The Tribe had many Legends because we had too many demons to fight. The most horrifying of all were the Reekaal, the bloodeaters of the Forest. No one had ever been able to describe them in detail. Whoever had seen them lost forever the life and the black from their eyes. They turned to a cloudy gray, and most times so did their minds. Just like the man standing in front of me.
The same Legend said that the only way to kill a Reekal was to offer him your own heart. No one dared lie about ever killing a Reekaal. But the Greentooth who raised us repeated the Legend so many times that it had become engraved inside me. They were senseless words, but I couldn’t forget them.
“The Demon always looks you in the eye. And she knows all she needs.”
She? The Demon is a She?
The Greentooth continued.
“Never in the heart. She cannot bear that. If you want to defeat the Demon, you must rip out your own heart and offer it to her. Then she will fall on her knees and sing her grieving song to you. And that will be her end and yours as you both sink to the bottom of the Blackvein River, together, in the last embrace.”
But who could ever rip out his own heart? It took me seven lives and deaths to learn that.
IV.
Roast Meat
Thirteenth Winter. The Sieve. Second Night.
Ughi. The maulers. They were all sleeping silent. I buried my teeth into the horse meat. It was a thick piece, roasted over a real fire, not a thin slice dried in the sun. I was tearing it apart.
We were sitting in a large round tent. Poles pounded into the dirt formed a circle about our height. They were covered with horse hides and sheep skins. A second row of thinner poles tied on top of them bent toward the center, making the roof. The skins were heavy and fresh, not like the torn ones that let the wind and rain through. I saw a stack of hides, waist-long woolen tunics, leather trousers, felt stockings, and horsehair boots. We punched and kicked for the best boots until we each got a pair. They were all the same, and there were plenty for all of us. I dressed and sat next to the fire to feel my hands and feet again.
Urak’s groans, and the blood running from his nose, made a good background for our feast. The Guides who had snatched us were in the tent watching. They had taken off their wolf hats and finally looked like old men. Wings had lifted my heart, and I was enjoying the spoils. At death’s first call, I had come out alive and a winner. And with a belly full of meat. It was the most beautiful night of my life, the night that I was born again.
My neck bent heavy as a log, and my eyes kept shutting. Yet sleep was long in coming. I wanted to talk. And to listen. “You are the Wolves tonight, but come morning, you will all wish you’d slept,” said Murky Eyes.
“No one sleeps the first night. Let them be,” said Old Man as they stepped out of the tent, leaving us alone for the first time.
There were spare skins scattered around the fire and room for more children to sleep. More children, where were they? The two girls were still eating and no one cared to speak before the last morsel of meat.
“This was roast meat, cooked with fire,” was the first thing I said.
“What did you expect? Rat?” asked the only one of the seven whose name I still didn’t know.
I didn’t understand. I had eaten rat once during the Great Feast of Spring.
“Rat?” Dried under the saddle. The horse’s salty sweat softening the meat. “Once,” I answered.
The boy spat with disgust in the dirt between us. The Sky, the Witch, and now this boy were spitting mercilessly on me. Even though I was a winner.
“I am Bako of the Archers, and I eat horsemeat all the time,” said the boy. His neck was jutting out of his shoulders as if he were announcing something of great importance to the whole Tribe. And that’s how I learned the last one’s name.
“They say that the end of the first night of the Sieve is half a warrior’s training,” said Danaka across from me.
She cared not for rats or orphans. She had strong legs but the voice of a girl half her age. And nothing else that I would ever notice again. My gaze returned to Elbia even before Danaka finished her words.
“Why do you tell him lies? A warrior’s training lasts five times spring,” said Atares.
“What half training? We’re still in the Sieve to see what banner we will be sent to. Then we begin training. I will become an Archer, and that orphan, if he doesn’t die here first, will be making my boots,” answered Bako.
“You are not an Archer yet. You come from the tents where the young of the Archers are raised.”
“Same thing.”
“You don’t know anything,” said Elbia.
Every time Elbia spoke, the fire in front of me swelled and brightened. My shoulders straightened so that I wouldn’t slouch, and my eyes opened wide. I wiped my lips with the back of my hand to get rid of the last bit of meat, drool and dried mud stuck around my mouth.
“Tell me.”
She turned to face only me and said: “Yes, it is true what he says. Training lasts five times spring. But those who know say that the first day, today, is the hardest, as hard as half the five winters’ training.”
“If we survive the one-and-a-half-moon trial of the Sieve,” Bako said again.
“A few winters back, the Sieve lasted one moon, but once it took almost two moons,” Elbia said.
“Yes, one moon; that was the black winter when the northfrost came early,” said Atares, staring at the weak fire.
I didn’t know much about the Sieve, but I knew that in a field of snow and ice none of us would stand a chance. Naked and barefoot.
Urak was sleeping off his beating. Every time he snored, Atares would get up and kick him in the ass to make him stop. Malan was the only one who didn’t talk at all. He had his arms crossed on top of his knees and was staring at the mud. He was an orphan too.
On one side of the tent was a stack of pots, some big and some small, and on the other were strewn a couple of poles and cudgels, and a whip. No blades or bows. I let out a sigh of relief. Almost everyone in the tent was better than I with the weapons. If we were to compete with bows the next day, I wouldn’t be among the winners, the Wolves.
“It’s going to be like that every day,” Atares said. “Guides, Reghen, Ouna-Mas. Sieving. They’ll keep coming.”
“And the Wolfmen. Those I fear most,” Danaka whispered.
“That is only Legend,” Atares replied.
“No, it isn’t. They come in the Sieve, always, with the first snow.”
My head and my mind were whirling from one mouth to the other to keep up.
“What Wolfmen?” I asked.
Bako motioned with one hand to the girls to stop. He knew.
“It is no Legend. We might be called Wolves, but we are not real Wolfmen.”
“What’s a real one like?”
“Wolf’s head, hide, tail, two legs. Teeth.”
“That’s a tale.”
“No, the Ouna-Mas lie with those men, the Guides, when Selene is full and turn them into Wolfmen. They then send them to purge the Sieve. The Reghen talked of Wolfmen in his Truths. He said it, don’t you remember?”
Danaka nodded yes.
“These are tales. For children,” Atares insisted.
“No, the Wolfmen will come. They are the ones who bring white death. You will see. Before the end of the Sieve.”
Atares turned to me.
“You listen to me, Da-Ren. Forget about him. The Ouna-Mas don’t waste their time with the old Guides; won’t even talk to them. The Ouna-Mas mate only with the Khun and the Chiefs.”
“Even when the Ouna-Mas ride the warriors, they never speak to them,” Bako blurted out.
“What do you mean they ride them?” asked Danaka.
“You haven’t bled yet, huh? Don’t worry, they won’t be riding you anyway.”
Elbia was looking at me. Again. I raised my shoulders straight.
“Hey, you, wake up,” Bako shouted to Malan. He had yet to speak a wor
d. “You, stupid orphan. Have you seen a girl bleeding?”
Malan just ignored him, so Bako turned his attention to me.
“Have you?”
I mumbled “Yes,” but Bako didn’t believe me. He kept on talking.
“Not like that other orphan, who bled first today. Those maulers. It was fast. Haven’t they taught you anything? What did you do all day?”
“Every day…we carried. Fresh horse piss for the hides and horseshit to dry for the fires. Sometimes—”
“Ha! Horse piss for the hides, he says. Why they’d bring you here? Your pal was smart. He got away from the first night. No more pain.”
Bako got up and mimicked Ughi shaking at the knees and falling. Then, with his palm held flat in front of his neck, he made the motion of the Guide’s blade when it slit Ughi’s throat. Bako bleated mockingly, then laughed.
I was on my two feet and ready to pounce on him, when Atares held me back. It was too late.
“You wanna fight, horseshit? Come on, grab one. Blade fight.”
I had fallen into his trap. Bako got up, threw me one of the two wooden poles lying next to him and stood ready across from me, holding his pole like a sword. The pole already reached the tent’s ceiling where it was lower along the sides. This was no place for a blade fight. There was no room to run, no way for my legs to save me.
“Block his blade, Da-Ren. Hold high. Two hands,” Elbia got up and cheered me on.
I grabbed the pole with two hands like a heavy sword and got up to face him. All this fuss woke even Urak. Everyone made for the sides of the tent to give us room. My legs were shaking as in the field.
I knew what I was up against. Every day I roamed most of the camp to find the fresh piss. I had seen the eleven-wintered Archer children, strong and proud, parrying and thrusting the wooden poles, again and again. They weren’t carrying pails of shit. I had no luck.
I countered his strikes four times, but I didn’t have the skill. On the fifth strike, Bako’s pole hit my wrist hard and the pain blinded me. On the sixth, the pole fell from my hands and lay, defeated, in the fire. Bako pointed to the hides.
“Kneel and say, ‘I am a horseshit orphan.’”
I didn’t move. Not even my eyes moved. I didn’t want to catch Elbia’s stare.
He lifted his pole to hit me. I closed my eyes and raised my arms to cover my head. I opened them two breaths later to see Malan between Bako and me. Malan had grabbed the pole with both hands and Bako was trying to free it.
“You cannot, you stupid orphan. No hands on blade,” Bako shouted to Malan, still trying unsuccessfully to free his pole.
“What blade?” were Malan’s first words that night as he secured Bako’s wooden pole in his fists. In the time it took Bako to think of all the rules of proper training, Malan kneed him in the balls.
Bako fell on his back, writhing in pain. “In practice. No, you can’t, no hands on blade,” he was still mumbling, holding his crotch with both hands.
“Practice?” asked Malan with a grin, as he fell onto Bako’s chest and wrapped his knees around him. He landed two punches in Bako’s nose—it broke on the first—and then pushed his bloodied face three fingers from the fire.
“Roast meat, Da-Ren. Cooked on fire. Want some? Orphans don’t get that,” Malan said in a low steady voice, his head turning toward me.
The red-hot dung coals were already touching Bako’s cheek. Screaming and bleeding. The Guides rushed through the hides. If they were a couple of breaths slower, Bako would have been marked forever. The whip hit the fire, sending embers flying everywhere. We all fell down and played dead.
The Guides stayed until we shut up for good. Silence fell, and broke only by the crackling of the fire and the dogs’ barking, not too far off. Malan lay down next to me, and Bako crawled away from us. He wouldn’t sleep next to the fire. He was Bako, from the tents where the young of the brave Archers were reared, where they were taught how to blade fight with wooden poles. In practice. Once the Guides left and the dogs quieted down, he bade me goodnight.
“You will bleed tomorrow, shit carriers. I spit on the slave bitches who gave birth to you. They spat you out and died in pain, when they saw your shit faces. You have no warrior blood in you,” Bako continued to mumble. He couldn’t sleep either.
“No orphan piss boy makes it through the Sieve alive,” I heard Danaka saying.
“Shut up and sleep,” Elbia whispered back at her.
I would sleep the night next to her.
“It’s true. They bring them here to have meat for the dogs. You’ll see tomorrow when they fall first.”
The warmth of the fire and the girls’ sweet whispering melted my turmoil, and my eyelids finally closed. Only for a little while.
V.
I Dreamed of Cauldrons
Thirteenth Winter. The Sieve. Second Night.
I dreamed of cauldrons.
Fat entrails and bloody guts were bubbling in there, and Ughi was stirring, holding a pole with his two hands. Blood was slowly dripping into the pot from his open neck. He brought his arrow finger to his lips, motioning me not to make a sound.
The sounds woke me, many and loud, as a man’s shouting orders ended everyone’s sleep.
“On your feet.”
The side of my face close to the fire was burning like the coals. My feet, away from it, were ice cold. I was slowly getting up when Old Man pushed me. “Quickly, move next to them.”
I protected my head, afraid that someone would start pulling me out of the tent like the night before. It was still black outside, not a single ray of light seeping through the hides. I squatted next to the other children.
The Reghen, the gray-clad youth who had thrown us the meat, was passing out a thick milk and millet gruel. We ate his warm gift straight out of our cupped hands. Soon, the new day would dawn and it would bring another trial. No Reghen had ever come to my tent to speak. I was never sent to their camp to load pails, so I had made up a few tales of my own that they were all creatures born of fire and iron and they didn’t shit or piss.
I remembered Elbia’s words. The first day is half the training.
It was.
It was the moment of the first awakening. The Wolves’ tent with the fresh-skinned hides, the voices of the Guides that replaced the Greentooth’s, the voice of Elbia yesterday, and her apple-red cheeks now, me licking the Reghen’s gruel from my fingers, all of this meant that I was an orphan no more.
Would I become a warrior? Would I end up as meat for the dogs? Only the stars knew that. But already I was a Wolf not an orphan. Even if I ran in the mud and the snow with horses, bows, and blades for five springs until my eighteenth winter when I would be a worthy warrior, it would still be only the other half of my training.
The Reghen was not alone. With him was the red-veiled Ouna-Ma and the same two Guides from the previous night. Atares turned to me as if I were his dumb little orphan child and said, “The Reghen is going to tell us a Story.”
“No, he is going to tell us a Truth,” said Elbia.
The Reghen turned his back on us and fell to one knee in front of the Ouna-Ma. Her fingers, painted with black henna ornaments all the way to the elbow, emerged from her black robe and pressed on the Reghen’s forehead. I could see nothing of her face. A thick red veil was wrapped around her head except for a small gap around the eyes. The man and woman stood still and exchanged wild, unintelligible whispers. After a while, the Ouna-Ma disappeared deep into the shadows of the tent. The Reghen rose, took off his hood, turned to us, and spoke:
The Truth of the First Night
We are commanded by the Sun of Enaka, the voice of the Ouna-Ma, and the bow of Khun-Taa, Fifth Leader of the Tribe. And we listen.
The trial of the Sieve will persist every day until Enaka’s glorious warriors of tomorrow stand apart from those lesser in strength, the weaklings that will carry no blade or bow, and, even worse, from the wretched cowards. Those, the Sieve will keep forever.
Neit
her bow, nor horse, nor blades shall the twelve-wintered of the Sieve see in the trials.
Three deaths will the children of the Sieve face:
Cold.
Hunger.
And the third, the unspeakable, the terrible.
What fate is deserved by each and every one of you will be decreed by Enaka, and she will tell only the First, Sah-Ouna, who will pass this wisdom down to the Ouna-Mas and the Reghen.
The First Reghen have forged the Truths of the Sieve, five generations past.
Listen to them now:
On the first day, the first who falls will twice be put to death, once with an iron blade and once with the blade of a beast.
This first, weakest of souls is the poison of Darhul and must not live among us. Do not spit at the feeble-bodied in the face, but send them to the tents of the help to live as Fishermen, Blacksmiths, and Tanners. But rip out the soul of the faint-hearted, the first one to fall, and only him, and into the Great River, the Blackvein, throw him unburned, before his poison spreads to the rest.
This is the Story that you will bring to the victors’ tent, the Wolves, on the second night before they go out again. In the weaklings’ tents, the Sheep, only horse dung and tar. May no Reghen or Ouna-Ma ever set foot there.
Thus declared the Ouna-Mas, the Voices of The Unending Sky.
The Reghen and the Ouna-Ma turned their backs on us and left without another word. Ughi, the poison of the Tribe, traveled unburned in the Blackvein, and I would never dream of him again.
They took us outside. No raindrop glimmered in the moonlight, and that made the darkness deeper than the first night even.
Old Man took me out of my thoughts. “Throw hides and boots in the first shed, leave only the loincloth on, and stand in line.”
“Again, the same?” I asked the others.
Atares shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know either.
“So, the Ouna-Ma doesn’t go to the Sheep’s tents?” Bako asked Murky Eyes. The Guide slapped him hard and then answered, “Today, when you fall, you will see.”
Drakon Book I: The Sieve Page 3