead of the skulls. Laid out were many sheepskins, rich and abundant, enough to warm three Packs. They were the armor that covered the dirt. To my right, there was a large circle of burning coals resting in a narrow trench. In the middle of the circle three Ouna-Mas, Sah-Ouna’s entourage, sat kneeling on the hides. They wore their short sleeved, torn black-ribbon, summer dresses. Razoreyes was there and turned to say something to the rest covering her mouth with a hand. She didn’t turn to look at me, but the other two did.
I approached them with slow steps, and some of their escaping whispering words made it to my ears.
“Evil.”
“North.”
The two Rods were quick to stop me and show me the way.
“Not here. The council is there,” one of them said, pointing to the opposite side of the tent.
I took a careful look at the glowing coals that surrounded the Ouna-Mas. The fires smelled like the Forest itself, blurring my mind. They were burning oak wood, not horse dung. I kicked the smoldering trunk with my boot just to be sure. There were rules. Wood was for coal, what we used to feed the bloomeries which made the iron. The Blacksmiths had to burn wood to separate the iron from stone, and horse dung would not do. Wood was valuable, especially since the Forest was cursed. Wood was for the bows and the arrows, for the carts and the machines of the Craftsmen. Wood was not for warming men or naked Witches or for cooking meat. Rules since forever, created by the Khuns and the Reghen.
The Rod tried to push me softly to the other side where the council had started.
“No need. I am going,” I said and walked to the small group of men.
“And the Chief of the First of the Blades arrives last,” Malan greeted me.
Everyone was sitting cross-legged, except for Malan, who was standing. He motioned for me to sit when he saw that I wasn’t doing it voluntarily. I sat and lifted my head to look at him. I was one of the two Chiefs of the Blades he had invited to the council. Druug, the Leader of the thousands of Archers, was there too, as well as Sah-Ouna, two Reghen, and a man I had never seen before. He had the brown ribbon around his arm, and I guessed he was a Tracker. All Leaders.
Most of them gave me only one quick glance. Druug’s eyes stayed a bit longer on my face. A great honor for you to be here, a fresh Chief ruling only thirty-three men.
The oldest of the Reghen continued as if the council had been going on for a while and I had interrupted.
“The men are hungry. For meat, for campaigns, for pillaging, and for young women.” He spoke loudly and sternly, addressing himself to Malan, and that woke me up immediately.
“We always start the campaigns in late spring with the Redflower Moon. And the loot comes in the fall. There is nothing we can do in this frost,” said the Leader of the Archers.
“Khun-Malan promised that we would cross the Forest,” said the Reghen.
Sah-Ouna motioned for the two Rods to approach. They brought trays heavy with slabs of raw meat.
“Roast meat. Want some?” Malan asked me.
Not horse or rats. Fat beef. Each of us grabbed a small spit, passed it through a thick piece of meat and held it over the fire. The charcoal gave a mouthwatering smell to the meat, so different that, for a while, I completely forgot what we were talking about. Every bite I chewed melted in my mouth and melted my fear. The beef juices were dripping from my jaw, talking with the crackling fire. They reassured me that somehow we would make it, despite the rage of the Drakons of the North. Some of us, anyway. Meat and wine soothed the minds of the men, and with their bellies full and warm, they talked without restraint.
“You, Tracker,” ordered Malan. “What news of your missions to the Forest?”
The skinny young man jerked his head back twice, trying to swallow a large piece of meat quickly before speaking. He probably knew that he would be thrown out after saying what he had to say.
“We sent many scouts there into the white darkness. An evil demon wanders among the trees. In the beginning, my men went in but didn’t return. We sent more, and they found the first lot, or whatever was left of them, pierced with arrows.”
He showed us one of the arrows that had struck his men.
“So they are men, not monsters,” said the older Reghen.
“Dasal?” asked Druug.
I looked at everyone around me, but my gut told me to play stupid and stay mute at this great council. No one spoke of the obvious. Those were our arrows. Who had shot them? Were they the sons of the Ouna-Mas, as Zeria had told me, or our own Archers? Or was he just a scared Tracker spewing lies? I waited for the other Chief of the Blades, but he didn’t dare speak. As the silence continued, I reluctantly voiced my thoughts.
“The Dasal have small bows,” I answered. “And their arrows don’t have such iron heads.”
“How do you know?” asked Malan.
“They don’t have arrows like that.”
The Tracker spoke again. “No, I did not say they were Dasal. The ones who survived spoke of demons of the night. They heard their evil screams, and it froze their blood. Those creatures, they’re not men like us, they laugh and scream at the same time. Otherworldly monsters, like that over there,” said the Tracker, pointing behind me at the long, horned humanlike skulls.
“So they have horns now, do they?” teased Druug.
“Pheasants again,” Malan mouthed with his lips, looking straight at me with a disappointed chuckle.
Malan sat down next to us, as if the foolishness had fallen heavy upon him.
The old and wise Reghen started speaking. “It takes only one day for you to take the throne, Khun, but for thousands of moons, the Forest has remained untrodden.” He had a hundred heads, two hundred eyes and ears. He counted the livestock, and he could smell the hunger of the men and the footsteps of the Forest. It was his way of telling the Khun that he was young and this was not a laughing matter. A mistake.
Sah-Ouna motioned to the Tracker to continue.
“Demons, big as bears and with teeth like sabers, are the Reekaal. The trees come alive as their allies.”
The fear filled his mind, and the Tracker started telling us about the horrid names his men had given the trees. He spoke of the “Embrace of the Reekaal,” the “Hundred Skeleton Hands,” the “Sword in the Heart of the Sky,” and the “Hair of the Old Crone Witch.”
Malan was no longer laughing.
“No one shall ever speak such nonsense, or else I will gather all the Trackers to the middle of Wolfhowl and let the maulers loose.”
The men sat frozen as if the winter chill had slid inside and thrown an armor of silence over everyone. Only one dared to break it.
“Enough with all this. You will follow me, and we shall cross the Forest, now,” said Malan. Large, wide eyes looked at him. “Now, in the heart of winter.”
The men were speechless and the Khun’s words sounded wrong in my ears. He had promised to cross the Forest, but not now, when Enaka’ Sun was weaker than ever.
“It can’t be done,” said Druug the Archer.
Malan’s slap found him on the ear, the one that wouldn’t listen to the commands. Druug was twice our age, but he wouldn’t dare challenge the One favored by Sah-Ouna and Enaka. The One surrounded by Rods in this tent.
“You can stay here if you’re afraid. We don’t have enough food to last for thirty thousand men till next winter. We will cross the Forest now. I will go in front,” Malan said.
We also had forty thousand women, children, and slaves in Sirol. And another ten thousand in the outposts of the east and the north and a few south of the river.
Four gleaming eyes appeared from the darkest corners of the tent, and two black dogs jumped next to Malan. I hadn’t seen them until then as if they had been buried beneath his red throne and just sprouted out of it. A Rod threw each a piece of meat. I had little left on my spit and was still hungry.
Sah-Ouna spoke for the first time, her eyes fixed on the Tracker. “With the air, not with carts and horses. That is how Stories travel. They cannot be caught, and no arrow can stop them.” She spat her disgust at the feet of the Tracker. “You spoke loathsome tales for weak men. As soon as the Forest embraces your men, they lose their hearts.”
“Have you ever gone into the Forest?” I asked the Tracker.
I had interrupted Sah-Ouna.
The Tracker nodded quickly, his eyes darting once to Sah-Ouna and back to me. He was telling the truth. He had been in there. He had seen something. I had had the same look on my face a winter ago when the Forest had swallowed me whole and alive for the first time. Only one winter ago I was First of the Uncarved, the hero of the Wolfhowl. It felt like so much longer.
“Say what you saw,” Malan commanded.
The Tracker, as if he had kept the worst for last, opened his mouth again: “Khun-Taa sent us in there the last two summers. Both times we returned before the winter began. I never made it to the other side. The Forest never ends. There is nothing at the end of it except the foot of a vast mountain chain, frozen and impossible to climb. When I found a pass to reach the top of the mountains, all I found was again—”
They rise again. Mountains. Forests.
“…mountains higher. Forests larger,” murmured the Tracker.
Rouba had told me the same, long ago. I nodded with eyes closed to the last words of the Tracker.
“What do you think, Da-Ren? Do you agree with this?” Malan asked me. “You have gone many times.”
“I have gone, but a few times only. I am not afraid of the Forest like the others. We will have to stay on the southern side. The north, where the Dasal live, is sunless, and the ghosts do not melt in that part.”
“And how do these Dasal live there?” asked Malan.
“No, we have to go everywhere, even farther north to bypass—” the Tracker cut in.
I interrupted before he spread the idea any further.
“The Blackvein is frozen, hard as a rock all the way to the south. If you go north, the wind will become a breath of death and will burn our lungs. Khun, I will go with a few Blades ahead to the northern Forest, to find out what I can from the Dasal. You stay south where the cold is bearable and the horses can pass. I will meet up with you soon.”
“The young Chief is right,” said the Reghen. “The horses cannot go north.”
Sah-Ouna nodded in agreement.
I imagined myself run through with a stake after every lie which came out of my mouth. I wanted all those men far away from Zeria. I was a despicable traitor, and it had happened so fast again.
“We will start in two days. Everyone must be ready,” Malan said.
Malan motioned for me to stay.
The others left, even Sah-Ouna.
“Talk,” said Malan.
“We should wait,” I said.
“We cannot. I want to find the prophecies before the Great Feast of Spring. I will not wait for them to find me.”
We were not alone. Sah-Ouna’s entourage had stayed behind in the tent to my right, resting leisurely on the sheepskins. The three Ouna-Mas had not followed her. Their tongues and their legs were the armor that would wrap around Malan.
The Khun motioned me to join them.
To the armor of their young skin.
How much night had passed in this tent? My men had probably left their last frozen breaths outside by now. I grabbed the last spit with meat on it and exited through the draped entrance. I raced down the hill to reclaim them from the unforgiving night freeze. They had been standing all night outside in the snow without a fire.
“Eat up well because soon we will be hungry again. Come dawn, we ride for the Forest,” I said as I passed the pieces of roast beef to them.
A Rod followed me, yelling for me to give back the spit that I had taken.
Glory to you, Malan, for exiling me to the Blades.
Eternal praise to you, my Khun, for not letting me fall in the lowly fate of a Rod, chasing after spits.
I threw the piece of iron which was burning cold in my hand between his legs and mounted my mare. She was weak and too old to last the winter; before spring I would need a new ride.
None of the men I had with me praised Khun-Malan. No one had anything good to say about him. Only the hanging horsetails and the size of his tent impressed them. But I knew that if they were ever to set foot inside the tent, if they saw the wood-burning fire, the horned skulls, and felt the warm legs of the Ouna-Mas wrapping around their bodies, they would fall to their knees at Malan’s service and offer their hearts to him.
They followed me with admiration because they believed that I was one of Malan’s men, his trusted servant and a faithful dog. One of those dogs he shared his meat with. “What irony!” I would say much later when I learned that word. But even that did not prevent them from whispering among themselves on the road back.
“Where did he say
we were going? Did he really say it? Into the Forest?”
“We are doomed.”
“No one ever returns from there.”
“You’ll see; they will send only us Blades. No Archers will come with us.”
That was all I heard behind me as we were trotting the horses back to the Blades camp. I said nothing. I waited for the dawn, for the sun which came out so rarely, to sweeten the moment and breathe some hope down their chests. I gathered all thirty-three of them together and said, “I’m going into the Forest. Khun-Malan will go, too. And if, by Enaka, you want to be called men and warriors, you will follow. Behind me.”
Fearless the Leader rushes toward the demons first.
That is the only true armor for a warrior.
XLI.
Rowan
Eighteenth winter. Chief of the First.
We set off two dawns later. For the Tribe to cross the Forest for the first time. Witches, Truthsayers, warriors and the Khun. To battle our monsters. With Enaka and Sah-Ouna at our sides.
More than a thousand warriors and slaves and a handful of Reghen and Ouna-Mas followed Malan into the Forest. I had managed to convince him to let me lead a separate mission. I took the First Pack and galloped north. We rode parallel to the Forest so that we could enter much later.
“Why do we go north, all alone, Chief?”
Those who asked questions were to be trusted more, those who didn’t, hated me beyond words for leading them there.
“So we can have all that we hunt to ourselves,” I said smiling.
But I had faith. If they saw no terror in my eye, the men would hold. I didn’t lose any men; I only won their respect in the Forest. There, where all others trembled, I was walking surefooted. I knew the paths, the trees, and where to stop to make camp.
“By Selene, you are truly the son of Er-Ren,” said Leke. The rest agreed with silent nods.
Drakon Book II: Uncarved Page 26