Drakon Book II: Uncarved

by C. A. Caskabel

  Finally, I asked them all to trim their beards very short. They thought I was joking, but I was dead serious. We didn’t cut our hair, only so that they wouldn’t confuse us with the shaved slaves. We just had it tied with a band. So that the ninestar mark of their Chief would show unmistakably.

  “I don’t want anyone to be able to grab you from the beard in the mayhem of battle. You must slither away like snakes.”

  When the other Packs returned, they made fun of us. “Blade girls on foot,” they would shout down to us from their horses. We heard much more, along with sneers and laughter every day. We stood out from the other Packs as the one-breasted female Archers stood out from the thousands of men.

  Before the desperation of the winter frost, came the Squirrel Moon, the last of autumn, and it brought the Competitions to honor the Goddess. The victorious warriors would receive generous amounts of booty from the great Khun. Horses and women. All other activities stopped during the trials. It was the season of Changes, after the raids and before the snow. Everyone was there either to participate or to watch the best. Wild and reckless festivities flooded Sirol from end to end. Milk spirit, roasting and feasts as if it were our last moon. Slave girls with legs wide open, winners and losers, thousands of men and women became one wild orgy looking for that last ember of warmth before the winter swallowed them.

  And that’s when the ridicule stopped.

  We competed against all other Packs of the Blades.

  In man-to-man combat with unsharpened blades, on foot, the First Pack came in first. Noki, Sani, Rikan, Leke. Faster than demons on their legs, capable of bringing down ten men each. I persuaded Malan to add an event: running in the Forest. The First came in first.

  At the horse-riding competition, the First came in first. I rode O’Ren faster than the best of the Archer horses.

  “Pelor’s iron balls! How did we win this one? We hadn’t ridden horses for so long,” Leke said to me. No one was better than he was on horseback.

  “Now you are two ironstones lighter each, and your horses were hungry for this, well rested for so many moons.”

  At the bow, the First came in third among the eighteen Packs. But the Blades didn’t do much shooting in battle.

  In the neckrope, the First came in last.

  Pigface found only that single opportunity to take a jab at us.

  “When you go into the Forest, Pigface, take your neckrope with you. And go hang yourself from a tall branch to feed the bats,” Noki answered.

  We attracted the yellow-green eyes of jealousy. And the eye of the Khun.

  “That horse of yours,” Malan said when he found me resting at the end of the last trial. “Where did you find it?”

  “Oh, that? A crazy beast. Not safe for a Khun,” I replied with a dead-serious face and a shit-scared heart.

  He sneered at my fear and dropped the talk. “I am not here for the horse. I have been watching your men all these days. Do you know what you are doing?” he asked.

  “Yes, the Blades need faster legs. We don’t fight man-to-man in shield walls like the Southerners. We chase those left behind at the end of the battle. Or they chase us. Or we climb mountains and hills. Those with slow legs and heavy armor always fall first. I have seen it from the first day.”

  “Not one Reghen or Chief agrees with you.”

  “But Enaka agrees, and that’s why I am victorious.”

  Khun-Malan was just. He cared for the strength of the Tribe first. He had no jealousy for anyone. He knew he was the One Leader. The just Leader. He was as smart as the son of the Devil, I said later in life, after I met the Devil herself. Almost as smart. Just and brilliant. And a madman. His Story would be better than mine if he, too, were ever to write it.

  “The First is the best Pack,” Malan announced. We had first choice of horses and women.

  “By the Goddess, you are the Chief I have been waiting for all this time,” Leke said to me. They lifted me up in their arms.

  “Everything you said came true. About the horses, about the legs,” Sani said.

  That is not why I had won, though. It was not about legs. I won because I had by my side hungry, bloodthirsty, faithful men—not whiners.

  The Blacksmiths and the Tanners took the horses and the women they had been dreaming of all their lives. We left Noki to choose the fresh slaves for them. If those men believed in me a little before the trials, they were mine forevermore after. And they were the only ones I wanted.

  When the competitions had ended, I gathered them again. We roasted the best meats, and I told them, “Here, you will grow old and you won’t fall by any othertriber. We will keep on running and get faster than the wind until we become ourselves Enaka’s arrows. The First Pack of the Blades will be the glory and honor of the Tribe, and we will lose no warrior in battle. Not one.”

  Big words that caressed the ears before the bloody campaigns begin that crush all promises.

  When I was finished, I drew my knife and carved my left arm deeply in front of all, to end their doubts once and for all. I was the Chief of the First Pack—nothing more, nothing less. I was among brothers, and I shared with them meat, pain, women, and sweat. And in all these brief pleasures, I was trying to drown the memory of Zeria. I slept alone in my own tent again. The men had made a new one, just for me.

  I became brothers with Sani, who was the oldest and strongest; with Leke, who was the most faithful but never servile; with Noki, who opened the legs of the women, and they screamed so loud they could be heard in all of Sirol, while we stood back to watch and learn from him. With Rikan, the Blacksmith who wanted to see the West; with Kuran, who wanted to change his fate. These men had become my Pack and replaced the Uncarved. I slept easily with both eyes shut among them. My men would go into the jaws of Darhul with me, and that was exactly where Malan would be sending us after all.

  But I was still deceiving myself about one thing.

  There were those moments, when I rode O’Ren head on to the sunset, when the sweat was running burning rivulets down my spine, and the cheers were loudest, or when my men lifted me up in their arms, I was at the top of the sky. Then night fell and my small tent strangled me.

  Leave for the North, Zeria. Find peace.

  I had delivered my heart forever. To the First and to the Last. The one with the blue eyes. I was enchanted, and every night, the magic took me away.

  Leadership. Everyone wants it. Few can endure it.

  Twice, in between all these moons, once in autumn and once in the dead of winter, I rode O’Ren north to Kar-Tioo. I told Malan I was looking for the hidden Forest paths. The first time, I found nothing. No one. No woman. The second time, I went deeper into the snow-covered trails all the way to the northern slopes. I made it to the mountain caves where I had never been before. Two Dasal were guarding the entrance of a cave, and Veker came to stop me.

  “Don’t ever go in there, those caves are cursed, and no man can enter,” he said.

  “What is in there?”

  “Nothing good. Why are you here again?” He was walking ahead, and I followed without answering. Another winter was coming down hard in the Forest. “We’ll be heading farther north,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Come. I want to show you something.”

  We had reached a rare wood of magic; all the oaks were alive with leaves though we were past the first moon of winter. He showed me two Dasal bodies hanging from a branch with their legs cut off.

  “As if someone took only the meat they needed.”

  “This wasn’t done by us,” I told him. “Our Witch has forbidden us to enter the Forest. The Reekaal did this.”

  Veker spat in the snow, went into his hut, and brought out some arrows.

  “These are what killed them. You! And you dare to come here?”

  They were arrows of my Tribe. He wasn’t lying.

  Zeria was nowhere to be seen. I had to know if she was all right. When I had lost all hope, patience, and honor, I asked him.
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  “Zeria doesn’t want to see any of you—you or your Tribe. She has taken a man,” he told me.

  “What does that mean?”

  “They have exchanged eternal rings.”

  Rings of what? That meant nothing to me. I wanted only to see her. My heart was beating like O’Ren’s crushing hooves in my chest.

  “If you wait, she may return in a few days. With her man,” Veker said when he saw I was not about to leave.

  I could hack all the men there into pieces, make eternal rings of their guts. Become a Reekaal.

  My eye caught the saddened gaze of O’Ren. There was a faint blue around the pupil.

  Let’s go back, Chief. You are dying here. The brave wait for you at Sirol.

  Boot on stirrup and I was on the back of my horse. The evening sun had descended low, unleashing a sea of gold among the trunks, painting the shadows darker. Could that faraway shadow be her, standing like a frail wood spirit among the eternal oaks? She was not going to come any closer. Next to her was a man with short hair and weak legs. Was she holding an infant?

  Stay away from me, my love.

  They were looking at me. I was holding an arrow of the Reekaal that Veker had given me. I snapped it in two, on my knee.

  I am not bringing death, Zeria.

  I knew as I had the first time, as I had every other time, that I wasn’t going to kill anyone. Even her dark shadow in the distance was enough to melt my rage.

  Betray me, Zeria.

  I’ll still protect you with my dying breath.

  Abandon me a thousand nights.

  I’ll save you from death a thousand times.

  Deny me a thousand kisses.

  I’ll come to find you to steal only one.

  I kept one of the arrows to remind me of the two mutilated bodies. Veker was right. I had the skins and the quiver, same as the monsters, strapped around my body and my saddle. How could I demand to reap the fruit of peace and love? In the Forest, the monsters hunted their prey, and I had to find them before they killed all that I loved. The last and only way for me to be near Zeria was to find the creatures who threatened her.

  Or, as it happened soon enough, they would find me.

  XLIV.

  The Ssons

  Nineteenth winter. Chief of the First.

  Monsters spreading death. Black, gray, and brown, with six legs, their bellies glowing full of the red blood they sucked. As big as my nail. Mosquitoes. They had annihilated thousands of the Tribe’s bravest warriors, but no one spoke of them. Enaka did not scare them. Always on our skin. But it was the Reekaal, those mythical invisible bloodeaters, who haunted our nights. The Reekaal who no one could yet describe.

  The abominable beast, the most dangerous of them all. The marshy stagnant water of the Blackvein swamps. But it was the Black Sea that scared us the most, the lair of Darhul, the dark waves of the east that we had yet to lay eyes upon.

  So many other monsters, impossible to count. Othertribers, Drakons, Sorcerers of the Cross, Buried skeletons, Deadwalkers, all had but one purpose in our Legends: to exterminate our children, the seed of the Tribe. And I had seen many of our children perish. All perished from our own monsters. They were the ones with the most hideous faces: ours. We hid them behind red veils and gray hoods so that we wouldn’t see them reflected in the crystal-clear waters.

  The Stories honored the warriors who had fallen bravely in the fights against the monsters. Who wants to lament and praise the one who battled the mosquito and the plague? Was he victorious? Did he die yellow from an insect’s bite? A Story worth a stallion’s fart.

  All men wanted to be the lucky ones. Those to be torn apart by the nine jaws of Darhul while naked Ouna-Mas wrapped their slender henna-painted arms around their knees and sang their Story.

  I was still standing after nineteen winters. If there were monsters, then sooner or later I would find them. Sooner.

  On a chilly winter morning, I saw for the first time the Tribe’s only monsters, the ones we would come to call the Ssons.

  We had been summoned to the Ceremony of the Brave and I was trotting with my Pack toward Wolfhowl. I saw Khun-Malan’s procession walking the horses carefully through the tall birch trees. The Ouna-Mas around him looked taller than ever on horseback, floating like ghosts embraced by the fog.

  This was the one day every winter that was customary for the Khun to make all the Changes. He would order more carvings for Chiefs who have proved unworthy, and he would choose younger brave men to replace them. The new Chiefs had to be in place before the boys finished their five-winter training in spring.

  Only a few days had passed since the victories of the First Pack in the competitions. Inside of me nested a blazing hope that Malan would make me Leader of all the Blades. That day, it was the ceremony for the Blades only. The Archers were too many, and they had already completed their Changes. The eighteen Chiefs stood in a circle in the arena, each one about seven paces apart, and their men a few steps behind them. Malan commanded that only the First, the Fifth, the Seventh, the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth come with all their men.

  “The others shall send only their Chief and three more men to witness,” the Reghen had told us.

  “Darhul’s jaws! He’s only going to make changes to our Packs,” said Sani. He had seen more ceremonies than anyone else among us. “He has brought all the men from the worst Packs here. That is not a good sign.”

  “He also brought the First Pack,” I said, with a tone of voice that faked confidence.

  My fingers ran up my left arm feeling the one carving that ripped straight through the skin. I would not bear it if the one scar became three.

  The Khun’s place was always higher up in the stands, in a designated seat of honor. But Malan had ordered the Craftsmen to rebuild the Wolfhowl ahead of the coming Feast of Spring. The stands were not ready, so Malan had decided to come to the ground next to us and took his place at the head of the Chiefs’ circle. He was flanked by a handful of Ouna-Mas and two Reghen. About a dozen Rods surrounded the whole entourage. I looked at the Ouna-Mas again. I always tried to guess if I could recognize them just by their movement under their robes. Those were taller figures that I’d swear I’ve never seen before, wearing gray hoods, not veils. An agonizing silence prevailed as the men waited for the Reghen to speak. The only sound came from a few men coughing from the cold; the only movement were the breaths of about two hundred men evaporating slowly and mixing with the gloomy morning.

  A flock of blackbirds crossed Wolfhowl’s silent sky. Instead of their flapping wings I heard a child whispering. Such gatherings of hundreds always brought Elbia’s face back.

  “A morning of death. Like that one long ago, when you didn’t save me. Remember, Da-Ren?”

  I had tried to get rid of that memory the night before, but I had chosen the worst of all ways to do it. Milk spirit and a sip of crazygrass. A stupid mistake.

  The Ceremony began with a young Reghen reciting praises to Enaka and a brief thousand-told Story about Packs of wolfen brothers and sisters. Then, the Reghen called for the Chief of the Fifth to go to the center of the circle. He was a man two times my age, who had taken the place of Keral after the night he had murdered Khun-Taa. The Fifth Pack had been cut down to half its size that night. I could count only twenty or so men behind him, and they were following him. The Fifth was about twenty paces from the center, another twenty from Malan. My Pack stood exactly in the opposite spot of the circle from the Khun, about forty paces away.

  Why are they following him?

  “They always begin with the disposal of the unworthy Chiefs,” said Sani.

  “Are they supposed to follow him?” I asked Sani.

  “If the Khun decides to name a new Leader of all Blades, that will be done at the end of the Ceremony,” added Leke.

  The fog was not helping, but those men had quickened their pace and had unsheathed their blades.

  She whispered again, closer to me now.

  “This is i
t, Da-Ren. You are here again. Will you save him? Him?”

  The men of the Fifth charged toward Malan and his personal guard, shouting and waving their knives. The boy Reghen was massacred in the middle of the Wolfhowl before he even had a chance to scream for help. More Blades from the other Packs joined in the ambush. About forty Blades, eighty knives, were running, searching for Malan’s throat. Against them stood twelve Rods. Malan saw the jaws of Darhul in front of him. The next Khun would be someone even younger. Even less worthy than Malan. Someone much worse than I.

  I was running as well, not even knowing why, whom I was going to defend, save or slaughter yet.

  The oddly tall shadows who stood around Malan took off their hoods and their robes with one sharp move. They were not Ouna-Mas. They weren’t even women. Were they human? What makes us human? Or monster?

  That was the first time I saw the Reekaal—the ancient servants of darkness who in our Legends sealed our path to the West. In the tales of Zeria, they were the sons of Ouna-Mas, their hearts locked with silver chains. Those who had killed my father, Rouba, Er-Ren, in the Endless Forest and who had even killed me before Zeria brought me back from the serpent’s belly. But the Reekaal ended up being another fairy tale, same as that of my father. The human truth of our Tribe that existed in the place of the tales was far more horrifying.

  The four monstrous men who protectively surrounded Malan had the unique long heads of the Ouna-Mas. They were taller than anyone else I had seen in my life, taller than I, with long fingers, as if they were talons on birds of prey. A short blade in each of their hands, a loud scream out of their mouths. A scream overlapping with an eerie laughter at the same time. One laughing, two screaming? Their leader silent. Underneath their robes, they wore nothing but loincloths that covered the nakedness between their legs. Their bodies were all muscle, bone, nerves, like skinned wild beasts. The naked legs looked strong and fast, as if they always roamed the Forest on foot rather than on horseback.